JJP Designs | Photo Ninja

How has a simple pile of paper, string and leather survived for so many years and in the face of so much technological assault directed at it? This is part of my series of blogs to explain what exactly is the Essence of a Book by photographically exploring my personal library. And I'm starting with my limited edition of The Book of the Thousand Nights and One Night... There is something about a book - a REAL book... that has permanence - that says to the reader that the author committed to their words and thoughts... and the act of producing that book, those thoughts, on a typewriter gives the author the ability to physically produce their thoughts and ideas - instantaneously and indelibly. Here you just barely see the almost imperceptible indentation of letterpress. Today we crave the telltale indent that says we are beholding a work of handmade skilled craftsmanship but back in the day it was typically considered by many to be bad form to press into the paper to the e...

 Why do we still collect books? Well, I do... and apparently so do many others. Given the availability of digital texts, why do so many still love books? For me, it is the Essence of a Book... Material - Paperback/Hardback... Weight/Texture of the pages... Type of binding... The ink... the color... was it set via letterpress? traditional letterpress or modern? Can you feel the indentation of the letterpress or is it perfectly elegantly smooth? Size - Quarto... Sextodecimo... Folio... It's Tactile - the pages, the printing, the binding... everything about it... It's Three Dimensional - you can relate to the events within the story not only through the words but via their location within the block... how far through the block, how far up/down/left/right on the page - recto or verso... The typeface... The spacing/leading... The simple decision of margins... Illustrations - wood block, hand drawn, black and white or color... How is the title first presented to you - gilded, emb...

Unlike a 'written' book, which contains a finite amount of words, a picture book contains literally every word you know. I love to read, but I enjoy picture books for the simple reason that I get to read whatever story I see in the images based on who I am and how I interpret the images based on my history, my joys and sorrows, and even my day right up to the moment I pick up the book. Maybe that's one of the reasons I love photography so much - the ability to capture a moment that tells an entire story simply by making a record of the configuration of light at one pivotal moment. No sound. No motion. No reference what so ever beyond the light as it was configured and frozen at that exact moment. There is an amazing elegance in capturing that one amazing story telling image and I can feel it in my core every time I capture 'that' image on any given day out shooting. That feeling is what drives me to keep rolling off shots... it is the very core of my per...