those who do register for the Conference get to hear Alec Soth speak on Friday and then John Gossage will speak Saturday night.  There will be lots of other cool shit to do but those two events and their subsequent soirees are not to be missed!  Looking forward!

Details of the 2011 SPE Northeast and Mid-Atlantic Conference are emerging and can be found here.  I will be updating the links page with any new info I receive and you can follow this blog to keep up with the latest.  Subscribing to the RSS Feed is recommended.  I will be sending a major update email to all the submitting artists the first week in October with some final information they should know.  Please be aware that you do not have to register for the Conference to visit the exhibition or go to the opening.  Both are free and open to the public.  Details about the exhibition opening are forthcoming.  Stay tuned.

This submission also deals with memory and loss.  From an exhibition the two artists had in Montepulciano last year.  Produced with the artists at a small press in Italy.

Submissions for the bookMARKs exhibition are beginning to arriving!  If you are a submitting artist, please send us a JPEG or 2 of your publication so we can post them here on this blog.  And if your publication is ready to submit, now's the time!

This first one is entitled Return by Sylvia de Swaan.  It is a softcover book with black-and-white photographs depicting a train journey through post communist Eastern Europe to explore transience, loss, personal history, memory and roots.

If you are making a Blurb book, they are offering a $10.00 discount on all orders during the month of September.  Just enter the promo code TENOFF when you check out.  This is a great time to try out Blurb, especially with the bookMARKs deadline only a little over 7 short weeks away.  I've never used Blurb before and I'm actually going to give it a whirl.  I'll post here about my Blurb experience so watch this space.

This is a new closed Facebook group created by Andy Adams of Flak Photo.  I like it a lot: all photobook goodness.  If you would like to join this by-invite-only group, email me.

Blurb has recently announced the 2011 winners of its annual Photography Book Now competition.  The Grand Prize winner is Gomorrah Girl by Valerio Spada and I think one of the reasons this book looks so great is because it is NOT a Blurb book!  Printed in color offset and designed by Dutch designer Sybren Kuiper of -SYB-, Spada wanted to create a compelling artifact to reveal the very sensitive and powerful story his photographs convey.  He had to go beyond the limitations that current print-on-demand services offer in order to do so.  The result is photobookmaking at its best and a well deserved Grand Prize.

Print-on-demand has great potential and enabling applications. Companies like Blurb, Lulu and HP's MagCloud offer artists the ability to print and publish on their own, but just because one can doesn't necessarily mean one ought to.  There is a lot to be said for working with a designer that is sensitive to and in tune with one's work, and also to go beyond what these packaged technologies have to offer.  It is eminently possible to create a great publication using print-on-demand technologies, but it is also important to remember that it is but one of many ways to produce a publication.  Books are enduring artifacts, just like any tangible work of art.  The most convenient or popular processes are not necessarily the best or most appropriate for the work in question.  We're looking forward to seeing the results of our artists' publication processes over the next couple of months.