A unique collaboration.
This semester for RMIT’s Advanced Editing course saw a photobook collaboration that was unique to any that have previously been completed. The assessment seemed simple: I — as an editor — was to collaborate with at least one photography student to create a photobook revolving around the subject of the photographer’s choosing. It sounded interesting. However, there was one tiny aspect that no one could have possibly seen coming that would alter the project entirely: a worldwide pandemic.
I had the honour of collaborating with not just one, but two photography students this semester on their projects. It was an incredible experience and an absolute pleasure to watch their photobooks develop from an array of random images to a refined and strategically formatted photobook; the end product looked like something you would find in a bookshop.
My main photographer was Bo Pang. Bo was a Chinese international exchange student who had originally been visiting family in China when the Coronavirus outbreak initially occurred in January 2020. Bo’s story for his photobook started with an interesting (yet limited) range of photographs he had taken during his time in China. Australia had cancelled all flights coming from China and, as a result, Bo was forced to travel to Thailand where he would spend fourteen days in quarantine before he would be permitted to fly back to Australia to undertake his university study. Bo’s story made for an interesting collaboration and was unique in comparison to the other students in his class — Bo was the only international student completing the Photography course for the semester.
Bo’s original project was meant to focus on his friend who played badminton but, as the restrictions within Australia tightened and a country-wide lockdown was enforced, this was no longer possible for the project. Instead, Bo decided to focus the project on his life during isolation as his practical-based course transitioned online and the reality of living by himself became incredibly apparent.
I was first put into contact with Bo via email. The supervising teachers at RMIT had planned to organise a large photographer-editor meet-up, but the lockdown restrictions soon prevented unnecessary human interactions, so the face-to-face meeting was cancelled. Instead, I saw Bo’s face for the first time on a Skype call and quickly learnt about his incredibly difficult experience of returning to Australia.
Bo was a pleasure to work with as his cheery personality made the long Skype meetings (averaging two hours) more enjoyable. Bo would often send me large PDF files, usually twenty or more pages, full of photos and we would go through each page to figure out which photos could work and build the story that Bo wanted to communicate with his readers. We spent many hours filing through these pages of photos, brainstorming ideas of different content or potential location opportunities that Bo could visit within his limited access to the outside world.
English is not Bo’s first language and as such it meant that a lot of the text that accompanied his photos required a reasonable amount of rewriting, copyediting and proofreading (thank you for the practice, Bo!) This experience reinforced the importance of understanding my photographer’s strengths and weaknesses; I had to adapt throughout the project to ensure the published result was something we would both be proud of.
Many of our Skype meetings involved drawing silly pictures in a notebook to hold up to the camera for the other person to see. These drawings often displayed different layouts of what the page spread could look like or whether something could be reshot using an alternate camera angle or subject. They brought us great amusement and I have the paper copies to give me a laugh as a reminder of the process.
I finally had the pleasure of meeting Bo in person for the first time on 20 May 2020. The restrictions had eased enough that Bo was able to visit my house while standing on the street. He showed me his test print and we discussed text sizes, photo layouts and colour saturation in the cool autumn morning. It was an absolute honour to work with Bo, so thank you for allowing me to have this experience.
This project was a challenge, not just with the limitations of the worldwide pandemic, but by the fact that I had never worked to edit a story that’s main component was the photographs, not the text. I had to draw upon my previous understanding of photobook layouts and conduct research on how text should complement the photograph, not explain it. The photobook collaboration opened my eyes to a different form of publishing that I had never previously considered — I am curious to explore it further as it is simply fascinating!
This semester had many ups and downs, but the collaboration project with Bo was never something I found tedious or boring. The opportunity to expand upon my skillset while witnessing (through a photograph) someone else’s completely unique experience during the Coronavirus pandemic was life changing.
