Thursday, April 28, 2022

Reality will remain a true mystery..

 

Altered States of Agoraphobia (Monograph)


This month I got my first, hands on, contact with my book in the making (if only in part) when I was sent all the pages, prints and postcards that needed to be signed and numbered, before being returned to Bologna, Italy, so that it could be published and shipped (now in May 2022) to all those that have shown faith and pre-ordered a copy. This is a journey which began almost a year ago when I answered an open call from Eyeshot Publishing to submit a portfolio of photographs to be considered for a publishing contract. After Eyeshot received well over a thousand entries world wide, I was fortunate enough, along with 7 other photographers, to be offered the opportunity to make a monograph with them.

The book is a selection of 123 of my photographs over 186 pages with a picture index in the back and an introduction generously contributed by Blake Andrews in the front. The final image selection was made by Marco Savarese, editor in chief of Eyeshot Publishing and these were chosen from my initial submission of 200 photographs. These pictures were, in turn, selected from an original personal edit of around 500 images from a 5 year archive of a few thousand.

It would be true to say I had some trouble giving up control of my work for the sequencing stage of the book's creation. Although I did not yet have a solid idea about how I was going to sequence this work myself, I have always considered the assembling of my own photographs into sequence as an integral part of the overall creative vision of a finished project. To give this up has been a process of having faith and trusting my publisher and simply letting go of my fears and anxieties. Fortunately for me, Eyeshot has their own vision for their brand and it has been an exciting and enjoyable experience for me to see the book take shape through their eyes.

Eyeshot has also been receptive to any changes to the image pairings that I have wanted to make and when they presented the first complete edit of the book for me to review digitally, they accommodated these changes to the sequence that I felt really needed it. This has set my mind at rest and the finished book is the result of what has been an inspiring and enjoyable collaboration. Eyeshot's sense of style and design is elegant and their printing on Fedrigoni paper and packaging is all top quality. There will be two editions published, a standard “white” edition with a run of 420, costing 54,90 Euros ($56,90) and a limited “black" edition of 30 copies with a signed and numbered print included, sold at the collectors price of 210 Euros ($221) making it a complete run of 450 copies.

Although I have always known the physical dimensions of the book being 22 X 27cm, these numbers have never meant much to me and it was not until about a week ago when photographer’s David Graham and Vasilikos Lukas both shared pictures of their own recently published Eyeshot monographs, that I got, for the first time, an idea of my own books size and also a feel for its look and quality. I now have a tantalizing image of what it might be like, if only in my mind. These are all ephemeral, night time, doodle-bug thoughts though really. I am aware of how big the gulf is between the real world and the virtual one and how different an image can look on a screen compared to that of a physical print and the final goodnight thought is, the book's reality will remain a true mystery for me until I can actually hold a copy of it in my hands.


Altered States of Agoraphobia by Simon Kossoff is available to order from Eyeshot Publishing here.



Monday, April 25, 2022

I was never going to be able to leave..



You know when you have driven far enough, you can feel it. There are several stages to leaving and each stage is assigned a distance. These distances can be both physical and mental. Each distance is unique to each of us, as is the stage order to the leaving itself. The stages are only consistent across time with the first initial thought and the last physical action. You do know when you have driven far enough, but to truly leave a place is not such an easy task. There are some places that I left a long time ago, only to later discover that I was still there, emotionally, and the place was tangled up inside me and I was never going to be able to leave, no matter how far I drove or for how long. Sometimes a place is a person and my dreams have become a purgatory of souls that I cannot let go of and I have, over the years, become a haunted house where I have been afraid to spend the night.. So with this now being said, a question now begs; why leave anywhere ever again?


Saturday, April 16, 2022

It will all make sense some day..


Sonder / Commentry #1



A parking lot on the vast southeastern plains of Colorado where the horizon is 360 degrees of wild unbroken prairie under a massive cloudless summer sky. I am far away from everywhere all over again. It's hot and a blustery July wind harasses me, tugging at my clothes incessantly, pulling from all directions, promising to drive me mad if I don’t take cover from it soon.



This is a photograph of me, taken in 1864. I have seen myself in history, like this, many times before, but it is not often I have had the presence of mind to get a record of it with my camera. It was part of a tourist information display at the site of the terrible Sand Creek Massacre. This photo is a close up of a larger group photograph of the US Volunteer soldiers that were part of it. It looked out at me and seemed to make eye contact from across time and across a parking lot like a spectral face in a distant scrying glass.




The face is one of the 675 anonymous murderers of 750 Cheyenne and Arapaho Indians which took place on the morning of November 29th 1864. Under the commanded of Colonel John M. Chivington and using small arms and howitzer fire, the troops drove the people out of their camp. While many managed to escape the initial onslaught, others, particularly noncombatant women, children, and the elderly fled into and up the bottom of the dry stream bed. The soldiers followed, shooting at them as they struggled through the sandy earth. During that afternoon and into the following day, the soldiers wandered over the field committing atrocities on the dead and dying before departing the scene on December 1st.




I don’t know why this photograph is me, but I don’t know why I am me either as I stand here looking at it today. And, as I begin to make a photo-record of it, I hold this question close, just in case the revelation that I am certain it holds, has a fuse on it. I let photographs naturally impose their own cool presence of mind upon the scene and I try, in this instance, to keep my-self out of it. The hope being that it will all make sense some day, later, upon reflection, tomorrow maybe.. I trust photography with all of these mysteries of the world and I have come to regard my camera as another sense apparatus with which to perceive it.





The wind finally snags my hat and I chase it through the long grass, flapping my arms and shouting like the madman it promised it would make of me.


Both Sonder and Descendant are available to order from Bump Books.