I spent some time playing around with making a couple of books this weekend. I made this one as a Christmas present for my in-laws. I took a walk on a crisp winter morning on their property in Elgood, West Virginia and made a series of square photographs (using the Fuji X-Pro1’s in-camera setting). There’s something especially beautiful about walking their holler this time of year. I chose nine photographs to print (using Inkpress Media duo matte 80) along with a quote from one of my favorite writers, Breece D’J Pancake. This was my first attempt at binding a book and I can’t believe how much fun it was. It measures 5″ x 7″. I made a second one using 1/32″ birch plywood for the cover, not realizing it wasn’t really flexible enough to practically use as a book cover. I’ll chalk that one up to inexperience…

“I’m going to come back to West Virginia when this is over. There’s something ancient and deeply-rooted in my soul. I like to think that I have left my ghost up one of those hollows, and I’ll never really be able to leave for good until I find it. And I don’t want to look for it, because I might find it and have to leave.” – from a letter to his mother Helen Pancake that Breece wrote in Charlottesville, where he was studying writing.

This little book measures 2.5″ x 3.5″ and is based on a new series I’m working on called Miner Pride. It’s a crudely made book, printed on a color laser printer and I made the cover from an Ilford paper box top cut to size. I used double-sided tape to hold the pages together and a strip of masking tape to bind the covers. Such simple materials yielded an incredible amount of fun. That’s what it’s all about, right? (I also made a little video here.)

Holler.