New York/Blurb Party

Blurb party in Tribeca

Last night I went to the Blurb party in New York. That's me at the beginning of the video above taken from Darius Himes's blog. Blurb as many of you probably know is an online service with tools for creating your own book, uploading it, and having it printed at very good quality at an affordable price. I've been using Blurb to create presentations of my work.

For the second year Blurb has sponsored a contest called Photography.Book.Now in which photo books are judged on content and design. Darius Himes, editor and book publishing maven, was the head of the contest jury. I decided, at the last minute, to submit my Berlin book dummy to the contest, which I am pleased to say won an honorable mention. Where things go with this book I don't know. It employs a number of photographs from my Lost Border book, but focuses specifically on Berlin, and 2/3 of the images have never been shown elsewhere.

You can preview the book on Blurb's website here.

The party was held in a space in Tribeca with beautiful views of the city. The winning books were liberally sprinkled about on tables and a continuous shelf running along the windows. After the awards ceremony most of us went to the roof terrace where there were more books. In the video I'm standing at a long table looking through a book and talking to the photographer who made it.

I didn't know a lot of people at the event, but chatted with a few I recognized--Vince Aletti, photo critic for the New Yorker, the grand prize winner Rafal Milach who did a wonderful book, Phil Block who runs the education department at ICP, and a number of photographers with their books whose names I cannot conjure up. It was an enjoyable evening.