Some ten years ago, Martin Parr said that he thought photobooks are the supreme platform for photographers to disseminate their work to a mass audience. This totally resonates with me and is the primary reason I am passionate about photobooks. They are especially important as a means for the myriads of brilliant, but unseen, photographers of all ages to find an audience.
Recently I was asked me who the audience was for my project. With my interest in getting unseen photographers seen, I’ve been thinking about an answer to this ever since, and wondering whether it actually matters who the audience is or not. At first I found it a very difficult question, but I’ve come to realise I was trying to answer it in the frame of a past career in broadcast TV. In those days, powerful gatekeepers got to say what the public watched, and with limited distribution channels, one had to be very specific about one’s audience and its likely size. It was a similar situation in the publishing industry.
We’re in very different times now, as we all know, this is the golden age of photobooks and zeens. With low cost, high quality on-demand and short run digital production resources at hand, any photographer can bypass traditional publishing companies and self-publish their own works without restriction. The internet has given us powerful tools for identying, finding and connecting with audiences all over the connected world. It’s not easy, but it is possible to reach potential audiences that were previously totally invisible and unreachable.
To me, all this means that there is more than one audience type for my projects, and these are:
1. Those interested in photobooks, regardless of the subject.
2. Those interested in the artist, subject or project.
3. Those interested in the concept and ‘the book as an
object’.
4. Those interested in photobooks as an investment.
5. Creating it for my own pleasure.