Guest Lecture & Portfolio Review: Ben Weaver

03/06/2020

Designer and publisher, Ben Weaver, came to talk to us about producing photobooks, sequencing and collaborating with other people.

Below are the notes that I took from his lecture:

Here Press publishing
First project was the history of skateboarding, created a book from that
Produced book with photographer Tom Hunter
Art director of Wire Magazine
Drowned by Sea Kurtis – first photobook to be published by Here (2011)
They reached out to people to ask if they wanted to create a photobook with them, rather than waiting for people to approach them
Jack Latham, Sugar Paper Theories & Parliament of Owls
- Spent 3 days solid creating the edit for Sugar Paper Theories
- Designed it the way the police would have presented it to people.
Stacey Kranitz, Speak Your Piece

Following Ben’s guest lecture, I had a portfolio review with him, here is the notes on the feedback I received from him:

Current images show the calm before the storm and the storm
Don’t force the studio work and water work together
They’re okay being so different
Something is missing, make another series
Try another approach, a whole new thing you haven’t thought of before
Try the domestic environment with diabetic stuff
Don’t restrict yourself to thinking the studio has to work with the water
Just allow anything to happen
There is a distance in the studio stuff, try extreme detail of the items
Try just photographing your lifestyle, see if there’s more of an everyday element you could incorporate, like maybe where you go, or things you eat
Set diabetes as what the work is about; then it sets how people will see the work
Doesn’t necessarily matter what it is because you’re saying its about diabetes – to people who don’t have it, it won’t be obvious
Interesting to look at carb counting and the numbers, menu boards etc
Look at things that are mundane, people wouldn’t think twice but when you make the connection they look at them differently.
Try the process of not thinking literally, the world will open up
purposely throw spanners in the work
Look into the oblique strategies – Brian Eno, prompts creative ideas and development!
Don’t produce work that’s so abstract, that it can be anything
The work should still be about diabetes, but it’s not so direct