RADIUS PHOTOBOOK WORKSHOP 2023
with Alex Webb, Rebecca Norris Webb, and David Chickey
Friday, April 14, 2023, 6 pm to Sunday, April 16, 2023, 6 pm
Friday, 6:00 - 7:30 pm
FREE & OPEN TO THE PUBLIC
The Blind Man & The Bus: The Photographs of Alex Webb and Rebecca Norris Webb, joint slide talk at Radius Books, followed by Q&A and book signing.
Saturday, 10:00 am - Sunday, 6:00 pm
WORKSHOP STUDENTS ONLY
Over the course of two days, this weekend workshop will explore a variety of photobook-related topics. Limited to only 18 photographers, this is an exclusive opportunity to develop your photography project with two renowned photographers and a publisher, all award-winning experts in the photobook field.
Through discussion, presentations, and editing exercises, you will learn:
– How to edit and sequence a photobook
– Deciding if there is more to photograph
– How to choose a writer
– How to select the right title, size, and cover
– How to work with a book designer
– What to expect when going on press
DEADLINES
-Applications Open: Monday, October 3, 2022
-Early Application Deadline: Monday, December 12, 2022
-Notification of Early Acceptance: Monday, December 19, 2022
-Final Application Deadline: Monday, January 30, 2023
APPLICATION
UPDATE: Please note that this workshop is now full for regular applicants. We are accepting applications for scholarship students through February 20, 2023 (see details below).
To apply: Please send (10) small jpgs from your project (72 dpi, 2000 pixels on longest side), or a link to your project online. In addition, please email a short statement (not more than 250 words) about your project (as a word doc if possible), and a short bio (not more than 150 words), including where you live and your relationship to photography, to Alex and Rebecca: webbnorriswebbworkshops@gmail.com Please put RADIUS PHOTOBOOK WORKSHOP APPLICATION on the subject line of the email.
After acceptance: Payment of $800 must be made in full to Radius Books to secure your spot.
Cancellation policy: If we can fill your spot, all but a nonrefundable $50 processing fee will be refunded to applicant.
SCHOLARSHIPS
We will be offering two tuition-free workshop scholarships for two photography students, who must be currently enrolled in an undergraduate or graduate program at a university or photography school to qualify.
Scholarship applicants need to complete the same application process as applicants to the workshop, as well as add two references of people who know their work (professors, photographers, photo editors, curators, etc.), including emails of references.
Scholarship Judge: Harvard Photography Curator, Makeda Best
Scholarship Applications Open: Monday, January 16, 2023
Scholarship Applications Close: Monday, February 20, 2023
Scholarship Notification: Thursday, March 2, 2023
VACCINATION
Please note all participants must be vaccinated for COVID-19 in order to attend this workshop. Please bring a mask, because there is a chance that we’ll be asking everyone to be masked while inside the classroom.
WORKSHOP DESCRIPTION
Over the course of two days, this weekend workshop will explore a variety of photobook related topics. Limited to only 18 photographers, this is an exclusive opportunity to develop your photography project with two renowned photographers and a publisher, all award-winning experts in the photobook field.
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 together and apart made 21 books, including Violet Isle, their first collaborative book, and most recently, Waves. The 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 25 years, and a book signing. This event will be free and open to the public.
Saturday will begin with a review of each participant’s project (each photographer will present 30-100 small prints –– 4x6 to 5x7, either inkjet or inexpensive photographic prints, such as drugstore prints). Through a group editing process Alex, Rebecca and David will create an individual assignment tailored for each photographer, which will be due the next morning. On Sunday morning, Alex, Rebecca, and David 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 and the Webbs, ending the workshop with an intimate Q&A and reception for all the workshop participants.
Throughout this intensive weekend, this workshop will explore a variety of photobook 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 text and images work in photobooks, how to choose a cover image, how to work with a designer, what to expect when you go on press for a book, and how prints in a book differ from prints on a wall.
WEEKEND WORKSHOP SCHEDULE
This schedule is subject to change at any time.
Friday, 6:00 pm - 7:30 pm
The Blind Man & The Bus: The Photographs of Alex Webb and Rebecca Norris Webb, joint slide talk at Radius Books, followed by Q&A and book signing.
Saturday, 10:00 am - 6:00 pm
10-1pm: Welcome, Workshop introduction, and review of the projects
1-2pm: Lunch
2-3pm: Review of the projects continued;
3-4:45pm: “Two Books: The Sequence,” Group Editing Exercise
4:45-5pm: Trip to Photo Eye
5-6pm: Photo Eye Book Store tour
Sunday, 10:00 am - 6:00 pm
Radius Books office will open at 9am for workshop participants who’d like to come in early and finish their assignments
9-11am: Finishing the assignment
11-1pm: Reviewing the assignments with Alex, Rebecca and David
1-2pm: Lunch
2-3pm: Reviewing the assignments, continued
3-4:30: Presentations: “Working with a Designer on a Book & Being on Press with a Book,” and other presentations.
4:30-4:45: Break
4:45-6pm: “Book Publishing: An Intimate Q&A” (including such topics as fundraising strategies, self-publishing option, finding the right publisher, etc.), Closing Reception.
PHOTOGRAPHERS WILL BRING TO THE WORKSHOP
Two copies of a selection of small prints from your project. This can be 30-100 from your series (4x6 or 5x7 prints; either ink jet or inexpensive photographic prints; we don’t care about the quality of the print, just the image). In addition, photographers will bring digital files for each of these images. *Optional: Photographers may bring up to 100 additional digital files of images they are considering as alternatives for the project.
Laptop and thumb drive or external hard drive; before the workshop. If you’d like, please download free 30-day trial of InDesign. Although we won’t be teaching this, we find this a useful tool for laying out a book: http://www.adobe.com/cfusion/tdrc/index.cfm?product=indesign.
Blank book (such as an artist sketch book or unlined blank journal) and double sided tape
Brief description about the project (not more than 250 words, as a WORD doc, if possible). Please email these ahead of time by MONDAY, APRIL 10, 2023 , AT THE VERY LATEST. Email address: webbnorriswebbworkshops@gmail.com
3-6 quotes or passages from a poem, novel, essay, news article, film, history, song, etc., (or perhaps a quote from one of the people you’ve photographed for the project, or perhaps a quote from someone who is an expert in the topic/issue you’re photographing). These quotes or passages should reflect or illuminate your project in some way. Please email this ahead of time by MONDAY, APRIL 10, 2023, AT THE VERY LATEST. Email address: webbnorriswebbworkshops@gmail.com
BIOS OF INSTRUCTORS AND JUDGE
ALEX WEBB has published more than fifteen photography books, including The Suffering of Light, a survey book of thirty years of his color photographs. He’s exhibited at museums worldwide including the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, the High Museum of Art, Atlanta, and the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. He has been a Magnum Photos member since 1979, and his work has appeared in The New York Times Magazine, National Geographic, and other publications. He has received numerous awards including a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2007. His most recent books include La Calle: Photographs from Mexico and the collaborations with Rebecca Norris Webb, Brooklyn: The City Within, exhibited at the Museum of the City of New York, and Waves (Radius Books, 2022).
Originally a poet, REBECCA NORRIS WEBB often interweaves her text and photographs in her nine books, most notably in her monograph, My Dakota—an elegy for her brother who died unexpectedly—for which a solo exhibition of the work appeared at The Cleveland Museum of Art, among other venues. Her work has appeared in The New Yorker, Le Monde, and The New York Times Magazine, and is in the collections of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, The Cleveland Museum of Art, and the George Eastman Museum, Rochester, New York. Rebecca is a 2019 NEA grant recipient. Her most recent book, Night Calls—in which she retraced the route of some of her now 101-year-old country doctor father’s house calls through the same rural county where they both were born—was released by Radius Books in December 2020.
In 2007, DAVID CHICKEY co-founded Radius Books, a non-profit publishing company based in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Radius Books’ mission is to encourage, promote, and publish books of artistic and cultural value. Radius titles have received national recognition, including multiple awards from AIGA, American Association of Museums Publishing, and best book nominations from The New Yorker, TIME, PDN, Independent Publisher, and The Paris Photo-Aperture Foundation. He is the former board chair of the Center for Contemporary Arts in Santa Fe, and a graduate of Sussex University, England, and UNC, Chapel Hill, where he was a Morehead Scholar.
MAKEDA BEST oversees the Harvard Art Museums’ photography collections. Her scholarly interests focus on 19th- and 20th-century American photography, with a special interest in photojournalism, documentary, war photography, and text and image works. Recent exhibitions include Crossing Lines, Constructing Home: Displacement and Belonging in Contemporary Art (co-curated with Mary Schneider Enriquez; 2019–20); Winslow Homer: Eyewitness (co-curated with Ethan Lasser; 2019); and Time is Now: Photography and Social Change in James Baldwin’s America (2018).
SELECTED LINKS
Alex and Rebecca’s Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/webb_norriswebb/
Alex and Rebecca’s website: https://www.webbnorriswebb.co/
David in WSJ and on 9 Lives, in conversation with Raphael Shammaa.
Any additional questions, please email megan@radiusbooks.org or 505.983.4068