Photobooks, zines, reviewed, etc...

Highly Important Jewels & Distinctive Fur Fashions - Ofer Wolberger

This is the most recent book in Ofer’s series of books, released under the banner of The Photographic Project 2010. It’s the series as a whole which I want to draw your attention to here.

The introduction to this series appeared in this blog post, an extract from which reads as follows:

The project will consist of 12 different self-published books, one book for each month of the year…The first book will be given away in the same way that the photographs from the past two years were given away, to the first responder. I will keep the second copy… a limited edition of each book will be made available for sale on this site at an affordable price. You can buy one book at a time or subscribe to the whole series of 12.

As soon as I read this, I knew I would want to see these books. But, for various reasons it wasn’t until Ofer contacted me directly about the project that I stopped procrastinating and bought the first four books.

I’ve given my thoughts on subscriptions in earlier posts on this blog, suffice it to say that I think it’s a terribly brave thing to do. To commit to producing not just a single title, but 12 books takes some confidence, and I have no doubt that it will take some determination to see each book through to publication - never mind the whole series.

I like the idea that each book has a completely different theme. I imagine this is both liberating and demanding at the same time. Liberating, because you don’t need to find 12 books worth of material on the same theme. Demanding, because you have to think of a new theme for each book.

I love the way that the design/presentation of each book is different (even down to the size of the book). I didn’t expect this (although you can kind of see from the videos - see below) so it was a nice bonus when the books arrived. Although I like consistency in certain contexts, and it can be nice to see a series of identical book spines sitting next to each other, I think this approach serves the purpose of the project much better.

Not only has he produced each book, but also a video trailer for each title, which you can see here. This alone shows a level of attention to detail that you don’t often see.

Personally I love the concept, and I’ve enjoyed looking through the first 4 books. I’m really looking forward to seeing the next 8. Based on the quality of the first 4, I’m sure they will be worth the wait.

You can buy the books individually or you can sign up to the entire series. I believe that a small number of subscriptions are still available, so you would need to act fairly quickly.