Curator, writer, editor and educator David Campany tells of his lifelong love affair with photography and photo books, exploring some of his favorites and discussing why they are culturally and artistically important.

Campany pulls many years of experience in the field to shed light on the different ways photographers craft photo books to communicate their artistic message.

Looking through Walker Evans’ seminal 1938 work American Photographs, Susan Meisalas’ Kurdistan: In the Shadow of History, Robert Frank’s The Americans, and more, Campany takes us on a journey through some of the pivotal works in photo book publishing.

Campany’s decades of experience in the field, including more than 20 books to his name, make him the ideal guide for this fascinating journey into the world of photo books.

MediaStorm was commissioned to produce a short film about the importance of photography books to be screened at an International Center of Photography event that was just two months away.

The project immediately faced a host of significant challenges.

Would it be possible to produce a compelling and illuminating film about such a broad topic with such a short runtime?

Who could speak as an expert on the topic? When would this person be available and where?

What visuals could be gathered to cover the interview?

And what could the producers do with the material not included in the short event film to provide a definitive body of work on the topic?

How did MediaStorm producers approach these challenges? 

Find the answers in MediaStorm’s online training module: The Making Of The Art of the Photo Book with David Campany.

MediaStorm was commissioned by Harbers Studios in early September 2022 to produce a short film exploring the cultural and artistic importance of photo books.

While recent advances in technology have made it easy to create a photo book using online tools, it has also led to the impression that publishing a sophisticated, professionally-edited book is as easy as putting together a family album.

Renee Harbers Liddell, who is a member of the Board of Directors of the International Center of Photography, wanted a short film exploring the complex editing, writing and design work that makes professional photo books a unique art form. 

She planned to screen the film at an ICP Spotlight event on Nov. 2, 2022, as a way to set up a conversation about the topic.

It was clear at the outset that exploring a topic as complex as photo book publishing in less than a few minutes was going to be a challenge. There would be no time for multiple voices or back and forth conversation. 

Finding the right subject to interview would be the key to the film, and it would have to be an expert in the field.

The short duration also meant that it would be likely a lot of valuable and interesting material would be left on the cutting room floor. 

Since the film was about photo books, it would need to include visuals from the specific books being discussed.

And given the tight schedule, time would be limited. Shooting, editing and production would have to start immediately and happen efficiently.

Harbers and MediaStorm founder Brian Storm began exploring potential interview subjects and quickly settled on David Campany. 

Campany, a curator, writer, editor and educator, has more than 20 books to his name — an outstanding singular voice to carry the film. 

To solve the issue of unused, but worthy material, MediaStorm decided to create two additional homes for this work leveraging the capabilities of the MediaStorm Plat.

The first was a longer, 11-minute and 45-second film that would allow Campany more time to tackle the topic in-depth.

The second was a slideshow including video segments on each of the 18 books Campany discussed.

After Campany agreed to be in the film, Storm spent a day researching his work and reading about photo books to come up with questions to be explored in the film. 

Storm then flew to New York City on Sept. 5th to interview Campany in the ICP library. He hired cinematographers Shmuel Hoffman and Anton von Heiseler to capture the conversation on film.

Their conversation focused on why photo books matter, how difficult they are to make, and an exploration of 18 books that Campany wished to discuss. 

Storm flew back to MediaStorm headquarters in the Santa Cruz Mountains with a hard drive containing the raw interview footage. 

Using Premiere’s new transcript functionality, he exported a full text transcript, along with a copy of the raw video.

Using DropBox, he sent the video to co-editor Robert Browman in Albuquerque, NM, and he copied the transcript text into a shared Google Doc.

Browman removed the timecode from the transcript and cleaned it up to match Campany’s precise words by comparing against the video file.

He then created blocks with topic headers, which helps identify sections during the editing process.

Browman then flew to MediaStorm headquarters to edit the film with Storm.

The two began the first-pass edit using just the transcript, removing large chunks of the interview. 

They also copied out Campany’s discussion of each of the 18-books into individual sections in the transcript file to be used in the slideshow.

They used these sections to cut the video segments in Premiere for each book, exporting them as they were completed.

Browman wrote a description of each segment, and they were uploaded to Vimeo and included in a slideshow title inside the MediaStorm Platform, with links to purchase each book on Amazon.

Storm and Browman then went back to the transcript and began trimming in more detail for a full cut of the film. 

Once complete, these cuts were made in Premiere, and music, additional second-camera video and still images were added to cover portions of Campany’s interview. This resulted in a full 11-minute and 42-second version of the film.

After creating a custom-designed poster frame image, the full version of the film was uploaded to Vimeo, and Storm created a video title inside the MediaStorm platform that referenced it.

Storm and Browman then went back into the transcript and began trimming to create the shorter event cut of the film, which Harbers had commissioned.

The project, when published on the MediaStorm site using the MediaStorm Platform, included a cinematic cover pointing to each of the three elements: 

• The full 9-minute and 37-second film

• Slideshow of video segments for each of the 18 books

For a detailed insight into the process that MediaStorm uses to create this project, check out MediaStorm’s Post Production Workflow.