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Book Weekend with Radius

BOOK WEEKEND with RADIUS and Alex Webb & Rebecca Norris Webb

This intensive weekend workshop is open to anyone who is passionate about a photography project that he or she has been working on –– from serious amateurs to seasoned professionals, from documentary photographers to art photographers, from those photographing a theme, place, or issue to those working on a more personal series of photographs of family or friends.

We’ll kick off the weekend with a Friday evening slide talk of the work of Alex Webb and Rebecca Norris Webb, a creative team who’ve edited six books together, including Violet Isle: A Duet of Photographers from Cuba (Radius, 2009), a project that’s currently being exhibited at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. Their slide talk will be followed by a conversation and Q&A with the Webbs and David Chickey, the publisher and creative director of Radius Books who has designed photo books for more than 20 publishers and museums over the last 15 years. This event will be open to the public.

Saturday will begin with a review of each participant’s project (each photographer will present 30-80 small prints –– 4x6 to 5x7, either inkjet or inexpensive photographic prints). Through a group editing process, the Webb/Radius team will devise an individual assignment tailored for each photographer, which will be due the next morning. On Sunday morning, the Webb/Radius team will go over the assignments, and offer specific suggestions for each photographer about how to take his or her project to the next level. Sunday afternoon will feature presentations by David Chickey, acclaimed book designer and Radius publisher, and noted photo book expert and Radius editor, Darius Himes, author of the new book, Publish Your Photography Book. This will be followed by a panel discussion led by David and Darius about the making and publishing of photo books, which will end with an intimate Q&A with the participants.

Throughout this intensive weekend, this workshop will explore a variety of photo book related topics through discussion, presentations, and an editing exercise, including such issues as how to find the heart of your photography book, how to edit and sequence a photo book intuitively, how to figure out what’s left to photograph for your book, how to choose a writer for your book, how to select the right title for your book, how to decide on the right size for your photo book, how to choose a cover image, how to work with a designer, what to expect when you go on press for a book, how prints in a book differ from prints on a wall, and how to publish your photo book.

To apply: photographers must submit 10 small jpgs (72 dpi, no more than 8 inches on longest side) from their project, and a short statement about it (no more than 250 words), as a word doc (if possible) to Alex and Rebecca: rebeccanorriswebb@yahoo.com

Former Webb Workshop participants are invited to apply, but others will be considered as well.