Categories
Book

Gaspereau Press

We at Literary Photographer world headquarters firmly believe that books as objects can be as just as important as books are to read. Gaspereau Press, in Kentville, Nova Scotia, produces some beautiful books.

See the accompanying photo of two books from Gaspereau, Tim Bowling’s Fathom and Robert Bringhurst’s The Solid Form of Language.

This from Gaspereau’s website “At the core of our philosophy is a commitment to making books that reinstate the importance of the book as a physical object, reuniting publishing and the book arts. Many of our covers are letterpress-printed, feature original artwork by artists like Wesley Bates and George Walker, and are printed on fine paper, in some cases even handmade. Most of our books are smyth-sewn & bound into card covers and are then enfolded in letterpress-printed jackets. Our house paper is Rolland’s Zephyr Antique Laid, a creamy, sensual book paper. “

Categories
Photography

Allen Ginsberg As Photographer

The late U.S. poet Allen Ginsberg also took photographs.

Essentially snapshots, taken, as most of us do, while hanging out with family and friends these images form a visual archive of Ginsberg’s literary acquaintances including most of the other major writers of the Beat era including Jack Kerouac, Lawrence Ferlinghetti and William S. Burroughs.

When Ginsberg began having these images enlarged from their negatives he started to add captions, written in longhand on the white space left at the bottom of the photograph. These captions add information, dates, locations, names and events, to our understanding of the photos. Somehow the idea of a poet adding text to photographs of writers seems so very appropriate

Chronicle Books published a collection of these images in 1993 entitled Snapshot Poetics.

If you like the idea of photographers combining text with their images, especially images of writers have a look through Elsa Dorfman’s site and click on the Housebook link which is sort of at your lower left on the transit map inspired guide to her site.