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A view of the entire press. I like the technician’s flair:

Another technician working his magic on the “DJ” station:

Here’s the cover being printed – so fast and so noisy:

And lo, the printing is done. Now these form prints need to be bound into books! No Sleep - May release in Europe, September in the States. Woo hoo!

No Sleep catalog page on Kehrer site

After my exciting week in Heidelberg, I took a break in Paris with F.  Here I am with my set of form prints:

Danke and Merci!

The cacophony of all the presses running at once is impressive, doubly amplified by the high ceilings. I loved the smell of ink. The place was huge, factory-like, much bigger than it looks here:

Here’s a close-up of one of the presses. A single false move and you’d quickly get eaten by one of these things:

The calibration and viewing area was like a DJ station. Here’s the touch screen monitor where the technician makes incremental adjustments to the cyan, magenta, yellow and black levels. That’s the test print from earlier in the week:

The technician lines up the newly-printed form prints (the actual pages of the book!) to this motherboard thing where each level below corresponds to a strip of the sheet above. I dunno, it was like magic. I would say, this one needs a little more magenta, this one a little more yellow and after some quick-fingered tapping and adjusting, and some hundred sheets later (in like 2 seconds), there it was corrected:

One of the printing screens:

The paper loaded and ready for printing. I chose Galaxie Keramik paper, in case you were interested:

Here we are: the printing technician, Jürgen the color expert, and me comparing the form prints to my reference prints:

By the way, we would check, adjust and recheck, reprint and recheck again each form print of about four images as it came out of the machine and then go into a separate (quiet) conference room for about half an hour while the entire set was being printed (1200 sheets or so I guess). Then we would get buzzed back into the printing room for the next form print. We did this twelve times that day! It was a long day.

Here’s Marijke, my Kehrer designer, looking up inquisitively at the misting system humidifying the space:

Afternoon shift change and another technician pulls a form print out of the press for viewing:

A pallet of final form prints. That’s a lot of paper:

Look ma, I’m making a book!

Printing the cover:

To be continued…

After an uneventful red-eye flight – I fell asleep about halfway through The King’s Speech (I know, confronted with a choice between Colin Firth and sleep, I thought I’d choose Colin Firth too) – I trained it directly from Frankfurt airport to Kehrer headquarters in Heidelberg, met the team and immediately began poring over the test print of about 30 images that was waiting for me.

That first morning is a blur – thankfully I was in the capable hands of my designer Marijke and Kehrer’s color expert Jürgen. We compared the photographs one-by-one on the test print to a batch of small reference prints I had mailed in the week before and made some minor and some not-so-minor changes to the images in Photoshop. Unsolicited advice: if you ever do a book, make sure your reference prints are really more or less how you want the final images to look. After several hours of eye-straining corrections, it helps to have that constant. We also made small adjustments to the book and cover layouts in Indesign and then I was off to my hotel for some rest!

Heidelberg is a seriously picturesque town, easy to get around in, pleasantly walkable, small yet cosmopolitan. Here’s a view of the river Nektar, with the castle in the distance on the right:

Lots of civilized picnicking and wine drinking along the river bank:

A typical alleyway in the Old Town:

And of course, the famous Castle:

(that’s a very big dog, about the size of a pony, running around in the foreground)

I enjoyed my downtime there immensely: took long rambling walks on Philosophers’ Way, ate delicious ice creams (who knew ice cream was so popular in Germany?), and basked in the sunshine.

Soon enough, it was off to the press!

To be continued…

Photo story on DIS Magazine, take a look. Short text by Sarah Raymont.

I’m showing photographs from the No Sleep series at the Center for Photography at Woodstock, opening this Saturday.  Stop by if you’re in the area!

MADE IN WOODSTOCK V
featuring work by CPW’s artists-in-residence from 2007-2009:

WILLIAM CORDOVA, LATOYA RUBY FRAZIER, TIA-SIMONE GARDNER, LAWRENCE GETUBIG, DANIEL HANDAL, WAYNE HODGE, JEANNETTE LOUIE, HEE JIN KANG, TARRAH KRAJNAK & WILKA ROIG, EMILY HANAKO MOMOHARA, RICARDO MORALES-HERNÁNDEZ, DAWIT L. PETROS, TIM PORTLOCK, JUSTINE REYES, KANAKO SASAKI, LUPITA MURILLO TINNEN, and DONNA J. WAN

January 15 – March 27, 2011
Opening Reception: Saturday January 15, 2011, 4-6 pm

Made in Woodstock V (MIW V) is the fifth installment of the Center for Photography at Woodstock‘s series featuring work created by recent partipants of WOODSTOCK A-I-R, CPW’s residency program for artists of color working in the photographic arts.

Established in 1999, WOODSTOCK A-I-R is a workspace residency program which provides participants with time, facilities, space, and the critical & technical support necessary to move forward. The program encourages the pursuit of creative risk-taking in the inspiring environment of Woodstock, where, working without distraction, photographic artists can focus intensely on their new work, continue works in progress, layout their goals for the future, and break new creative ground.

Representing the broad range of photographic practices and interests that WOODSTOCK A-I-R helps realize, the 18 artists featured in MIW V engage in an inspired and deeply self-aware dialogue on history, politics, representational concerns, and more. As no two residencies are the same, the exhibition reveals the intensely diverse, dynamic interests of the artists as a group, and addresses each image-makers own particular story and voice.

To learn more about this show, click here.

I’m pleased to announce my participation in the first issue of 50pm, a monthly collection of fine-art photography portfolios and the first portfolio-based photography magazine developed especially for the iPad (Santa, bring me an iPad for Christmas, ok thanks).

Here is a link to the Apple iTunes page. Go download it for your iPads!

And a separate Lite version, which previews the full magazine, is iPhone compatible and is free.  Though you really need to buy the full iPad version to experience the app in all its glory.

Our first issue – Family Matters – has been released in app stores worldwide on December 7. It comprises of beautiful portfolios by Chris Verene, Hee Jin Kang, Mami Kiyoshi and Elizabeth Clark Libert, four artists who share inside views of their own families. It covers American family life of various social classes and a Japanese family set against a recreation of paradise. Each of these artists has connected with their family to create a beautiful, strong and often touching photo story.

50pm – the iPad magazine is a collaboration between Bite! magazine (Dutch, online) and Daylight Magazine (US, print and online). Both magazines feature fine art and documentary photography of the highest standards.

It only costs $1.99 to download the iPad app – I hope you check it out.

The description reads:

With compact bodies and simple functionality, classic 35 mm cameras paved the way for both amateur photographers and professional photojournalists everywhere. The first was prototyped in Germany in 1913 and went into production as the Leica in 1924. Our collection of found cameras crafted by a variety of mid-century German and Russian manufacturers have become vintage icons, making them perfect for display. Each one is unique; let us choose for you.

• Each bears the rare character and timeworn beauty of a vintage piece.
• Cameras are usable as well as decorative.
• Catalog / Internet only

Wow.

So let me get this straight.  You can fork over $149 and let Pottery Barn choose the perfect vintage camera to suit your perfectly vintage-inspired abode. And lo! not only are they great for display, the cameras are actually “usable.” For those of us just a tad too lazy to pop over to ebay and find these exact same Zorki 4K cameras for less than half of what PB is charging.  I guess the extra surcharge covers their curation fee.

© Hee Jin Kang