Next week, Thursday the 28th November I’m doing an At Home With The Furries book event and talk at a new venue dedicated to the art of photobooks, The Photobook Cafe in Shoreditch, central London. It’s a great venue, set up by Lee, owner of Rapid Eye lab and printer. The event starts at 6pm and runs on to 9pm. I’ll be doing a short talk about my book and why I started the project. Definitely come along if you can, it should be a lot of fun. Godzuki, Bhavvels and Zepp, a wolf, rabbit and dragon respectively have said they’ll be there in character so if you’ve never met a furry before, now’s your chance. It’s a free event and you can RSVP here: Eventbrite. There will be postcards, signed books and prints available to purchase on the night. You can of course order books through my shop here.
It’s a bit of a throwback in time for me as my first job in London was literally around the corner in Scrutton Street. Way back in 1999, I was the assistant, co-ordinator, researcher and tea maker extraordinaire for a photo library called PYMCA and a magazine called Sleazenation, dedicated to youth culture of all kinds. So it’ll be lovely to be back in the area again as I have such great memories from my time working there.
In other news, last month saw At Home With The Furries take over Colwyn Bay Train Station as part of the Northern Eye Photo Festival. Arriving on the train and spotting the furries was a special moment and it got me thinking about the success of seeing the work in public, something I’d like to see more of. When the work is life size it takes on a different dimension. There were 15 pictures featured and it got a lot of great feedback.
I was also really pleased to meet one of the legends of photography, John Bulmer. I first came across his work in a book and exhibition called Young Meteors originally shown at the Museum of Media, TV and Film in Bradford in the 1990s. Colin Wilkinson, his publisher introduced us and we had a good chat about books, photography and film making. John was very complimentary about At Home With The Furries and then this happened..
While I was there in Colwyn Bay I gave a talk about crowdfunding photobooks, which filled the room. It was based around an earlier blog post I wrote, link here. I softened the first rule slightly and included lots of thoughts from other successful photobook crowdfunders. It got a great response and lots of questions afterwards.
Speaking generally about the Northern Eye Festival it was a wonderful experience attending talks by Tessa Bunney, Brian David Stevens, John Bulmer and Dan Wood to name a few. Meeting with and spending time with fellow photographers was a joy. Thanks to the curator, Paul Sampson for organising the whole event.
In other news, launching on December 5th at Photofusion is their annual Salon exhibition, an image from my new project, Mersonas about mermaids and mermen will be on display.
Become a valued supporter of mine on Patreon as I develop new work and post about self-publishing photobooks and crowdfunding: https://www.patreon.com/broadbentius
To get hold of a copy of my book At Home With The Furries, visit my shop here
https://www.tombroadbent.com/booksandprints
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