When I say photo book I don’t mean that dust covered, leather bound album full of your parents wedding photos and pictures of aunts and uncles that you’ve never met but rather what I really mean is something even more obscure.
By photo book I really mean the collection of photos captured by an artist or journalist that is curated into a physical creation. An exhibit that fits into the palms of your hands. And I’m going to explain to you why photo books are important.
They’re not.
I suppose I could bat back and forth on metaphysical existence of important and what it really means to add the value of importance to something, but for the sake of getting to the point I’m going to explain to you why they are important to me.
I’m not alone when I say that aesthetics are important. We love beautiful things. And although we live in a time where it seems to be more apart that someone will find something they dislike about someone before they can find something they do like I still believe that regardless to the hate that echos through the internet we still gravitate towards beauty. And although we might be less vocal about beauty, in telling someone they look good today, that you like what they are wearing, or that their smile brings you joy, that sensation remains inside of us. There’s something much more powerful in enjoying beauty than there is in disliking ugliness. In fact I even more so that it’s even easier to find beauty in someone or something than it is to find the lack of beauty.
Maybe we keep these thoughts in our heads in fear of being judged or making someone feel uncomfortable by speaking them aloud. Or maybe because vocalising these thought is such a rarity in todays world that we fear that someone might be getting the wrong idea by what are saying or that we feel like we are betraying a significant other by saying these sorts of things. I’ve always struggled to hold these thoughts I my head and I think more people should focus on turning the switch that regulates compliments off.
I think it’s okay to compliment beauty. But let me clarify.
Beauty isn’t some sort of perfect combination of soft lines, flawless skin, unparalleled symmetry. The type of imagery a Disney movie would depict its main character in the final act. But it can be. Beauty is a combination of shape, colour, and form that pleases us. Pleases our core. Our soul. The type of images David Chancellor presents to us in his book ‘Hunters’ which depicts over 100 images of dead animals. Giant elephants, silky coated leopards, de-horned rhinos. bullet holes left on their skin, pelts torn, and blood stained clothing. How can you say this is beautiful? yet it is. It makes us feel something. It makes everyone feel something. If 100 people picked this book up you would get 100 different, unique, and unpredictable opinions. This here is the power of a photo book (Or more so its creator).
Works like these create social impact. A project like that of Chancellor captures the complicated relationship that exists between hunter and beast. A series of eloquently executed shots by a photographer could flip someones entire outlook on life. And it has. There’s countless image based books that have shaped how people think about the world. These Journalistic captures like ‘Hunters’ or artistic concepts like ‘Beneath the Roses’ by Gregory Crewdson help shape the way society thinks. And without buying these physical creations most photographers would’t be able to continue pursuing this avant garde route in life. Which, in turn, would provide less beauty in the world.
And that’s not the world I want to be living in.
So go out and buy a photo book by a photographer you’ve never heard of, complement the cashier on the way out, and keep the world a little bit more beautiful.
Feel free to check out my favourite photo books of right now!