Making a Photo Book

 

Under the careful guidance of Kate Hutchinson, the 6th-semester students in our photography program have the opportunity to extend their knowledge about photography by applying it to bookmaking, which is a medium all to itself.  This is a unique opportunity for students to explore and experiment using their imagery with bookmaking by seeing how books can add a new layer of understanding about visual storytelling.

 

 

Pictured above are examples of the many handmade photobooks our third-year photography students made in their Digital Lab 6 class. For this project, students print and bind a series of their images into a cohesive and thoughtful photobook. Through a series of workshops in DL6, students learn sequencing, layout, and book design, as well as Japanese stab binding, Smyth binding, adding a hard and soft cover to a book block, and dry mounting. After that it is up to the students how and what kind of book they make, as long as it flows and functions as a photobook and is not simply a collection of their best images. Come see these beautiful books in person at the third-year vernissage on May 24th!

Kate Hutchinson is a member of our teaching faculty. Not only does she teach about the bookmaking process, but she has published two books of her own titled, The Park, published by Les Éditions Du Renard, 2015 and Seasons of Separation, published by Anchorless Press 2022.

You can find more about her and her work by visiting her website at http://www.katehutchinson.com and find out more about her latest publication, Season of Separation at, https://anchorlesspress.square.site/product/seasons-of-separation-by-kate-hutchinson/166

Article by Peter Berra and Kate Hutchinson, May 2023.

 

Lumen Prints

In the early 1830’s William Henry Fox Talbot experimented with “photogenic drawings” by placing objects and drawings on paper coated with a solution of silver nitrate and exposing it to sunlight. The first year Professional Photography students in their Photo Technology course explored the principle by placing objects on modern-day photographic darkroom paper and, like Talbot, exposing it to daylight for several minutes.

Here is a selection of the lumen prints (and one cyanotype) that they created using light to create photographic images. The paper was dampened just prior to exposure to increase its sensitivity and reduce exposure times. Wetting the paper also results in colour effects and the introduction of random stains and artifacts that Talbot would probably not have been happy with, but that the students liked. Incidentally, photo paper develops out (forms a visible image) simply from the exposure to the intense light - no darkroom processing required.
- David Hopkins

Counterpart

Counterpart stems from an assignment Professional Photography faculty members Peter Berra and David Hopkins introduced in their 2019 Photo Studio 2 class: photograph another student who is a stranger. Afterwards, Berra compiled these images into a portrait of both individual and collective identity, in all its beauty, poignancy, and complexity.

The Photographers: Marie-Florence Angers, Patrizia Ayotte, Kévin Orian Boyer, Élodie Boyer-Lafrenière, Alice Bruel-Joncas, Éloïse Cyr, Victoria Cyr, Enya De Belle, Isaiah Domazet-Casimir, Samuel Fhima, Nina Cannelle Gibelin Souchon, Mark Gorlovsky, Emily Hamelin, Ian Hamilton, Johnathan Houle, Jonathan Jimenez, Cassandra Lacroix, Méghane Laflamme, Kelly Lamer, Magalie Léveillé, Jasmine Martin-Brouillet, Samantha Monette, Abigaïl Nolet, Romello Occhialini, Benjamin Portaria, Samuel Proulx, Zachary Regnier, Mortheza Rezae, Philip Smart, Ya-Nan Song, Jenna Sousa, Christopher Spanos, Jie Sun, Alexandre Tremblay Pereira, Kloé Villeneuve-Boillat, Geoffrey Webster, Taylor Winlo, Leila Yahya.

Robert Walker’s Griffintown

The 3rd year Print Production class was treated to a presentation of the McCord Museum’s extensive Notman archive. Quite interesting to see how prolific Notman was, and that he produced composites and 3D images. In the 1850s!

Our main reason to visit the McCord was to see Robert Walker’s Griffintown exhibit. The McCord is focusing on different Montreal neighborhoods and the urban transformations they are undergoing. 

None more apparent than Griffintown, where Robert Walker’s striking photographic style and his bold use of colour and compositions, juxtapose the old neighborhood with the inflated dreams of the new condo developments. 

Highlight of the visit was meeting Robert who very generously guided us through the exhibit and shared his vision with the students. He spoke about working on this project and other aspects of his career.  

Robert Walker Robert Walker’s Griffintown

Special thanks to Mr. Walker!

Pierre Arsenault

Before the World Shut Down, There Was Cuba

Just prior to the global lockdown, twelve students, two teachers from the Dawson College Photography Program and clothing stylist, Sophie Lanza, travelled to Havana Cuba, to participate in workshops on travel and fashion photography.

The vibrant culture, warm people and faded beauty of its baroque architecture make Havana an ideal choice for a location to practice photography 

The six students in the fashion photography workshop worked with a local producer, models and a creative team on photoshoots on the streets of central Havana and in a Vedado mansion, Josie Alonso House (where photographer Annie Leibowitz photographed Rhianna for Vanity Fair). The fashion workshop students participated in lighting demonstrations before each of their own shoots.

The other six students in the travel photography workshop, spent two days with local guides, visiting the family of one of the guides on their farm a few hours away from the capital city in Vinales. They also spent a day touring and photographing the city and a local ballerina. 

Laurel Breidon & David Hopkins

Making Photography Books

For this handmade book assignment in the Digital Lab 6 course, I show students different techniques such as: sewing a book using the Smyth method, Japanese stab binding, adding a hard or soft cover to a sewn book block, and dry mounting. All the printing is done here at Dawson College by students using the double sided Canon printer (which prints matt) or the single sided Epson printers.

Examples of different binding used to create the books.
- Japanese stab binding with a soft cover
- Smyth binding with a hard cover and a ribbon (and nice textured end papers)
- Japanese stab binding with a soft cover. Pages were folded in half but were printed double sided so there are hidden images inside the folded pages.
- Smyth binding with a soft cover. A box with embroidery and covered in binding cloth. All images inside the box were dry mounted to individual matt boards.

Kate Hutchinson

Reconsidering the Still Life

Looking at the work of Giorgio de Chirico, Florence Henri, Oliver Schwarzwald and many more photographers, the still life reconsidered by the students of Photo Studio 3.

These images are the result of rethinking what a photographic subject can be, and exploring composition light and colour in unusual ways. To create these images, the students interpreted and implement historic and contemporary practices in still-life photography. Additionally, the students integrated techniques that are unique to digital capture, blending photography with contemporary post-production tools and techniques to create images that are no longer purely photographic.

This work would not be possible if Lab and Studio did not collaborate and so, many thanks to Anouk Lessard who guided the students through the various editing techniques they needed to complete these images.

Claudio Calligaris

“Our sons will know seas with no fish” - Adrienne Surprenant

At the outfall of the Sanaga river and Yoyo’s white sand beach, more than 3,000 West African fisherman have started their lives anew in the municipality of Mouanko, Cameroon. They now form a third of the population in this region where 90% of the inhabitants are busy with fisheries. They left Ghana, Nigeria, or Benin because of overfishing.
Their exile was provoked by a man-made catastrophe : the foreigners overexploitation of the ocean’s resources deprived West Africa’s artisanal fisherman from their means of subsistance.
The amount of fish taken out of West African waters has tripled since the 70’s. In 2016, the sea products exportations from that region to Europe were worth 874 millions of euros. The same year, approximately 300 Chinese industrial fishing boats were tending their nets in the region. The groupers population was reduced by 80%. An Overseas Development Institute 2016 report on illegal, unreported and unregulated (IUU) fishing says that these unlawful practices are creating the yearly loss of 300 000 jobs in West Africa. It forces artisanal fisherman to migrate in search of more fecund waters.
I photographed the migrant West African fisherman in Mouanko, and the hardships of their threatened livelihood. I followed them at sea, in the fish market, and in their camps as they struggle to survive, working from their dugout canoes, or Awasha boats, in the shadows of industrial foreign-owned boats. I witnessed their conflictual relationship with locals, who see them as unwelcome rivals. And while, incited by the growing lack of sea fish, they drifted through the mangrove’s roots of the Sanaga river, I documented how they destabilize the already fragile coastal environment of Cameroon.
This story is about South-South migration, and human impact on nature.
36% of worldwide migration is from a developing country to an other one, and it changes the environment and economics of the hosts countries like Cameroon. In this case, it is industrial fishing and overexploitation of natural resources that led a group of individuals to migrate to a more fecund, but also endangered ecosystem.
As Eugène Zounon, a Benin-born fisherman puts it : “Someday, our sons will know seas with no fish. The sea is emptying.”

Murder by Guillaume Simoneau

“In MURDER, Simoneau’s works do honor to the Japanese master in a violent and modern way. This same violence, juxtaposed with the calm and gentleness of his mother's instinctive images lets us presume a romantic – maybe even watered down – vision of both his childhood and of the past. The omnipresence of such oppositions and tensions in Simoneau’s work is due to the fact that his focus centers primarily on the simultaneous presence of power and vulnerability, on the unique and fleeting coexistence of strengths and weaknesses. The sublime, the horrible, attention, negligence, youth, old age, gentleness, violence, day, night, life and death: the layers are multiple and the proposal complex.”

“Murder” by Guillaume Simoneau - MACK Books - MACK Books Twitter - MACK Books Instagram

Guillaume Simoneau graduated from the Dawson Professional Photography Program in 2000. You can see more of Guillaume’s work on his site http://www.simoneauguillaume.com and you can follow him on his Instagram and on Twitter