One of the many, many benefits to me of this blog has been what I would go so far as to call the ‘democracy’ of it: the fact that it stands open to feedback and Comment from you, its subscribers, and indeed from whomsoever. That has been very valuable. For instance, I had been assuming for years that the twenty-five illustrations would go into a couple of glossy tranches inside the book, but the majority of followers who responded said they preferred to see them as close as possible to the narrative that they illustrated.
This consensus was very fortunate for me, as I had been baulking at the cost of the glossy illustrations, tending myself to want the images ‘integrated’ with the words, but hesitating because it is still not common in biographies. There exists a belief that black and white images were first dropped into a continuous prose text by W.G. Sebald back in the 1990s (see The Rings of Saturn, Austerlitz, etc.). That model rather put me off, in fact, as Sebald’s images are often indistinct and unhelpfully surreal for non-fiction.
Two image print trials and the professional comments on them from three followers of the blog convinced me that the quality the printers could produce on the text paper would be excellent, so I decided to go ahead. Instantly, though, this raised another problem: HOW was I going to ‘integrate’ them into the text, to what extent was this a DESIGN issue, to what extent were we going to IMPROVE the given images, indeed beautify them?
To enlarge, click on this image and next
The more we looked at this challenge, the trickier it became. It’s a juggling act and the factors being juggled kept going round and round like clubs.
One has to recognise that any book is an exercise in design, irrespective of the power or otherwise of its verbal content. One wants to create a book that gives readers pleasure not only to read, but to look at and hold in their hands. The positioning of our images had to be very carefully chosen so as not actually to break the continuity, the size of them was very important (give them space to breathe on the page), and they had to be shown off to their most reader-friendly advantage. Thus one or two have been trimmed, e.g. masses of foliage cut back to concentrate on the human figure; all black edges that come from scanning have been removed; two have actually been rounded at their corners by us; those that are studio shots on rounded card have been cut to their real edges. We have used computer manipulation to get rid of blobs and enhance definition.
At the same time, I wanted to retain some of that feeling of discovered documents. This is not a biography of someone whose life was already known; the whole book is more of a process of first-time discovery. Thus many bald square images, like the one from George’s cartoon book above, have not been framed, but simply laid down in the text where their subjects occur. Similarly, even if it had been possible to remove a water stain over Kittie’s eye on a delightful photograph of her as a young girl, or lift off the heavy foxing on a studio photograph of Manya Ross, I would not have done it. Most outrageously of all, perhaps, we have left a gaping crack on an amateur photograph of George from 1901. I wanted some of these precious images to be as ‘in your face’ as I first experienced them in the attic where they had lain for forty years. My only regret now is that I have not used more than twenty-five of them and that they are rather unevenly scattered through the book.
I think at the end of the day the images in a biography have to remain subordinate to the writing. For that very reason, where a photograph in my biography is rotated by ninety degrees to fill a page, I have kept the running head on that page. It emphasises that the image is an adjunct to the story, even if it is an important one that we must try to display to its best advantage. The word does take precedence. I wanted the images to be as far as possible ‘synchronous’ with the words, with narrative/reading time.
For the finest balance between text and image that I know, buy Andrew Tatham’s A Group Photograph whilst stocks last! I am serious: it is now in its second edition and I doubt whether it will be republished. I would expect it to have sold out by the end of this commemorative year, as it is comparable to the ceramic poppies being sold in their thousands from the ‘Bloodswept Lands and Seas of Red’ installation. Tatham’s book will be a vital part of the permanent legacy of the centenary of World War 1; a book that you will return to again and again. Andrew is a writer and an artist. For me, the most beautiful combination of word, image, layout and colour is that celebrating Louis Arthur Klemantaski between pages 110 and 111. But every section on a soldier and his family is a work of art, and every ‘memorial window’ that Andrew has designed for them is a unique composition of image and subtle colour.
What a beautiful page. And a terrific cartoon. And a tantalising glimpse inside a long-awaited book. One cannot but hope that – after they have recovered from their present endeavours – Sams 1&2 may go on to publish other works to this meticulous and exquisite standard. I foresee many future approaches from authors…