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QUESTION/Request for Advice
Hi, I'm an artist who's been lurking on this site for a few years, but this is my first post. Not a photographer, but use photography in my artwork (what does THAT mean, you say...) It means that I am not really a very good photographer, but take images that I collage into my works on paper, artists books and installations and so on. You can view some of my work at www.whitecolumns.org in the artists registry under my name: Miranda Maher. My artist book distributor is www.printedmatter.org. They list their books by artist/author name as well.
I am in need of help with a project that is important to me, so I thought I would ask your advice -- really I'm asking about how to ask or if it's even worthwhile to ask for the help I need.
I am beginning a book on the atomic bombing of Nagasaki in 1945. It's an art book, not a history book. It basically involves page after page of fields of flowers, each flower with a number laid over it in Photoshop. The pages -- and numbered flowers -- will continue until the total casualties from the bombing are reached: 39,000. As the numbers get longer, more and more of the images will be obscured by the (white) numbers.
The nature of this work is a kind of quiet, contemplative tribute to the people who were lost. ...And usually overlooked because the 'emblem' of the bombings became Hiroshima (not only was it first, but the casualty count was higher). I make no political statements of any kind. Ultimately, I don't care about war strategy or whether it was justified or not. This is just one human being remembering and recognizing the loss of so many.
I have so far solved a variety of issues with this project. Some Photoshop script writers in England have kindly written me a program to automate the numbering to some degree -- saving me from certain carpel tunnel syndrome. This gift of their time and expertise is extremely generous. Now I'm addressing how to collect the 75-100 images of flower fields to be used.
I could set out to shoot the photographs all myself and make this a tribute from me personally. As an artist working 60 years after the incident in the culture that dropped the bomb, this has some poignancy to it. This would mean waiting until next Spring at least -- and travelling extensively (something that's difficult for me). But I have done many projects in the past that involved the participation of other people and I think it fundamentally changes a project in very good and interesting ways. This project is calling for that kind of open participation.
THIS IS MY QUESTION: As professional and/or serious photographers, how would you feel about participating? I should note that I will most likely make no money off the project, so there would be no payment, but each participant would be given credit in a special section of the book. This would probably be in a list of participant names and their city/countries. So basically, even though you'd get credit, you'd get no money and your image would be tampered with -- even to the point of being unrecognizable, but it would be in the service of a well-intentioned, moving project.
There is also the issue that these types of broad 'field' images are not very popular, so most people don't take them much (they're really kind of boring). SECOND QUESTION: Do you have any such images in your files (maybe they would be 'rejected' images) or maybe nobody has them. I guess if this is the case, I could send out the invitation to shoot them for the project, but that is a bigger favor to ask. Or maybe if the file images were high enough resolution, people could submit the field portion of larger views...
This is my first public inquiry about getting photo-help for this project. Any thoughts or suggestions you might have will be most appreciated. And, of course, let me know if you'd be interested in participating.
Thank you very much,
Miranda Maher
miranda_maher@hotmail.com
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