Identity: A Photographic Meditation from the Iside Out

This recently published book project for Stewart Cohen was truly a labor of love. Stewart came to me 4 years ago and asked me if I’d be interested in designing a book concept he had been creating images for. The idea was to shoot interesting people throughout his extensive travels and ask them to write a brief note describing what life means to them. He shared some of the subjects photos and quotes with me, and that was it, I was sold. My reply? Let’s do it.

I created some preliminary concepts, title ideas, and did a first round of image picks. Presented to Stewart and he loved the directions. From that point, not much happened with it. Stewart and I got busy with projects, and pushed it to the side. In hindsight this was a good thing, because Stewart continued to shoot new subjects and we edited our picks over and over again. The result was a much better selection of subjects for the book.

Then, last summer Stewart called me and said, “let’s make it happen, let’s self-publish it”. So we revisited the design, finalized the subjects to be included and costed out the printing. Which, 4 years later was 50% lower than previous bids. That’s telling of how the printing industry has been radically effected by the recession.

And finally, a few weeks ago this baby was released at an exhibit and book signing event at Photos Do Not Bend Gallery in Dallas, TX—setting record attendance and book sales for a single show. Although this was one of the longest projects I can recollect, I’m glad to have saw it to its completion, and proud of the result.

Click here to see more Identity spreads. Or visit Dream Editions Press to order a copy of the book.