N.b.: This is not a call for work! Thank you, but do not send anything yet!
^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Very important!
This is, rather, advance warning that I will be making a call for work in the near future, for our first book.
(You can tell from the above that I know some people are going to ignore my pleas.)
My publishing company still doesn't have a name. I'm heartbroken that I can't name it "Bayard Books," after Hippolyte Bayard. Hippolyte Bayard was an independent inventor of photography who was beaten to the punch by Daguerre and Talbot and never got credit for his researches. He later made a satirical self-portrait of himself as a drowned corpse, implying that he was driven to suicide by his undeserved oblivion and the treachery of those who wronged him.
Unfortunately, there's already a publisher called "Bayard Canada Livres" which I'm sure would object.
However, we now do have a printer (in the good ol' USA), a fulfillment house, sufficient capital (made possible in part by people who subscribe! Thank you!), and a production management team. We soon might even have a schedule, which, according to the TV shrink Dr. Phil, is the surest sign that a dream is turning into a plan.
Anyway, our first project—which I'm thinking of as a sort of test bed or trial balloon—will be a collection of photographs by different photographers, and we will be looking for submissions of quiet color art photographs. Among my "touchstones" for the kind of pictures I'm looking for are these two pictures from our long-ago Reader Contest:
Photo by Leigh Perry
Photo by Bill Hanson.
They're both "straight" pictures despite their ambiguity: Leigh's, of the floor and wall of a parking garage, with "found" marks that happen to echo each other; and Bill's, of an abandoned storefront through its front window.
Note that I'm not looking for pictures just like these two, but rather for pictures that look like they might go with these two. The only real requirement is that the pictures should have rather muted color. I have so far picked only six pictures, and the book will have 30 reproductions, so there are slots yet to fill.
Again, do not send anything yet. I am not set up to handle submissions yet.
You'll be able to suggest your own work, or the work of others—either way. We'll make the call for work some time after the end of the upcoming print sale, and well before October 1st, when we have another big announcement planned.
Just wanted to give you some advance notice so you can be mulling it over.
(Oh, and if you happen to be Leigh Perry or Bill Hanson, I'll be trying to get in touch....)
Mike
P.S. Please just be thinking about pictures you might want to nominate. Don't send anything or contact me about this yet. (I hope I've said that enough times.)
P.P.S. This publishing venture, quixotic as it might yet turn out to be, is very exciting. I'm really psyched about the possibilities and I often find my mind racing with ideas for future projects. I know not everyone is interested in reading about this stuff very often, so I'll try to keep updates to a minimum, but there's a lot going on behind the scenes here at TOP these days and it's really got me goin'. This is going to be a whole lot of what I call fun.
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