collab: photobook

*this is a complete repost from laurie's blog.

  the story behind this book was narrated perfectly without any need from me to expound.

we'd been rushing, trying to get as much as possible done whenever we could. i took photos; ige sketched. it was the last weekend before the voucher i won from jo's birthday giveaway expires, and we still had other stuff to do before we could work on the photobook.  still, after all the collab-related arguments, squabbles, and disagreements (*pulling of hair, gnashing of teeth*), our beautiful awesome photobook was delivered last friday, and everything was forgiven. :P

the unboxing was quite an experience.  we stroked the photobook's cover so obsessively we could be charged with harassment.

our concept for the photobook was a sampler of sorts, filled with conceptual pairs--my film photographs and ige's sketches. it was both fun and frustrating to come up with the pairs: ige drew his own 'interpretations' for some of my existing photos, or i would choose a sketch of his that i really liked (or one he'd identified), and would take inspiration from to create a photo based on it. we had pairs from 'existing' photos and sketches, and we also made photos and sketches 'from scratch'.

at left is a "new" photo inspired by an existing sketch of a vintage telephone. i was thinking of "old school" methods of communication, and since i love postcards and snail mail, why not take a photo of my postcards? :) the postcard with a clearly-seen text is from fortuitous faery! here's how the spread looks like:

here's another favorite spread, featuring my rat gypsy (who's in heaven now)!

i love the concept in this one.

 we came up with 20 pairs all in all, and ige just penned out a simple "title" for our cover page:
 

since ige did the cover, the last page features film photos of the "authors" doing our thing, taken by none other than yours truly.  a fitting end page, i must say.

making a collaborative project like this is difficult! i have to admit, ige & i may be buddies but we are still very different persons with different "methods" and attitudes about working, and i guess the squabbles are part of 'making things work'. in the end you just think about what really matters, that little thing you hold dear, and then, when you see your output, you go all wow and think you want to do it again.  okay maybe not in the near future, haha.  

thanks again to jo for the awesome opportunity to create our own photobook! we can surely say that in this case, the 'creative process' is definitely integral to the value of a piece of art. hahaha.

next!

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project details photobook service provider: photobook philippines || 11"x11" large square debossed || 42 pages || textured matte paper || cover: synthetic leather in 'elephant' || files were uploaded monday afternoon, book was delivered friday morning :)