Printed Photo Books as Gallery Companions
Once you’ve managed to secure a show in a gallery, a much coveted position by photographers everywhere, you might find you have more options than you have space. Depending on the size of the gallery and duration of your show, you might have to trim back on your already carefully crafted showcase. A professionally printed photo book can help enhance the show when you come across a situation like this. Photo books allow you to showoff you talents and vision as a photographer, even if you are limited by the gallery.
Let’s suppose you wanted to show your Cape Cod landscape series, which consists of a carefully edited and selected 34 pictures—it started with several hundred images, so this is already a much trimmed selection—but the gallery, regardless of its reason, is only offering you 17 spots do to so. Suddenly, you have to go through the entire show with a fine tooth comb, cutting out an additional 50% of your images. This can be a frustrating effort and might hinder the success of your show, should you not be able to reconstruct your finest gallery presentation.
Why not create a professionally printed photo book to serve as a companion guide to your gallery show? Not only will the images displayed in the gallery make it in, but so will the images that you had to cut out. This way the story you had originally intended to tell can be seen in its unabridged version. You can even add text to the images, describing both the technical and artistic aspects of each shot. You can include a forward about the show and contact information, further promoting your work. A photo book adds a voice to your gallery show, speaking on your behalf.
If the gallery permits it, you might also be allowed to promote the sale of your photo book in addition to the prints being displayed.
Should your exhibit be sharing gallery space with another photographer’s work, a professionally printed photo book might be that extra special piece that gets the attention of the public, earning you more recognition and, perhaps, future clients.
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