Wondering about Pictorialism: Thoughts on making an artist’s book by Irina Dakhnovskaia Lawton

Making an artist’s book can be seen either as an extension of a specific project or as an independent artistic practice.

After finishing my long-term project, Wondering about Pictorialism, it felt like a natural step to bring all the images together into one place--something tangible and more accessible to a wider audience. The format of a book, with its own specific rules and constraints is very different from other forms of presentation yet it is deeply satisfying. It has the potential to extend and broaden ideas about the work on which it is based.

Creating an artist’s book can be both challenging and rewarding. It often becomes a project involving countless decisions about sequencing, paper choices, sizes and binding, typography and layout. All those choices help the book to develop its own visual language, enriching the ideas and emotions expressed in the photographs. This process can be as exhausting as it is satisfying. The final book should maintain a stylistic connection to the original images, while also developing its own life, meaning and presence.

By choosing the artist’s book format rather than a traditionally published version, you gain the freedom to make every creative decision yourself. As the artist, you are the one who knows best what you want the final work to become. Because of that, the book becomes an extension of your vision and, quite often, an addition to the original images themselves.

Lawton’s book, Wondering about Pictorialism, is on view here