Book Project 1965-66
Made for Nathan Lyons Home Workshop
Size: 7x9" hand-bound accordion style
31 vintage photographs
Originally made in 1966; re-edited February 2013
Edition: 1 of 1
"Afterword" written February, 2013
Click on images to enlarge
#1 Book Project 1965-66 Home Workshop with Nathan Lyons
Front Cover, Book Closed size: 7x9"
#2 Book Project 1965-66 Home Workshop with Nathan Lyons
"Comet" Opening of Book, single photo on right
#3 Book Project 1965-66 Home Workshop with Nathan Lyons
"Splash on wall" / "Cracked Gravestone"
#4 Book Project 1965-66 Home Workshop with Nathan Lyons
"Girl and boy behind, half-light" / "Equivalent" tree limbs
#5 Book Project 1965-66 Home Workshop with Nathan Lyons
"Equivalent" round form / "Equivalent" rock surfaces
#6 Book Project 1965-66 Home Workshop with Nathan Lyons
"Figures on the Beach" / "Equivalent" Storm sky
#7 Book Project 1965-66 Home Workshop with Nathan Lyons
"Visitors & Figure & Flag" / "Car and Light in front of window"
#8 Book Project 1965-66 Home Workshop with Nathan Lyons
"Store Window-shadow figures" / "Come On, Join Us Moneymakers"
#9 Book Project 1965-66 Home Workshop with Nathan Lyons
"NYC Limos and Black Pedestrians" / "Permit" and Shadow
#10 Book Project 1965-66 Home Workshop with Nathan Lyons
"Christmas Tree and lonely figure" / "Store Window, Cross shaped Frames w Kennedy Image"
Click on images to enlarge
#11 Book Project 1965-66 Home Workshop with Nathan Lyons
"Religious Figures on Dashboard, Frozen Tears" / "Woman by Bus"
#12 Book Project 1965-66 Home Workshop with Nathan Lyons
"Tears on Door #82, Figure with accordion" / "Little Girl by door sunlight"
#13 Book Project 1965-66 Home Workshop with Nathan Lyons
"Married Couple" / "Woman in front of Store Window"
#14 Book Project 1965-66 Home Workshop with Nathan Lyons
"Bus Rider with Sunglasses" / "Man waiting for Bus by splashed phone booth"
#15 Book Project 1965-66 Home Workshop with Nathan Lyons
"Light Streaks on Wall" / Volkswagen in Shadow behind door"
#16 Book Project 1965-66 Home Workshop with Nathan Lyons
"Hand on Bus rail, cracked glass" / "Flag and Cracked Grave Monument"
#17 Book Project 1965-66 Home Workshop with Nathan Lyons
"Shelter sign and arched window" / "Two Young men playing flute and Kazoo"
#18 Book Project 1965-66 Home Workshop with Nathan Lyons
Last Pages of Book: Signature, date & "Afterword"
Afterword
This untitled hand-bound book which includes 31 vintage b&w silver gelatin prints is a recently revised version of the actual book I made in 1965-66 for the final project of Nathan Lyon’s home workshop in Rochester, NY. Other members in the group that year included Alice Well, Roger Mertin, and Jim Erwin.
The original version of the book contained all the photographs that you see here, plus about 20 others! When I decided I would give this book to the Visual Studies Workshop in February, 2013, I decided that some of the weakest pictures had to come out. Then, after the weeding-out process I was faced with having to create some new linked pairs and then re-sequence the book to some extent. Nonetheless the present version of the book retains many of the original double-page spreads and it certainly retains all of the original ideas, themes, feelings, etc. The new version is more directly to the point.
I could not have been content with simply giving away an old project; Re-vision has always been at the heart of my creative process. I was pleasantly surprised by my experience of editing and re-organizing the old work; I felt like an active participant once again in a creative process that in some strange way “was me” 47 years ago! Amazing. In a subtle way, the present version of the book now contains a bit of who I am today.
I took Nathan’s home workshop two years in a row, 1964-65 and 1965-66. This book is from the second home workshop. I was 20-21 years old and a student at RIT at the time; while in Nathan’s workshop I also took one of the last Visual Communications classes taught by Minor White before he left Rochester for MIT. You can see the influence of Minor and Nathan, Aaron Siskind and Alfred Stiegliz in the “abstract” work; and clearly I was influenced by W. Eugene Smith, Robert Frank, Dave Heath and Lee Friedlander.
The book addresses social class, religious and cold war angst; and the book is dark with my own personal angst, not to mention the sexual energy of a introverted, shy, 20 year old male. I believe I was still grieving Kennedy’s assassination, though death and grieving were always present in my work due to my father’s death when I was age ten.
The book grapples with what Nathan called Visual Flow. That is to say, I was trying to learn the language of book form, which included repeating and restating and challenging various formal, subject matter and conceptual motifs. I was learning how to make the visual linkages between images as provocative and open-ended as possible so that the viewer could fill in the spaces between the pictures with their own meaning. I was also trying to learn the language of “abstract” photography, the non-representational or equivalent photograph, and integrate that work with my social commentary work. Finally, this book was the beginning of a sincere life long search for an answer to the big question Nathan frequently asked us: Why do you make photographs?
This book is offered to the Visual Studies Workshop in gratitude to Nathan Lyons for all that he has given me and all the rest of us. Finally, after 47 years it has come back home, with a touch of renewed life. Thanks, Nathan.
Steven D. Foster
February 14, 2013
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