Photobook research assignment #2

After looking at several of the photobooks in the photography section of the library, I found Willie Doherty's Requisite Distance: Ghost story and landscape. Right off the bat this book caught my eye. The book has several different sections and each one is clearly divided due to the drastic change in color (black, white and grey) between the sections. Each sections' photographs formally go together but are different from each other and yet each section comes together under the overall theme. The beginning of the book has beautiful yet kind of eerie photos of different roads or sides of the road that are completely empty. I also love how these photos in the first section were labeled. They have a little descriptor in the corner of the opposite white page. The following section of photographs have a much darker feel. The beginning photographs had white backgrounds and there was a lot of sun and greenery. The second section of photos have a dark grey background and are very foggy and mysterious looking. They then have pictures of eyes put throughout the section.  The ghostly look goes well with the title, Ghost story and landscape. I feel as though the landscape photos in this book could be the scene of a creepy movie, this is probably because many of the photos are film stills. The creepy and dark feel represents the troubles of Ireland.

Formally, the cover of the book has on of the "creepier" photos of the road which wraps around to the back cover of the book. I also like how the photos on the first section have all the same format and then the photos in the second section change format and have 3/4 photos on one page then they have a full bleed across two pages, then there is a small photo in the corner of an empty page. All of these formats go together in a way to make it more intriguing to look at.

After seeing how successful the use of multiple formats is at getting a point across and keeping the reader engaged, I am really considering doing that for my photobook. I originally was going to do a book with all the same format that is very uniform and clean but I started to see that that could be boring. That is a lot like the first section of the book and I don't think that the book would have been as good without the second section to compliment the first section.