I’ve been hearing and reading about online book printing on demand for a while. Quite often though, opinions diverge regarding the quality of the books and it is difficult to know the real value of these opinions.

So I decided to design and order books from several online printing companies, see for myself and share my experience and results here on insig.ht. I tried to do so from a photographer’s standpoint.

I picked the three following websites as they seemed to be popular choices among photographers: lulu.com, blurb.com & adorama.com

My goal was to print a nice looking hardcover photo book in color. Ideally the quality would be good enough so that I could feel comfortable selling the book.

I also wanted, as much as possible, to:

- have control over the layout of the book
- have control over the printed colors
- minimize the resizing of the pictures by the printer

I chose 23 of my images and used the same files for all the books. All images were JPEG quality 12 in sRGB profile, resized in Photoshop at 300dpi. Those are specs recommended by all 3 sites. When a profile was available, I soft-proofed the images in Photoshop using a calibrated monitor.

I won’t go into details regarding the pricing as it varies greatly depending on the size of the book and the printing options chosen. But, expect to spend $30/$40 or more for a single book. Note that unlike Adorama, Blurb and Lulu offer the ability to sell your books through their site, and you can choose your price.

Now, let’s get to the comparison. I wrote down the technical stuff and you can see short videos of the book reviews…

ADORAMA

Website: Adoramapix

You will need to create a free Adorama account to login & access the online software. No need to install anything; you design the book online.

Hardcover Sizes: 4″x6″ – 5.5″x8″ – 8″x8″ – 10″x8″ – 12″x8″
(No Softcover available)

Pages: 26 or 50

Cover: ImageWrap Only

Themes: Lots of silly themes (templates for the book) are offered. Choose “no theme” and get a neutral look to start with.

Software & Layout: Navigating the software is pretty straightforward, controls are easy to understand and pictures are laid out on the book with Drag & Drop.
Unfortunately, the pictures won’t insert in the layout keeping their original sizes. You need to resize them manually to match their native pixel dimensions.
Also, in order to center your images the same way on every page, I recommend clicking on the Grid button and selecting the Snap to grid option in Tools –>Preferences .
The software gets the job and offers good freedom with the layout. However, it can be pretty painstaking to resize each picture back to its original size.

Profile: you can download a color profile at the bottom of this page

Book printed: one 8″x8″

+’s: Real photo paper / Profile provided / Accurate colors / Sharp & vibrant prints / Interesting “flat” binding

-’s: Number of pages: only 26 or 50 / Very thick pages give a unusual feel to the book / no PDF upload / Not possible to sell your book through the site

BLURB

Website: Blurb
You’ll first need to download and install the Blurb Bookmark software on your computer and create a free account in order to print your book.

Hardcover Sizes: 7″x7″ – 10″x8″ – 8″x10″ – 13″x11″ – 12″x12″
(Softcover available for smaller sizes)

Pages: from 20 to 440 – Standard & Premium Paper (optional)

Cover: ImageWrap or Dustjacket

Themes: Like Adorama, there are a number of bad looking themes offered. I think the “blank” theme is a good start.

Software & Layout: Easy software to naviguate with Drag and Drop capability.
There are many different pre-formatted page layouts you can choose from. In them, you’ll find fixed sized containers where you can drop your pictures. But if your picture is too big for the container, it will be cropped.
For full control you can now (it’s a new Bookmark feature) create custom-sized containers and personal layouts. To do so, click on Edit Layout in Bookmark. You can then save and re-use your custom layout on any page.
Overall, it’s good and pretty flexible software. But, if you need to use many different personal layouts, it can be a lot of work to build them.
Update: Blurb now also accepts PDF uploads.

Profile: The standard Blurb offering does not provide any profiles.
However, their B3 program offers the download of a profile and a Custom Workflow printing option, meaning that your book should be printed on designated calibrated printers.
This program is still in Beta, so an invitation is needed to get access it; Blurb sent me an invite in a timely manner. You can find more about the program here.

Books printed: one 7″x7″ with the Custom Workflow and one 10″x8″ without it. Both books on Standard Paper.

+’s: Good software / Good & varied book formats offered / Profile available (if B3 member) / Accurate colors even with standard Workflow / PDF upload

-’s: No significant quality increase with Custom Workflow / Flat & unsharp prints / Thin paper / Poor binding / Extra options (Custom Workflow, Blurb logo removal, Premium Paper) increase the price of the book significantly

LULU

Lulu offers 2 types of books: a standard Book and a more expensive Photo Book.

- The standard Book is printed from a PDF file uploaded on the site and printed on standard paper. It seems to be aimed towards written and/or illustration books. Most of the offered book formats are in portrait orientation.
- The Photo Book is designed online with the Lulu Studio software and printed on better paper. Less book format options.

1. Photo Book

Website: Lulu Photo Book
You access the software online. No need to install anything. You will need to create a free Lulu account to print your book.

Themes: Same as competitors; I recommend the theme named “blank”.

Cover: ImageWrap Only

Hardcover Sizes: 8.5″x11″ – 9″x7″ – 8.5″x8.5″
(Softcover also available)

Pages: from 20 to 120

Software & Layout: Software is pretty basic but easy to use. You can choose from different containers to insert your pictures into, but there is no indication of their sizes. So there is a good chance that your pictures will end up being resized by the software when you insert it. The resizing done on my pictures seemed OK though.
So, friendly software but with limited control.

Profile: No color profile is available.

Book Printed: one 9″x7″ Photo Book

+’s: Software very easy to use

-’s: Limited controls in Software / Flat & unsharp prints / Color Cast / Poor binding / No PDF upload

2. Standard Book

Website: Lulu standard Book

Cover/Sizes/Pages: Many options are available, too many to list, but you can find the info here.

Layout: You can design your book and layout using any desktop publishing program before converting it to PDF format. I used inDesign. Unfortunately, there is no inDesign template on the Lulu site, which would be nice!

Profile: No profile is available.

Book Printed: one 6″x9″ standard Book

+’s: PDF upload, hence full control over the layout / Good color accuracy / Many formats and binding options

-’s: Flat & unsharp prints / Thin non-glossy paper / Poor binding

CONCLUSION

Looking at the books I received, I think that none of these printing services really makes the cut in order to be considered a serious option for photographers’ books. Adorama printing is good, but the product seems limited in use. Blurb and Lulu printing quality is simply not good enough. However, I do think they can be used in certain cases; they could be great for mock ups, promo pieces, or even fancy magazines.

I have started researching other options: smaller printers, printing lesser quantities and more focused on quality but haven’t found the task very easy so far. Where are you hiding, dear printers? I would love if you could share (in the comments) your experiences with the sites mentioned here as well as with any other book printing company.

Links:
- An up to date listing of interesting printing companies: Printer Resources for Independent Art Publishers
- The founder of Edition One Studio interviewed here
- Magazine printing on demand: MagCloud

Thanks to Karen Rudd for the video editing.

For those new to the work, Passing Through Eden was influenced by the biblical Book of Genesis:

The sequencing of the book, or at least the first half of it, is quite literally based on the first six chapters of Genesis. The world, or Eden, or Central Park, is created in the first half-dozen pictures, one for each day of the Creation: Adam appears as a pile of molten dust, then as his radiant self; Eve arrives opposite a picture of bleached branches that, to me, suggests her emergence from Adam’s rib; and on it goes… – Tod Papageorge

Flipping through my own copy of the book, I’d often speculated on the nature and emphasis of this biblical allusion, wondering just how explicit it was beyond the initial few pages. With my days of enforced scripture class long past, I struggled to discern much beyond a few vague inferences and eventually resigned myself to a state of muted perplexity.

Fortunately, during the presentation Papageorge generously volunteered some insights into his editing process and I found myself both surprised and impressed by the ambition behind the work. Rather than entrusting to a generally amorphous Genesis-themed representation, individual photographs were selected to denote characters and incidents within specific verses of the bible.

To illustrate, here are a few images that were specifically highlighted: I’ve added relevant excerpts from Genesis to flesh out the back story. With these images serving as chronological markers, I was then also able to identify additional connections from the biblical text.

So God created man in his own image

Adam

And the rib, which the Lord God had taken from man, made he a woman, and brought her unto the man.

Eve

Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave unto his wife: and they shall be one flesh.

Adam and Eve

Now the serpent was more subtle than any beast of the field which the LORD God had made.

The Serpent

And he said unto the woman, Yea, hath God said, Ye shall not eat of every tree of the garden? And the woman said unto the serpent, We may eat of the fruit of the trees of the garden: But of the fruit of the tree which is in the midst of the garden, God hath said, Ye shall not eat of it, neither shall ye touch it, lest ye die. And the serpent said unto the woman, Ye shall not surely die: For God doth know that in the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil.

Eve and the fruit from the Tree of Knowledge

And when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was pleasant to the eyes, and a tree to be desired to make one wise, she took of the fruit thereof, and did eat, and gave also unto her husband with her; and he did eat.

Eve eating the fruit

And the eyes of them both were opened, and they knew that they were naked; and they sewed fig leaves together, and made themselves aprons.

And they heard the voice of the Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of the day: and Adam and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the Lord God amongst the trees of the garden.

'The eyes of both were opened'

Therefore the Lord God sent him forth from the garden of Eden, to till the ground from whence he was taken.

So he drove out the man; and he placed at the east of the garden of Eden Cherubims, and a flaming sword which turned every way, to keep the way of the tree of life.

The explusion from Paradise

And Adam knew Eve his wife…

'And Adam knew Eve his wife...'

and she conceived, and bare Cain, and said, I have gotten a man from the Lord.
And she again bare his brother Abel. And Abel was a keeper of sheep, but Cain was a tiller of the ground.

Adam and Cain

Adam and Abel

Cain and Abel

And Cain talked with Abel his brother: and it came to pass, when they were in the field, that Cain rose up against Abel his brother, and slew him.

The murder of Abel

And the Lord said unto Cain, Where is Abel thy brother? And he said, I know not: Am I my brother’s keeper?
And he said, What hast thou done? the voice of thy brother’s blood crieth unto me from the ground.
And now art thou cursed from the earth, which hath opened her mouth to receive thy brother’s blood from thy hand;

God admonishing Cain

And the Lord set a mark upon Cain, lest any finding him should kill him.

The marked Cain

Until that point, I had never quite realised how deeply down the rabbit hole Papageorge had descended; it would be fair to say that neither myself or the majority of the audience expected such an intimate relationship between the photos and the text. Afterwards, I asked my friends A and Z for their opinions, which proceeded to differ by the range of the alphabet:

It’s completely changed my approach to looking at the work, I’ll have to re-examine everything in light of this! – A

Without doubt it’s a clever exercise and adds some meat to the project, but ultimately, and in the nicest way, they’re still just photos made in Central Park, no more, no less. – Z

Equally provoking was the reminder that the Genesis motif had been conceived only as the book was being assembled, long after the photos had been made. What A and Z said started me thinking about the effectiveness of similar projects that have been conceptualised post-hoc, after the act of making the work. However, I soon ran into difficulty when identifying strongly-themed projects that were admittedly ‘post-hoc’; it’s something that never seems to be advertised as such.

Alec Soth’s The Last Days of W sounds like it was made post-hoc, while Jason Fulford’s Raising Frogs for $ $ $ (some pictures here) might fall under this category too, but beyond that few obvious candidates sprang immediately to mind (please feel free to add to this list by leaving a comment).

Without wanting to enter into a deep philosophical and theoretical debate (but with a hankering for a shallow one), I posed the question to some friends: can you think of reasons why projects like these appear to be a rarity?

One theory was that they were more common than admitted to:

I even suspect many photographers are lying when they say they had it all planned in advance and that they spent ages working on one particular concept, when in fact they just threw it together at the end. It feels like the former approach is regarded as more respectable: smarter and more insightful. – R

If lying is too strong a word, than perhaps a post-facto recognition of organic growth:

And honestly, I think the most lying happens when someone realizes that they’ve stumbled across their subject matter which they happen to have been shooting for years, but just haven’t realized it. Then, upon realization, they’ve been doing it on purpose all along, naturally. – M

The band played on, leading to a thought-provoking discussion which arose from a query by Eliot Shepard regarding the difficulty and validity of bringing meaning to work seemingly made at random. Reading through it, the point being made was that ultimately of course, it doesn’t really matter. It doesn’t matter how the photos were made or if there was any conscious intent behind their making or whether said intent was later attached to them. All that matters is that they “work” as a collective whole. A photographer sufficiently talented, ruthless and intelligent will find a successful approach to photographing, editing and sequencing.

As Michael David Murphy put it:

A collection of strong photographs held together by an oblique concept (that allows the viewer the space to breathe and create their own connections) is an experience that can’t be touched by an easy-to-describe project with an air-tight, marketable concept populated with unfeeling, anaemic pictures.

The concept is not king. Randomness is a myth.

Does Passing Through Eden succeed in this respect? The answer has to be undoubtedly yes. The Genesis theme, while fascinating (especially upon further revelation), isn’t evident to many readers, nor is it necessary to the success of the images. Instead, it hangs like a delicate thread throughout the book, sometimes glimpsed, flitting in and out of the light. There are no heavy-handed concepts that burst forth to remorselessly hammer themselves into the viewer’s psyche; rather, sufficient latitude is preserved for individuals to draw their own conclusions. The work can be successfully appreciated in either complete ignorance, semi-awareness (with the perception of a palpable yet indistinct Genesis reference: my state of “muted perplexity”), or the full awareness that comes with being able to connect the dots between individual images.

Papageorge himself said it best:

…the fact is that attempting to weave these disparate images into some twentieth-century New York City version of the First Story gave me a form that I felt could provide a much more flexible armature for the shape of the book (and the large number of pictures I wanted to include in it) than the usual photographic monograph. I also wanted to make a book that could be understood in as many ways as possible, even if it risked the possibility that a reader more interested in decoding the sequence of Biblical references could well miss the ambition informing the pictures, and what I hope is the poetry animating them.

Clever man that he is, that goal has successfully been achieved.

Another clever man is Alec Soth. While the Last Days of W may not have been well-received in some quarters (indeed that particular critique highlights some of the potential minefields in post-facto projects), Soth has been spectacularly successful in other endeavours.

I recall having a convivial chat with someone quite high up the Magnum food chain about this:

You know, that Alec Soth is a very, very clever fellow.

Really?

Yeah… you know NIAGARA of course? It has a theme of love running throughout:there’s a repeated heart motif in many of the images. But did you know that to maintain this, Soth also actually POSED the couples he photographed in a shape of a heart?? Now THAT’S clever!

Regardless of the veracity of this tale and Soth’s actual intentions, the best part about this anecdote is that like any truly great conspiracy theory, there’s just enough evidence for it to be vaguely plausible. It doesn’t matter if it’s true or not, it’s just a fascinating (or ridiculous, depending on your perspective) story that may add to the NIAGARA mystique.

Take a look for yourself: do you see hearts? Do you care?

Aleisha and Joe

Martha and Anthony

Michelle and Pedro

As many have already noted: he’s a clever man that Alec Soth…

All photographs in this article © Tod Papageorge and Alec Soth respectively.
Passing Through Eden: Photographs of Central Park by Tod Papageorge. NIAGARA by Alec Soth.

Additional notes

Blake Andrews includes a great comparison with Robert Crumb.

When I first discovered his work, it was like being taken by both shoulders and shaken – I had never seen anything like it before and it took me a while to really work out what all the fuss was about. However the more I explored Mark’s vast archive of images, I found threads appearing, and a strange rhythm in the photographs that urged me to keep looking. We’ve tried to ask Mark questions that reveal some of the methodology behind his practice. The interview is based around a new body of work called “Mexico XXI”. We’ve featured some of the photographs from this series in the interview, but you can see a wider edit over on Mark’s website.

First of all, can you give us a brief insight into your photographic history and how you came to be a photographer?

In 1986, I spent a year as an exchange student in Vereeniging, South Africa, a predominantly Afrikaner city south of Johannesburg. Coming from Michigan, it was altogether another planet for me. At the time, it was at the end of the Apartheid era, everything was still censored and tense. I would ride in the black-only sections of trains, police were everywhere, and dark clouds of smoke rose up from burning tyres from the violent clashes in the segregated township Sebokeng just outside of Vereeniging. Meanwhile, I lived with my rich white host family who lived in a very privileged almost unreal bubble. The whole experience gave me a rebellious and messed up feeling and changed my world view—I knew then I wanted to be a photographer. I started taking my camera most places and having adventures. When I got back home I enrolled myself in a photography courses at a local community college with a fantastic photographer and teacher named Linda Menger. She showed me lots of work of other photographers and really encouraged and mentored me to take my work to the next level.

(Hin Chua) How do you go about assembling your images into a larger body of work? To my eyes they appear to be of a relatively open-ended nature. What themes and guiding principles informed your choices during this process?

I know more what I don’t want than what I want in a photograph. It is a growing search, I am collecting, editing down. I put my photographs into “number ones” and then all the rest. A number one is when I really hit on something and I think about that photo for awhile. The photographs I am working on right now are for a new book tentatively called Mexico XXI. It is a mixture of portraits, mostly a cast of male characters and sprinkling of straight scenes and landscapes taken mostly in Mexico City. I like to start with one picture and build upon that mood or feeling, pictures with hopefully long shelf lives–because a lot of pictures just putter out and I don’t want to look at them anymore.

(Ben Roberts) Are your influences photographic or from a different sphere such as literature or film? Can you specify any of your influences?

Of course, I love looking at photographs. My favorite photographer in Mexico is Enrique Metinides, a photographer who worked for the “Las Nota Rojas” the violent working class newspapers in Mexico City. I just learned last week that he is basically housebound now and sets up backdrop pictures of fires and explosions, bloody crime scenes, then re-shoots scenes as lego-like fantasies, just as if he was out photographing like before. It is a little heartening because he can’t stop his photographic impulse, like a cat chasing a string. He now develops all his film cheaply at Costco stores too. That is pretty cool. I admire his non-self-conscious style, his pure eccentric passion, with no real art intentions except to make pictures.

I also have a big regard for movies made from the late 60’s to early 80’s, movies like Badlands, El Topo, The Mechanic, The Getaway, Straight Time, The French Connection, Westworld, The Shining. I am content just to enjoy seeing movies and not consciously take anything from them– The best inspiration is when it is slippery and unclear, though people tell me over and over my pictures give them a movie still feel, so yes it may come from my joy of movies.

(Hin) The scenes that you photograph, indeed your entire viewpoint, appear off kilter, unreal and larger than life; yet in some way they still represent a version of reality. How do you go about seeing this way?

I think my photography is driven foremost by my personality. I’ve got a pretty critical eye and I immediately try to take the obvious out, I like it when something is in front of me and I can’t quite see it just yet. I let the camera do some work and later a nice result of the unexpected comes through. So there is that initial inkling and it is important to recognize that first feeling that something could be there—where to point the camera, who to approach, what things to say, how big my smile is– all those small game changers that allow for imagination to enter and make interesting pictures – and they either workout or they don’t…

(Ben/Hin) Following on from the previous question, do you actively seek out people and situations that suit your vision, or do you feel that your photographs are an accurate cross section of the geographical area in which you shoot?

I am pretty active in seeking out people. Just yesterday, I met a lady in the street who had a collection of gaudy, colorful knitted yarn bags used for carrying pop bottles. She looked quite young but had all white hair, very blue eyes. There seems to be law of attraction and people respond in an immediate spontaneous and real way when I take an interest in them. I got her number and plan on calling her up because I didn’t have my camera with me then. Maybe it will be an easy picture, maybe it could be a little too direct and too “charactery,” but for sure would make a nice adventure. She is definitely whiter than most Mexicans, “una guerita.” (I just called her house, no answer). Who knows what other pictures could come out of it? I imagine her as kind of scary, colorfully knitted spinster, like Sissy Spacek’s mom in the movie Carrie—Ok, there is a movie reference. I tend to go for those contrasts of what is usually not expected from Mexico, or how people should look like here, maybe because they stand out a lot more. Recently, I have been seeing Tarot card readers and getting my fortune read then I take a portrait or something—the fortunes are equally cool! But, I still rely on the day to day unexpected meeting of people I find in the street.

(Hin) Did there come a time when you knew that “VIP” was complete? What have you learnt from VIP
? (note – “VIP” is Mark’s monograph from 2006 – you can read more about it in this article on 2point8)

I was discovering digital then and everything was new, I was getting my feet wet, meeting strangers, I mainly used my little 4 megapixel Canon G2 camera and a 1 megapixel Rollei d7. I knew I was going to do something with them one day, but was just photographing everyday not thinking too much about when I would finish. In the end, I really couldn’t take any more pictures because my cameras had fallen apart. It took about a month to edit about three years of work for the eventual book. Though the characters themselves fit well with the Very Important Person theme, I think I learned that to make photographs is an important choice. In the end, you say something more about yourself than about the people you are photographing. Because the people and things we are attracted to probably say something deeply about why we are attracted to them in the first place. We all chisel out the world into our own little VIPs and everyone has a different kind of list. I had to go through those attractions in VIP in order to get to the people and circumstances I am photographing now.

(Hin) How strongly connected do you feel your work is to Mexico and Detroit? While the locations are obviously deeply infused within your images, do you feel that they are integral to your process? Do you have a desire to make work in other places?

By my own circumstances I have made pictures from Detroit and Mexico City. I don’t think they are integral to my process. Though these two cities have definitely given my photographs a certain feel that I don’t think I could get from any other places. I would love to go to Los Angeles and make pictures. I have never been there and a lot of people tell me there are things in common with Mexico City. Here in Mexico, I want to spend more time in Acapulco, Merida and Tijuana. I would love to eventually go to Brazil too. I hope that my pictures remain consistent no matter where I go and you could tell that I made them.

(James Hendrick) You are working across divides of culture and nationality. What are your thoughts on photographing Mexico as a foreigner? Does it constrain or Liberate you? Does having the ‘outsider perspective’ provide a unique value?

I think I feel pretty much at home in Mexico now – next year I will become a Mexican citizen, though I am sure I will never shake that otherness, outsider feeling I get here – heck, I feel that same feeling in Detroit too, and really anywhere I go. Taking pictures makes anyone into an instant outsider, looking through the glass. I think that is an important grasping point when taking pictures. You don’t need to be traveling or be a foreigner to have an outside perspective, but certainly that point of view has to be turned on at some point and that is perhaps when traveling and living something different is a great tool and button to push. Because when you go back home you gotta “hit it while it is hot” before the illusion of familiarity seeps back into view and creates a visual stupor of sorts. So it is always nice to brainwash yourself into seeing things as if they were for the first time or take trips. Plus that is a good way to keep you sharp.

(James) Have you found differences in how you are regarded as a photographer in Mexico, versus in the US? Have these differences helped you or challenged you?

Well in Mexico I can make jokes with my accent in Spanish and pretend to be the stupid Gringo. Back home in Detroit I can be the funny weird white boy in the hood. Both give me some degree of advantages. In that way photography is definitely a hustle to get the shot.

My dad is a life insurance salesman and I learned from him how to put the foot in the door. It is very manipulative and a little deceitful. In Mexico you can always be the tourist, so maybe it is a bit easier here. But in the States people really like attention while Mexicans can be are generally little more shy and reserved. But of course there are always exceptions.

(Ben) In Mexico XXI, there seems to be a few story strands woven amongst a larger whole – represented by repeated motifs. One theme that jumped out at me was that of people sleeping – but I couldn’t help linking this in my mind to the issue of mortality in the context of Mexico’s current atmosphere of violence. The place that these people (usually men) choose to sleep are streets and sidewalks; they make the viewer question momentarily whether these are violent images or merely people sleeping. was this intentional?

Society out there is pretty destructive in really direct ways and we see this splattered on the headlines on a daily bases, with the drug wars and all the decapitated heads found in coolers, the kidnappings, the general apocalyptic, deathly smog, now influenza scares–chaotic world which is Mexico City. But, I think there are a lot of sleeping lions in everyday experiences in Mexico and where we can’t quite see that sensational bite.

I honestly don’t want to directly photograph the heads rolling per say, the violence— I am content to try to find the less direct pictures or the quiet-violence or the pictures that go up against the everyday saying of “no pasa nada,” “nothing ever happens.” It seems that Mexico is always on the verge of pulling itself from failure, yet eventually sinks again into a dark and unsure time, slumbering into a world that tries to make everything seem fine again.

There are hints of this in my picture of the football team lying down meditating before a game which approaches something like a massacre but isn’t and then there is the very real picture of a long trickle of blood flowing from under a sheet that covers a man, footprints still there from when he arrived to work that morning and not knowing he would fall that day from scaffolding while painting a sculpture of a giant horse.

I kept on thinking that day how unfair and absurd that was and I thought of his family and how overpowering and how unforgiving a city can become; of course that picture wouldn’t be the same if you could see the dead body.

(Raoul Gatepin) There’s an image in your Mexico XXI series of two women holding brooms. It’s an odd scenario; did you direct the subjects in this photograph?

I wanted to take picture of the maids that were cleaning the sidewalk outside a residence. I asked them if I could take a picture of their brooms. The said ok and they unpredictably faced each-other in a mirror-like way. They were both very shy. Fantastic, I thought, and I took the picture.

(Raoul) Do you rally against setting up portraits, or are you comfortable with it?

I am very comfortable approaching people to ask them if I can take their picture. A lot of the portraits I do are done very quickly, under a minute sometimes, I like working in a rush because I don’t get too familiar to what is in front of me and fail to react to odd special moments —ultimately, the environment, background and situation inform choices as well. Approaching someone is unpredictable – people exert their own particular gravity and move in their own universe. Unexpected things happen when you are in this space photographing with someone. So the setting up process is allowing for unexpected things to happen. When people ask me if I set something up in a picture, I tell them that I really just don’t have that kind of imagination.

If you have any further questions for Mark, or think you would like to expand upon any of his thoughts, please follow up in the comments. We’d like to thank Mark for his time and patience in answering our questions. As part of the PhotoEspana 2009 festival, Mark is showing his work at the Instituto Cervantes in Madrid. All photographs in this interview © Mark Powell