Visiting Speaker - John Bulmer

 

We had a talk with visiting speaker John Bulmer, known for his colour photographs of the North of England in the 60s. He explains that “It didn’t occur to anyone to take the north of England in colour – that was considered a black and white subject”. He talked about his considerations when sequencing his book that is still in progress. The book is to show various shoots he has been commissioned to do, and will be split up into 8 different chapters to create a divide between projects and the opportunity to introduce each one. He said that he considered the sequencing of his images on a purely visual basis, which makes sense as it was a pioneering move for him to shoot the north in colour at the time, and therefore his book needs to reflect this, with a focus on colour on a visual basis. He also said that he wanted to keep the layout of each image on the page simple,  he had a dislike towards gatefolds in a book as he hated the loss of an image in the bend of a book. This was an insightful talk to be able to find out how another photographer thinks about how they sequence their images, and also interesting to hear his opinion on gatefolds;something which I am looking into in my book module research.