When I was living in Chicago for grad school, there was a curious local phenomena that occurred every business day at mid-afternoon: the entire north shore of the city would be bathed in the unmistakable sweet scent of chocolate. Many people didn't know where the chocolate smell was coming from, most didn't care, but what everyone did have was a surprisingly variant opinion on what kind of chocolate thing they perceived smelling. "It's brownies," was a popular answer. "Chocolate chip cookies," was another. "Fudge, it's definitely fudge," another would dreamily say, almost leaning into cocoa-scented wafts of air.

This same lack of congenial consensus occurs to me now, as I posit to you, dear reader: When you think of Photography (with a capital "P"), what is it you think of first? Is your answer shaped by your experience as a practicing photographer that still makes their own prints, and sifting through contact sheets and discarded test prints on a constant basis your first thought is of the print itself? Photograph as sheet? Or are you instead a gallerist, an art critic, or simply a lover and follower of the contemporary scene? And is the scene that you're used to seeing one where photographs are shown on a gallery or museum wall? Your chief experience of these artfully made images is a show shaped around an idea, conceit or a big personality—and likely, when you think of photography, you think of these public spaces where you encounter images by being surrounded by them in a room.

Or maybe you're a different sort altogether. Maybe when you think about "Photography" your chief concern is what the artist is relaying to you personally. You are invested in the mano e mano moment. You want to hold photography in your hands, you want to be presented with a thoughtfully sequenced and edited set of ideas and images, you want an experience that is total as it is private. When you see or think photography, your thought is a photo book.

The good thing is the three experience are not mutually exclusive. A person doesn't have to enjoy one of these modes at the expense of the others (nor does one of these methods only inherently contain one static kind of value/experience). But what's true is that you probably think of one of these types first, and that one has more immediate recognition and relevancy for you than the others.

Of the print, the gallery show and the book, it is the latter that is the odd binding force of this trinity. While the print is a idea communicated in singularity, and the exhibition is a culled and ephemeral showing of a continuum of an idea, it is the photo book that can be precedent and antecedent to these. A book can also be a collection of prints or cards, and from what is initially only conceived of as a book, a gallery show can arise. Photobooks, and their future status, has been the subject of much conjecture and debate both online and in-the-flesh. In December, Miki Johnson and Andy Adams helped mediate a crowd-sourced post on the future of photobooks for the Livebooks Resolve blog. Earlier this year, a photobook colloquium (pdf) "Lasting Impressions or Fading Impressions?" was held in Lausanne, to hold roundtables with photographic experts and publishers on three related discussions:

Profusion & Confusion: What is the photography book today?

Menaces & Promises: Where is the photography book going?

Concepts & Objects: A Photobook Laboratory

Steidl exhibit at Musee de L'Elysee, Lausanne by Nick Turpin

Heavy-hitters Gerhard Steidl and Markus Schaden held court on the publishing end of things, along with a retinue of smaller art-house presses, as well as artists, editors and collectors. Nick Turpin's summary of the conversations and concerns are well summarized in this post. Perhaps a culminating sentiment about the future of photobooks can be encapsulated in this observation by Turpin:

Today, Robert Frank wouldn’t wait two years to find a publisher for The Americans. He’d produce 2,000 copies himself and sell it through his website and market it through his blog and Twitter account.

In fact, perhaps looking at Robert Frank would be a good case example for one extreme direction where photobooks are going: at the conference in Lausanne it was revealed that the recent reissuing of Frank's The Americans by Steidl press has sold an unprecedented 80,000 copies since 2008. Turpin added in his summary post, "John Gossage pointed out that 50 years ago The Americans was remaindered in bookstores and you couldn't give it away." At Steidl's list price of $39.95, that amounts to over $3M in profit for the publisher. Steidl's model is to keep everything in-house, both production and distribution (they own their own printing presses), which is a large part of the reason that they have become the most well-known and most utilized art press out there, churning out a staggering four-hundred art titles a year, far beyond what any other competitor can boast.

To take The Americans to another publishing extreme, have a look at what Jeffrey Ladd, author of 5x4 reported last month, that eccentric Japanese publisher Kazuhiko Motomura has released a long-rumored special publication of all of Robert Frank's contacts for The Americans.

81 Contact Sheets, published by Kazuhiko Motomura as seen on Jeffrey Ladd's site, 5x4

Ladd writes about the nearly hedonistic excess that arrives from the publisher:

After getting past the shipping carton which I heard was a solid wooden crate, you discover a large very sturdy black box approximately 20 X 24 inches in size. On the front edge, a label with the edition number lets you know which copy of the 300 you own. Lifting the lid reveals a second box made of light wood - burned into the surface is an enlarged version of Frank's signature. Lifting that lid reveals the interior which is foam lined and cradles a silver folded portfolio upon which is embossed Frank's initials. This is lifted out and when opened, reveals a handmade japanese paper enclosure with a dark silver star at the right edge. Opening that you get to the meat of this endeavor - 81 individual enlarged contacts sheets held in place by a large belly-band.

Sounds great, right? Sign me up, right? Wrong. Ladd burst the book prospector's bubble, and reveals that there's an elite even among the book-buying public:

Now before you get too excited; A) it is very expensive at $1500.00 B) Mr Motomura only sells books to people who have bought in the past or will buy a set of ALL of his previous publications which totals around $7500.00 (including this new Frank). So that leaves me out and I guess a few of you too.

So what's an art-loving bibliophile to do? Or even more to the point, what are you as a photographer to do, if you've got a book to publish and you're not a Robert Frank, with eccentric foreign publishers willing to stake a fortune on an extremely limited edition art runs of sybaritic proportions?

Well we've got several photographers near and dear to us that have come up with their own real-life examples of what they have done, are doing, as they challenge this new publishing paradigm shift. And all of that will be revealed in Part II, coming later this week.