The Birth of “Learn”—A Knowledge & Skill-sharing Space at The Phooks
Learn at The Phooks offers workshops, masterclasses and courses on photobook & zine editing, design and publsihing.
In my previous post, I was reflecting on the online photobook meetups initiative that started late last year.
While these exciting talks were the subject of interest for the community and a source of inspiration for me, they also generated quite a lot of anxiety.
While spontaneous events bring a lot of excitement and feeling of the community around, this does not work in the long run. I wasn’t able to spend enough time both preparing for them, promoting and getting the records online afterward due to a huge workload and some technical issues.
— People prefer to plan their weeks and days ahead.
— I prefer to sleep sometimes.
— Quality beats quantity.
— Any events should be carefully planned in advance.
Another important outtake was about the high interest of our engaged community towards learning. Many asked for more in-depth presentations about particular books and projects answering the main question “How all these were made?”
The main idea behind The Phooks is about helping self-publishing artists to promote and sell their books and zines. So, why not we go a bit wider and help those who are just planning their first publication, but have no idea where to start?
This was the birth of Learn
As I always strive to quickly test new big things before committing to them, I started it by finding a good, known-to-me partner who has a prepared and tested workshop program and some experience in running them online.
Luckily, Zoopark Publishing guys were promoting a series of their zine-making workshops with an ideal program: creating a photo zine in three weeks and six sessions, from scratch to a print-ready zine project.
The program was balanced between creative curation, technical skills of working with InDesign, collective discussion and feedback sessions. Looks like the best way for students to introduce themselves to self-publishing.
Since then we’ve successfully hosted a bunch of workshops by Zoopark, and arranged a quite spontaneous open call with a live zine-making session which ended up with a collective photozine Global Zoo featuring works by more than 30 artists from dozens of countries.
Right now we have a couple of photobook publishing workshops by Zoopark starting next week.
Expanding the program
I see Learn as a carefully curated space offering a set of regular workshops by three to five permanent partners. My intention is to cover all the key aspects of publishing workflow and a bit beyond: to provide more general curation and critic for artists who didn’t realize yet how to develop their photography or visual art projects.
For this reason, we have recently started working with dienacht Publishing as our second partner. They have a huge experience running publishing and photography workshops across all the continents.
Here you can see our open free talk with Calin & Yana Kruse covering the story of this publishing house, their attitude to publishing and some exciting examples of books they create:
While Zoopark guys are helping students to dive into design aspects and creative work, dienacht programs are focused on the conceptual side of developing photography projects, not necessarily about photobooks.
Their first event, Online Group Portfolio Review, was held last Saturday. Here’s what Shannon Randol, Curator at Baldwin Photographic Gallery, Assistant Professor of Photography at Middle Tennessee State University (MTSU) says afterward the review:
My experience with the online portfolio review offered through The Phooks and dienacht was very valuable.
As someone who is working on their first large project, having new observations is key. The feedback that Calin and Yana offered allowed me to solidify previous perspectives on the series while also considering others.
I would recommend that anyone needing feedback on their work, should consider participating in future reviews.
Next Saturday, March 27, we start a two-session Editing & Sequencing masterclass — check it out here.
https://www.instagram.com/p/CMkZ6fpnhaO/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link
We’re calling for more tutors and students
Join us to run your photobook publishing workshops or a webinar and earn by sharing your knowledge.
We will get everything arranged, promote it intensively across our media channels, help to design a program and to run the events (including the necessary technical infrastructure). Just send us an email or use a chat in the bottom right.
The topics we would like to cover:
- Book printing: to cover all the aspects and insights about the printing stage. Experienced printers and/or studios.
- Bookbinding: types, methods. Theory and practical experience.
- Photobook project promotion and distribution.
- Working with publishers.
We’d strive to build a strong community around photobooks and believe that the key of it is in building closer connections, sharing the experience and skills.
We’ll get back to our online book talks too, but a little bit later. Stay tuned!
Max & The Phooks
