Esta entrada puede ser útil a la hora de iniciar un proyecto, pero también para evaluar el progreso del mismo en diferentes etapas de desarrollo. Puedes descargar una copia y utilizarla según te sea necesario. Estas preguntas las he sacado de los apuntes de Rubén H. Bermúdez (https://www.rubenhbermudez.com/apuntes), de un vídeo de una conferencia de Gustavo Alemán titulado “Las tres preguntas” (puede verse en https://tv.um.es) y de mi propia experiencia. Su finalidad es aclarar las ideas al comenzar un proyecto.

“Participants shall prepare a personal story. This story can be your own personal story, but it might also be a story of someone else, visualized by you or a fictional story (character).” Extraído de las bases de RPS workshop.

Explícale a tu abuela el proyecto en 5 líneas:

¿Qué tipo de autor quiero ser?

¿Desde dónde hablo? ¿Cuál es mi posición?

¿Cuál es mi contexto?

¿A quién me dirijo? ¿Qué estoy intentando? ¿Para quién lo hago?

¿Qué puedo hacer yo que una superproducción no puede?

¿Cuáles son mis virtudes? ¿Cómo puedo potenciarlas?

¿Cuáles son mis defectos? ¿Cómo puedo esconderlos?

¿Cómo se relaciona lo que soy y lo que hago con lo que quiero ser y hacer?

¿Cuáles son mis criterios?

¿Qué nos gusta? ¿Qué no nos gusta?

¿Qué quiero que sienta el espectador? ¿En qué momento le voy a golpear?

Haz un mapa de ideas

Establece limitaciones y síguelas hasta el final

Las tres preguntas: ¿Qué quería hacer el artista? ¿Lo hizo? ¿Merecía la pena hacerlo?

¿Cómo quiero transmitir mi mensaje? ¿Qué materiales voy a usar para hacerlo?

¿Qué relación hay entre el formato y el concepto del proyecto?

¿Lo estoy pasando bien haciendo esto? ¿Es positivo el balance esfuerzo-recompensa? (esta pregunta hay que hacerla de manera recurrente durante el proceso de realización del proyecto personal)

En el vídeo de Gustavo Alemán, cita a Jorge Wagensberg que decía que “Una obra de arte es un pedazo finito de realidad que distorsiona una experiencia del mundo para encender, en la propia mente o en la ajena, una ampliación de tal experiencia.”

Agradecimientos a Rubén y Gustavo por los conocimientos compartidos.

Hay una cosa que me ronda la cabeza a menudo sobre el documental. A veces, y más últimamente, se aboga porque el punto de vista sea parte de la narrativa del documental. Otras veces preferimos una supuesta objetividad, por las razones que sea, y creo que tiene que ver con mostrar el punto de vista de lo que queremos contar y no desde el que lo percibimos como creadores. Hay como una línea de veracidad o verosimilitud que estamos rompiendo si la cruzamos y somos menos objetivos de lo que decimos que vamos a ser o más subjetivos de lo que creemos que necesita el tema.

Hace poco se estrenó una nueva temporada de la serie documental de cocina Chef’s Table, que aunque trata de un tema bastante inocuo para exigir veracidad o verosimilitud, ha hecho que vuelva a pensar en esto y que me sienta molesto con algunas cosas. En la serie utilizan mucho la voz en off del protagonista del capítulo mientras la imagen muestra escenas de la preparación de los platos o de cómo van a por los ingredientes, el cocinero paseando por su restaurante, entre otro tipo de recursos visuales. También abusan un poco de la cámara lenta y de los planos emotivos. El caso es que, no me explico por qué, la voz en off consiste en fragmentos de entrevistas que a veces utilizan con su imagen, pero que van troceando para intentar introducir un elemento de reposo, de pausa o de reflexión interna al discurso del cocinero que muchas veces no tiene. Se me ha hecho muy evidente en los dos últimos capítulos que he visto, de Bo Songvisava y Albert Adrià. En el caso de Bo se nota porque cuando habla en la entrevista con imagen lleva un ritmo más rápido y no corta las frases tanto. El capítulo de Albert Adrià, que habla mucho más rápido y se entrecorta, es mucho más sangrante porque dejan el principio de la palabra siguiente al hacer el corte del audio (que es lo que suele pasar cuando el entrevistado no tiene costumbre y no deja mucho espacio entre palabras, es muy complicado hacer un corte que no sea brusco).

Y lo que yo me pregunto es ¿por qué? ¿Tan necesario es emocionar al espectador con la forma (aquí el montaje lento y reflexivo)? ¿Por qué el intento de componer todos los capítulos de la misma forma si cada uno de ellos trata un cocinero y un estilo completamente distintos? Creo que imponer un tempo falso a un tema documental crea una barrera con el espectador que no debería estar ahí. Por supuesto que podemos tratar de buscar un punto de vista más pausado, pero si una persona habla rápido o lento o se entrecorta, estaría bien aprovecharlo y buscar la manera de ser fiel a esa manera de ser con su representación.

¿Qué es un fanzine? Esto es algo que yo no tengo muy claro del todo; como casi todo en la vida, dudo bastante de si mis conocimientos son suficientes sobre cualquier tema. Ramón, que ha hecho unos cuantos, siempre me dice que un fanzine es aquello con forma de fanzine. Gonzalo Golpe, en un curso sobre edición de fotolibros, comentaba que era una publicación “urgente”. Pero claro, Ramón tarda entre un mes y 5 años en sacar un fanzine y yo me meto un poco con él diciéndole que hace fotolibros con aspecto de fanzine. Lo que yo creo es que un fanzine es algo que está un poco fuera de las reglas o normas y vale para comentar cosas o publicar ideas sin muchas pretensiones.

Hay páginas que hablan sobre el tema con mayor profundidad de la que yo aquí puedo pretender, esta entrada no pretende dar claves ni establecer el estado del fanzine, es más algo urgente que me sirve de excusa para hablar de lo que estoy haciendo.

En 1972, Daido Moriyama comenzó a publicar una pequeña revista llamada Kiroku o Record partiendo de la premisa de Somerset Maugham que decía “when it rains, you should write that it rains” (cuando llueve, hay que escribir que ha llovido).

El propio Moriyama escribe esto sobre su publicación: “At the time, I was busy with all sorts of work for magazines. Partly because of a daily feeling inside that I shouldn’t let myself get carried away by it all, I came up with the idea of a small, self-published personal photo journal. Without any ties to work or any fixed topic, I just wanted to continue publishing a 16-page booklet with an arbitrary selection of favorite photos among the pictures I snapped from day to day. By nature, it was directed first and foremost to myself rather than other people. I wanted a simple, basic title, so I called it ‘Kiroku’ (record).” Agobiado por el trabajo diario para revistas, sintiendo que no debía dejarse llevar por la presión, le vino la idea de una publicación fotográfica pequeña, autoeditada. Sin vinculaciones con el trabajo ni ninguna temática fija, Moriyama quería publicar un libreto de 16 páginas con una selección arbitraria de las fotografías que tomaba en su día a día. Algo que haría para sí mismo y no para el público, algo simple, y por eso lo llamó Kiroku (conocido como Record, que en castellano se traduciría como registro).

A estas alturas todos sabemos que ninguna idea es completamente original, y la inspiración para hacer un fanzine es tan simple como los dos párrafos anteriores. Tenía ganas de seguir haciendo cosas que no tuvieran pretensiones. Ayer decía Alvaro Laiz en la conferencia del ciclo Full Frame que el mejor consejo que podía dar a la gente que estaba empezando en la fotografía era hacer lo que te llene de verdad y ser fiel a uno mismo en los proyectos personales (para nada dijo esto literalmente, pero la idea era esa).

Me gustaba especialmente el concepto de Record precisamente porque no tenía mayor pretensión que compartir algo. En mi caso, aparte de querer compartir una serie de fotografías que no habían entrado en otros proyectos o que estaban en el limbo, me sirve para probar cosas en maquetación, para hablar con imprentas, fallar y aprender. Hacer estas publicaciones me sirve como respiro para mi trabajo diario y para decir cosas que podría publicar en un blog pero no tendrían el mismo significado.

¿Por qué “Registro de exploración”? Obviamente, por un lado es referencia a Record y por otro alude a una concepción personal de la fotografía como una exploración, como experimento o como búsqueda de conocimientos. Como una forma de mostrar cosas que encuentro, ideas que surgen y probar conceptos que no se muy bien cómo quedarán. Mi forma de enfrentarme a los proyectos se basa bastante en el ensayo y error, y hacer algo que es sencillo de producir permite experimentar mucho más libremente y fallar con más felicidad (y facilidad). El título de la portada está escrito en japonés precisamente por jugar con esa idea, y porque el primer y segundo números tienen fotos del viaje a japón que no acabaron en “Than nothing, than flowers”. También he puesto los títulos en castellano en la contraportada. Los textos interiores, si los hay, serán principalmente en castellano, y en caso de no serlo, se traducirán de alguna manera (o no, es algo experimental).

En un principio estoy haciendo 50 copias de cada uno de los fanzines y serán mensuales (aunque esto puede cambiar). Cada uno costará 3€ y no tengo idea de enviarlos por correo en principio (aunque todo se puede estudiar). Iré publicando por Facebook los números según vayan saliendo y cuando se agoten, agotados quedarán.

Referencias: 

Ramón Romero Pastor

Curso de edición de fotolibros

La ola japonesa: el legado de la revista “Provoke”

http://www.fanzineologia.net/2017/04/como-hacer-un-fanzine.html?m=1

https://www.shashasha.co/en/book/record-no-1-5-reprint-edition

http://www.cendeac.net/es/full-frame/

Durante toda mi vida (o casi toda) he sido poco constante a la hora de hacer sólo una cosa. No quiero que esto suene como algo negativo, no se muy bien a qué se debe, pero cuando algo deja de interesarme, es más bien complicado que vuelva a ello para quedarme. Creo que la fotografía es lo único que no deja de interesarme desde que tengo uso de razón. No se si la fotografía sería lo más preciso, digamos la imagen fotográfica, que deja un poco más de margen a otras cosas que pueden no ser fotografía propiamente dicha pero que yo (porque soy así) considero imágenes fotográficas. No voy a entrar a detallar estas imágenes, porque da igual.

Borja Morgado, profesor de la carrera que nos dio Ilustración (pero del que he aprendido más de fotografía que de otra cosa), nos dijo en una clase que no hay que hacer solo fotografías de los momentos felices. Que la fotografía también sirve para mostrar otras emociones, otros momentos más allá de los cumpleaños y los viajes. Aquí estaba hablando de fotografía familiar, obviamente, ya que desde que la cámara fue lo suficientemente portátil se han mostrado todo tipo de situaciones que no son precisamente felices.

Desde entonces (desde que nos dijo eso Borja) he ido haciendo fotografías un poco a escondidas, a veces no, de todos los momentos no-precisamente-felices de mi vida como ente familiar. Esto, más allá del recuerdo fotográfico, me ha ayudado en diferentes aspectos a enfocar mi personalidad hacia una perspectiva en la que los momentos negativos pierden un poco de poder sobre mi (a través de la imagen me hago un poco más fuerte) y analizo mejor las situaciones. También tengo un recuerdo más vivo de esos momentos y puedo (a la vez, aunque suene raro) hacer que pasen antes en su aspecto negativo.

Cuando empecé a hacer el proyecto de #notaninstant con Adela en enero de este año no teníamos mucha idea de a dónde íbamos a llegar en los siguientes 365 días que duraría el proyecto. Es un poco extraño ver cómo evoluciona una relación durante un año, sobretodo cuando termina en una separación. Es un proyecto doloroso, sobre todo lo ha sido el último mes de noviembre, y en diciembre estoy continuando con él por varios motivos. Primero porque la vida no es un instante, porque sigue y no podemos quedarnos parados para ver qué ocurre en el futuro. Segundo porque dejar de hacer un proyecto porque se vuelve doloroso sería un poco subrayar que la fotografía solo sirve para contar cosas felices. Y tercero porque es de las pocas cosas en las que soy constante en esta vida, hacer fotos y contar cosas con ellas, aunque me duelan. No tengo muy claro qué pasará con las fotos cuando acabe el año, si se quedarán en un cajón o formarán parte de otra cosa, pero hasta entonces seguiré haciendo una foto al día.

This post is about the production and publication of my photobook which you can buy here (although calling it artist book would be more appropriate). I think this is the fastest project I have ever done, but this doesn’t mean it has lost any quality, since the process has been very fluid from the beginning; and that is where I will start.

Basho:

木のもとに
汁も膾も
桜かな
Underneath the trees
soups and salads are buried
in cherry blossoms

During April 2017 I travelled to Japan. It was conceived as a vacation trip to enjoy the place, see monuments, eat (EAT) and take some pictures for the family album. The problem was that I like photography quite a lot (maybe too much), and researching places to go to, I started looking for photobook shops, photography stores, second hand camera shops and galleries and museums related to photography. Since I wanted to have enough information about it, in an attempt of bravery and wit I sent a message to Gabriela Cendoya, of whom I knew very little at the moment, apart from her being an avid photobook collector which meant she would know something on the matter. After telling her all I had planned (just for Tokyo) she told me that it was probable I had more information about japanese libraries than her, and that photobooks, as everything else in life, depend on the taste, that I should look and take whatever I was interested in. It seems I am getting away from my thesis, but it is all related. Gabriela put me in contact with Ricardo Garrido, who lives in Tokyo, to get more information about interesting photography-related places and he talked to me about TOP Museum and told me there was a place called Reminders Photography Stronghold, managed by Yumi Goto, that was very interesting. I didn’t give too much importance to that information. I looked the places up and put them in the map we had created for the trip. Once in Tokyo, for some reason or another, we ended up not visiting Yumi’s place.

In the first days of the trip, in Kyoto, I bought an excelent analog camera (nicknamed by Adela as C3PO). With it and another compact digital camera we took all of the photos during the journey. Buying the camera and taking loads of pictures with it (13 rolls or about 450 shots) was not fruit of casuality. I had planned on buying a camera and taking pictures with the intention of doing something, a project, a series, a thing, about Japan. Throughout the journey, the idea of what to photograph began taking a clearer shape, as I looked for cherry blossoms, people in the subway and more or less a link between the two things.

We also stored brochures, papers, cards and small magazines with the intention of scanning them too. With the developed photographs and a slight idea of what I wanted to talk about (which was the hanami, or cherry blossom celebration), I started editing the images, with more or less luck and cohesion. I also began investigating about the hanami celebration and the meaning it had in Japan, and what I saw in the images I had taken. The first selection and sequence had to do with the passing of time, with fugacity and “mono no aware” (this concept is very important). A bit by instinct I began trying different things with the pictures, like painting over them with watercolor, making origami flowers and looking for ways to transfer that sensation to the photos (or looking for it in the images).

The first version of the project was sent to a PDF contest in Arles, France. We had planned on going to the Opening week before traveling to Japan and, even though I didn’t have time to take the pictures to any portfolio review, there I went to see what had been done and what would come in photography this year. The festival’s opening week, by the way, was on the first days of july. Before that I had seen that in Getxophoto, another festival organised in Bilbao, they were offering a photobook making workshop with Yumi Goto and Juanan Requena.  In order to be selected for the workshop you had to send a project to work with during the classes, so I sent a little selection of the japanese photos (the second or third selection) and a brief description of what I wanted to say with the pictures.

Back to Arles, July 2017. In the beginning I was planning on leaving Murcia tuesday morning and arriving in the afternoon, but I saw in the programming that there was a photobook talk by Yumi and some other people that day. So at 3 in the monday afternoon I left Murcia and 11 hours and a lot of tolls later, I arrived at Arles. I didn’t know them at the time, but during the talk I was seating behind Yoshiko Mogi, Miki Hasegawa, Miyuki Okuyama, Mayumi Suzuki and Kenji Chiga, who had participated in other workshops with Yumi and all of them had their dummy coming along.

After the talk I approached Yumi and introduced myself, told her that I was working on a project about Hanami and Japan, she looked at me with a funny face, like saying “you don’t know the trouble you are in”. We spoke for a while as I explained her what I wanted to do and what I knew about the celebration. She told me hanami was something much deeper than just a spring celebration in which japanese people go to the parks to eat and drink, that, to say it bluntly, I was stepping in muddy waters, but she would like to know more and see where I went with the project. We met again a couple of times during the festival and I had the luck to see some of the books and dummies she had brought. The production level in all of them was astounding, and then end there I decided to get the most out of the Getxo workshop if I was selected (the selection timeframe ended after the Arles opening week). Yumi said not to worry about that, and introduced me to Arimasa, who was also planning on attending the workshop and was working on a project about his relationship with his girlfriend, who passed away due to cancer some time ago. I also met Juanan Requena there, since the last day of my stay he came to have dinner with us, and I told him I was going to the workshop. Back in Murcia I saw I had been selected, so I prepared everything they had asked us to do before going and looking for a place to stay in Bilbao.

During the summer vacation I used the extra time of a trip to visit the family to take pictures of the cherry trees moving in the wind, without flowers. In Murcia I made different tests with cherries, putting them on glass containers, seeing how they decomposed, and reading the Genji Monogatari by Murasaki Shibiku, from where I took some of the texts included in the final book. The other text I found looking for haikus about hanami and cherry trees, and I found other texts in the novel that didn’t make it into the book, but versed about the same concept of time passing, youth leaving and cherry trees. Another test I did was placing the origami flowers in the shape of the japanese map, and making pink paper petals, like those of the cherry flowers, to make another map and blow the petals away during a series of images. I had also found some woodblock print images in the Library of Congress about Hanami and cherry blossoms, free for use and publication. So, at the end of August I went to Bilbao with a suitcase filled with the photographs and materials I had prepared for the first session, and a hard drive full of photos and images for the project.

At that moment I had two more or less defined lines in the pictures. One line consisting of cherry trees, petals and people celebrating hanami, and another line of people in the subway and trains in which the pale pink color of cherry flowers was present or photos where flower motifs and flower-like clothing was used as a trigger for taking the picture; and apart from that I had all the scanned materials and found images. During the first session we laid out the first selection of images on the wall (a bit ample selection in my case, since the exact final concept was a bit diffuse).

After setting this up and explaining the images and what we wanted to say with them, we went on with commenting each other’s projects, and thanks to them I found out that there was a great dispersion in the selection, that there were images too explicit to be inside the “mono no aware” concept, which was the main line I hade decided (and the thing that appeared most in the project). There were also images in the hard drive from the compact digital camera (which at first I considered as being inferior to the analogs). With the hepl of Yumi and Arimasa I was able to put away the pictures that were farther from the concept from a japanese audience point of view, which was something I wanted to have in mind so that the work was not disrespectful or vulgar; from my point of view (and confirmed by Yumi) it had to be subtle but clear. For clarity, Juanan’s advice was key, since he helped me on how to see photographs that were full of different information, or in which there were noisy elements that separated them from the subtlety and clarity I needed.

I now had a much smaller selection than at the beginning, the wall almost empty, and then I started a new search in the hard drive, looking for images closer to the concept and the selected pictures. The quality and where they came from was irrelevant at that moment, they would serve as  stand-ins for the first paper dummy to design the narrative of the book. With the hard drive selection done, Yumi went through all of our computers, helping and refining our selections from a different point of view, always respecting the concept we had chosen. I was a bit afraid of the selection we had made in the hard drive, since many of the images were very similar, but Yumi insisted and told me not to worry, to start working on the paper dummy with that selection and then start polishing in Indesign.

Selection for the first paper dummy

During the weekend we worked on the paper dummy, pasting and sequencing the images we had on very basic paper signatures. This helped us see the flow between one picture and the next, and get an idea of the size, the contrast from one photo to another, as well as finding out where there was something missing and where we had to take images out. With the photos from the wall as the image shows I found out that there were certain similarities between the woodblock prints and some of the hanami celebration photos, and that was something I had to explore in the book.

After doing the paper dummy we had another group session to put in common the works. The first dummy had some hard contrasts and harsh cuts in the sequence that changed the register of the story I was trying to tell. Yumi told me that I had to take advantage of the picture repetition, using the little changes in the images to speak about the impermanence and the transient state of things. Giancarlo Shibayama, who was there as Yumi’s assistant, explained to me that in the book he was working on, the images were folded in the japanese traditional binding style, with the center of the image on the outer border of the page, and that each photograph was in contact with the one before and the one after, something I hadn’t thought about until then, but really helped on the flow of my project’s narration. Step by step, the picture sequence was starting to get clearer and I went on with designing the dummy on indesign. The final format couldn’t be very big, or I would lose the view of a somewhat little idea. I thought that something I could print in A4 size would be big enough for the concept, and I started thinking about the paper I would use for printing.

On one of the sessions we went to the Goya shop in Bilbao, in order to see the papers and materials for the final dummies. I asked there if they had 50 or 60 gram paper, so that when folded it wouldn’t be very thick and also for it to have some transparency. I also looked for japanese papers for another idea I had, to give another layer that meant the fragility and fugacity of life. The intention was to cover some images of the book so that they had a layer over them, like a flower petal that doesn’t allow for us to see the whole picture. On other pictures I used transparency to make them fade out. I did a dummy in normal paper, still without a final title, to see the sequence and the effect of the japanese paper and binding.

After the second dummy came the hardest thing, coming up with the title (some in English, some in Spanish). Accross the trees (gracias Juanan), volver del viento, volver, terminar, viaje, viento, final tránsito, cambios, pétalos, rosa, nothing you can see, nothing in the trees, la velocidad del viento, nothing in the wind, pétalos madera hojas, pétalos hojas madera, spring again, spring morning sun, than the stars, than the flowers, Than nothing, than the flowers. Between the first and last title ideas there was a long span of time (at least that seemed to me), thinking about everything I wanted to tell but not explain with text inside the book. The final title is a play on words with a japanese phrase “than the stars, than the flowers (星よりも、花よりも Hoshi Yori mo, Hana Yori mo, suggested by Yumi) which refers to something more beautiful than the stars and the flowers, and in the book, “than nothing” is about the cherry tree’s state when it has no leaves or flowers, just the wood, a future state, a potential in which every other life state is latent.

The book starts with the cherry blossoms and finishes with a plum branch without flowers or leaves. I had thought of changing the final pictures for those of a cherry tree in the beginning, but as I was investigating the hanami celebration I found out that it was originally celebrated in february during the plum blossoming, but due to the better climate during the cherry blossoming and the fact that flowers fell completely from the tree, the latter was popularized among the masses. The plum flower stayed on the tree and didn’t have the same implications about transience and impermanence. With the idea of uniting the past and present, as I had done with the woodblock prints, I decided to leave the plum branch as a colophon for the book. On the last day of the workshop I made two final dummies (with a little difference between them), so that Yumi could take one for her library in Tokyo, which I numbered as 0 of 85.

 

Genji Monogatari:

宮人に行きて語らむ山桜　風よりさきに来ても見るべく」
“Hurry up if you want to see the blooming cherry trees in the mountains, for the winds may visit them before you”

嵐吹く尾の上の桜散らぬ間を　心とめけるほどのはかなさ
Little time separates the cherry blossoms from the fall storms that destroy their flowers… That is the time you will think of me!

Why will I make 85 copies? Looking for a significant number for me or the project, given that I was talking about life, cycles, the time that will never come back, I decided to use the year of my birth to mark the number of books I would make, marking a time that will never come back. I have started production at home, and had to make some adjustments to the final book ,which in the dummy were a bit confusing, but that I have compensated with other things.

I think thtat with this and the technical data it is all quite clear.

Technical data:

“Than nothing, than flowers”
110 pages
Handbound japanese binding
September 2017,
Editions: 85
Size: 195mm x 148mm x 15mm
Price: 65€ plus shipping
Photos/binding/translation: Isaac Rupérez Cano
Texts: Basho and Murasaki Shibiku
Woodblock prints from the pre-1915 fine prints collection found in loc.gov
Language: English and Japanese
Made in the context of Photobook as an Object workshop with Yumi Goto and Juanan Requena in Bilbao, August 2017

The Photobook as an Object workshop Bilbao participants:

Pablo, Juanan, Tere, Yo, Arimasa, Amaia, Diego, Yumi, Marco y Giancarlo (Sonia had to leave early)

Pablo’s “book” dummy

A japanese system to order the speaking turns