When I showed both of my current dummy books to Rich and Yan, they said that the sequence is there, but I now need to focus more on the aesthetic and production of the book, i.e. whether the book will be cloth or leather bound, experiment with different paper types, binding and formats, to see which would be appropriate for this project and what would make it stand out (since Yan mentioned there are a lot of photobooks of this personal nature on the market).
Furthermore, to see how other practitioners have approached their photobooks, they recommended Paul Graham's Does Yellow Run Forever?, because, as mentioned by Yan, his and my images aren't anything special, but Graham's layout of the work transform the project into something unique. They also wanted me to look at Phillip Toledano's When I Was Six again, in particular his use of text and how just a small amount of it clears the narrative and elevates the project as a whole.
Therefore they stated that I should include text in the book, so as to clear the narrative of the book and ponder upon what the conceptual images do to the book; they also wanted the text to relate to the archive and current imagery, and how they represent the past, present and future
Though I felt some of the comments from Yan directed towards my work was a bit disheartening, I know she was saying it in order to push my work forward, and the comments I have received has given me a lot to consider, which in the end will hopefully turn my work into something I wouldn't have thought possible.
