Kamiyama

It is conventional wisdom that you are not supposed to touch pieces of art. That’s why museums employ staff that stand around in galleries and berate anyone who dares to get too close to the museum’s wares. And mostly, I’m not interested in touching art, in particular painting or photographs. But there actually is art that I would love to touch. Anselm Kiefer’s pieces, for example, invite me to touch them. So do Louis Bourgeois’ fabric works.

In other words, there are pieces of art that inherently create a viewer’s desire to engage with them besides looking at them. I’m not talking about Richard Serra’s overwrought gigantic steel pieces (one of which I have touched — to feel absolutely nothing). I’m talking about pieces of art where the materials themselves evoke a viewer’s tactile experience. With Kiefer, it’s not the paint I want to touch or the metal. It’s the degraded organic matter that is present in some of his work, matter that speaks of the world outside of the artist’s studio.

Their tactile aspects might be the most underappreciated components of photobooks. In my experience, you can tell the difference between a brilliant photobook maker and a competent one by observing whether or not their eyes light up when it comes to the papers they use. Competent book makers will know all about what printing on different papers looks like. Brilliant book makers will know what it feels like to the person looking at a book.

Here, looking entails seeing as much as registering the signals sent from the finger tips. Photographs are said to have no surfaces, meaning that unlike Kiefer’s paintings they don’t strut out into space. But photographs printed with ink (whether in a book or elsewhere) actually do — you might not be able to see them. Your fingertips will pick up on them. They will glide across the surfaces of smooth (or cheaply genetic) papers, and they will notice the possible roughness of other types of paper. They will notice how one type of paper feels fragile while another resists when a page is being turned.

The vast majority of photobooks are made without consideration of their tactile qualities. Production often is an afterthought. Or the flawed goal of the precious photobook is pursued where preciousness means a combination of heavy printing, thick paper, and an almost criminal absence of even the most basic aspects of good graphic design.

The right printing, the right paper(s), and the right graphic design are important. They have to be considered in such a fashion that they’re in support of the work. And “the work” means the book itself — and not its individual constituent photographs. This holds true even for catalogues, collections of images that often are pulled from different projects and that might not easily cohere in a visual fashion.

For me, the most important aspect of the book as an object is the following. As an object, a book (or any publication in general) has to support the material it contains in such a fashion that it helps a viewer understand or feel what they’re made to look at. This means that the object might draw attention to itself. But this has to be done in such a fashion that that attention does not divert the viewer’s focus from what it on view.

This means that if a viewer notices, say, the way the paper feels there should be a connection to the work (meaning the photographs and the overall goal of the book). If there is no such connection (it is clear that for many books, the object does not need to step in), then the materials should not attract undue attention.

A recent example of an absolutely perfectly made catalogue is provided by Kim Boske‘s Kamiyama, published by FW:Books, a masterclass in photobook making.

Kamiyama showcases art work made by Boske during a string of art residencies in a small Japanese village of that name. Japan consists of over 10,000 island, with four main (large) ones. Kamiyama is situated on the smallest one of these main ones, Shikoku, roughly 70 miles (or 110 km) to the southwest of Osaka (which is on Honshu, Japan’s largest island). The area is very rural, with the Akui river passing by and numerous other, smaller ones flowing into it. There are a number of waterfalls nearby.

For the various pieces showcased in the book, Boske collaborated with local artisans, using local materials and techniques. These include the production of indigo pigments to create blue fabrics. Kamiyama sits in the area which is famous (at least in Japan) for its indigo production.

The work showcased in the book is mostly abstract. The most easily recognizable photographs show layered depictions of streams and shrubbery. The rest are completely abstract, and the pieces are not the images themselves but, instead, the images plus their carriers (whether paper of cloth).

How do you convey the range of art pieces made by Boske while helping a viewer understand what they’re looking at? The book does this by showing either the pieces themselves (in some cases, this includes their back sides) or installation photographs. In addition, there are some essays (printed on blue or green paper — this is a nice touch, because historically, the Japanese language did not have a separate word for “green”, including it in 青 [pronounced ao]).

And there is an extended section that showcases the processes itself, with Boske, various artisans, and workshop participants engaged in producing pieces. That process section does a lot of heavy lifting for the catalogue, and it does so very smartly. There are no explanations (it might in fact be rather tedious having to read specific production details). But as a viewer you can see what things looked like.

The process section with its depictions of cloth, water, dyes, etc. combines with the materials of the book itself to communicate the importance of materiality for this particular artist. Looking through the book, I was wondering what, say, the handmade cloth would feel like to my touch. Being far away I have no way of knowing. But I have the book, with its coarse cloth cover (which visually resembles some of the cloth in the book), and I have the different types of paper, some of them smooth, others with what feels like little ridges that my fingertips can’t slide over so easily.

I am somewhat biased in that I am very interested in both Japanese culture and traditions (but not in a fashion that only focuses on the latter). You might wonder whether this does not in fact shade my view of the book. It might. On the other hand, if you showed me Boske’s art pieces in a conventional catalogue, I would probably not be very interested. The abstractions created from layering photographs ordinarily are not my cup of tea.

But I am deeply intrigued by beautiful art pieces and the ways they are made. Kamiyama does a perfect job of pulling me in and of engaging me with Boske’s work from Japan. Which is to say that I personally expect a catalogue to do more than present information: it should create an experience that goes beyond the cerebral.

I want to feel something when I look at a book. In fact, that’s the only reason why I look at photobooks (and art in general).

Whatever you might make of the above, your response to the book and the work it showcases might be different. Still, I am confident in claiming that you would have to have a heart of stone not to be touched (please excuse the pun) by the sheer beauty of this book. There are a few books I pull from my shelf when someone asks me how a book can be a piece of art. From now on, these will include Kamiyama.

Highly recommended.

Kamiyama; art works by Kim Boske; essays by Erik A. de Jong, Ryoko Yoshida, Taco Hidde Bakker, and Menno Liauw; smaller pieces of texts by various authors and participants in workshops held by Boske; 306 pages; FW:Books; 2025

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In late October this year, I traveled back to the town in northwestern Germany where I was born and where I spent the first two decades of my life. I had not been back since roughly the early to mid-1990s. There had not been a reason to go back for me, especially given how strained my relationship to my parents, and especially my father, had become. But now that he had died, I decided that I would attend his funeral.

I brought my camera to attempt to make sense of the world. For a few years, I had been wondering what it would be like to face locales that had had some meaning for me a long time ago. Now I would find out.

But there are only so many things a camera can capture. I had had plans to write about my experience as well, which did not work out as planned. There is only so much time in any given day. If that time is taken up with a memorial and funeral, with re-connecting with my brother, and with photographing, then the remainder of the time is better spent on creature comforts (good food and plenty of sleep).

Before I left, I thought that I needed to make something out of the trip — mostly for myself. I didn’t know what that something might be. But it felt as if years from now I would want to look back at this particular moment in my life not just in my thoughts but also through some form of creative expression.

I took a lot of photographs, but there were many things that happened in my head that needed to be expressed as well. With the idea of making something in mind, I decided to make a publication. I didn’t set myself a deadline, but I forced myself to write. In retrospect, I can say that this was a good idea. I not only wrote down things I experienced, through my writing I also came to understand that trip and many of my feelings a lot better.

Back in that city, my brother asked me to go through some of my old materials that, somehow, were still being kept in some old desk (that I didn’t remember but that I was told had been mine). But there also was a red box. Inside that red box, there were a large number of old family documents and some folders my father had assembled.

The folders provided the model for what the something I had been thinking about would become: a folder that contains a loose set of photographs (in random order) and a loose set of pieces of my writing (ditto).

You can see some of the photographs, some of the text, and information about that folder on my website. Please note that for this website to work, you will need a larger screen (meaning at the very least a tablet computer held horizontally or up). I actually don’t think any longer that every photo project needs to be viewable on a phone.

Complicated Feelings — that’s the name of the project and publication — allowed me to play with some ideas that I had had in my head for a while. As much as I like books, the fact that they’re so finished has always bugged me. How can one make something that is well considered but that is less formed? Something that contains a sense of openness and that might, in fact, change with time?

If someone decides to buy a copy, I’m assembling a new folder. There are added, hand written notes for some of the writing. I’m imagining that these notes might change as time passes and the trip becomes more and more a fact of my past life.

I don’t know what this might look like, and I also don’t know how one is to understand a publication that might exist in different forms, possibly with slightly different meanings. Making this publication allows me to find out. There’s no edition of any sorts: I will stop making these publications until interest in them has run out (whether its audience’s or mine — whichever comes first).

I also like the idea of imperfection that is contained in the publication. My hand writing differs from day to day, the order in which I place the photographs changes every time. What needs to be controlled is controlled (the way things are printed, say). But every person gets their own, unique copy, and every one is imperfect in its own ways. Right now, this approach appeals to me.

This is the first and very likely last very personal project. I can’t say that I particularly like this aspect (I am a very private person); but I am still very open to seeing what this might do. It might do nothing, or it might do something that I am unable to foresee right now.

Not everything needs to be personal, but the deeply personal ought to be.

In my own teaching, I always tell my students to consider their future self as the one person to make a publication for: make something that your future self will be happy to have, even as they’re likely to have outgrown your current self.

I don’t know what I will be making of this publication in five or ten years. What I do know, though, is how important this advice is, given how making something for my future self forced me to face my complicated feelings.

If you’re interested in buying a copy of Complicated Feelings (again, don’t look at this on your phone) have a look at the details on the website and send me an email (jmcolberg at gmail.com).

In the past, I have worked with photographers whose projects involved a lot of very different elements, both photographically and conceptually. While many complex projects are complex because their makers are unable to decide which of the less important aspects they can trim, some projects are in fact complex.

Complex work poses a challenge when you want to create a book. Very heterogeneous imagery often does not lend itself easily to being condensed into a single book: a viewer who knows nothing about what they might encounter might get overwhelmed or confused. Book design can help alleviate this problem only to some extent. In the end, you almost always need added text.

My suggestion for photographers has always been to think about a catalogue. In nine out of ten cases, that suggestion was roundly rejected by the photographers I worked with. Photography catalogues appear to have a really bad reputation in part because most of them are, well, terrible.

In a nutshell, a catalogue is a collection of material under an umbrella. In the world of photography, that umbrella is usually provided by the topic at hand.

What makes so many catalogues bad is the approach taken: an expensive coffee-table book with an assortment of essays that were written by and for insiders (whether art historians, curators, or any other in-group). The writing isn’t bad per se; it’s just that it’s unreadable for people who are not immersed in whatever jargon and conventions the writers take for granted.

In the hands of a gifted bookmaker/publisher, it’s not very difficult to turn this approach around and, instead, produce a book that showcases the work it contains in the best possible fashion. The book then not only helps viewers understand how the heterogeneous imagery relates to one another, it also helps them understand how what looks so different is in fact related to the same underlying topic or idea.

A recent catalogue that piqued my interest is With Love. From an Invader. – Rhododendrons, Empire, China and Me by Yan Wang Preston. The publisher, The Eriskay Connection, has a history of creating very engaging books that as objects are a pleasure to look at (the books are always very nicely designed and produced).

As the book’s title makes clear, there is a plethora of ideas behind the complex set of images contained inside. It all starts out from, you guessed it, the rhododendron plant. Even though the plant can now be found in Great Britain, it arrived there from elsewhere. It shares these qualities with many other global transplants, whether they’re plants or people such as the photographer herself, born in China and now residing in the UK.

There is a particular plant that forms what I see as the emotional core of the book, a bush that when seen from one particular direction is heart-shaped. Wang Preston took photographs of this bush for an entire year.

In addition, the artist created a number of pieces based on the plant, whether by using a camera trap (that would take pictures of whatever creature would appear in front of it) or by working with the plant directly, taking pieces and turning them into pieces of art.

In addition, there is material from botanical and other archives, resulting in that large number of heterogeneous images that turn creating a book into such a challenge.

Whoever decided to use the seasons as a device to organize the work had a really good idea (there are three editors listed besides the publisher’s team). Organizing heterogeneous material provides structure for a viewer who otherwise might be overwhelmed.

It’s good to remember that any photobook maker, regardless of what type of book they’re making, has one major role: to guide a viewer through their book in a fashion that is not too loose and not too tight. If it’s too loose, the viewer will get lost. If it’s too tight, a viewer’s imagination will get restricted in a fashion that they might say “this is not for me”.

The book itself features pages of different lengths for the seasons. It’s a very basic device, which I find very appealing because it’s simple, and at least to me it looks really nice.

That all said, I think the long and somewhat convoluted title hints at the book’s shortcoming. It attempts to cram way too many things into the book. And maybe that could have worked if the essays were more engaging. This reader, though, finds their academic nature mostly off-putting.

For me, the work’s emotional core and the beauty of a lot of the imagery simply gets lost in the verbiage and in the decision to cram as much material as possible into the book. While I understand the drive to express as much as possible with a book, I do think that more is not always more.

If as a book maker you are unable to stand back from what you have how to see what matters most how do you expect a viewer to discover it?

Then again, possibly this book was not made for people like me. If that were the case, as seems likely, that’s a perfectly good decision to make. From what I see in this book, I’m thinking that academics working in botany might get a lot out of the book. And other practitioners working in more academic fields of photography might as well.

As always, as a reader you will need to come to your own conclusions. If you’re working on something incredibly complex, you still want to look at this book. For sure, this is not your boring boilerplate catalogue, and a lot of the decisions used to show its materials are really smart.

With Love. From an Invader. – Rhododendrons, Empire, China and Me; images by Yan Wang Preston; essays/interviews by Emma Nicolson, Alan Elliott, Bergit Arends, Matthew Gandy, Monty Adkins, Michael Pritchard, Liam Devlin, Yan Wang Preston, and Cosima Towneley; 320 pages; The Eriskay Connection; 2025

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