Call for Book Chapters (2023)

We are working on a book proposal for an edited collection, with the provisional title – Personal Work: The Art of Self-Initiated Photographic Practice 

We will be aiming to send it to a publisher in the new academic year, which if successful, would have a publication year of 2025, or early 2026.

We are reaching out for book chapter proposals for the publication. 

Deadline for the proposals – 8th September 2023, one side of A4. 

Please read the draft book proposal below, and below that for more information about what we are asking for the proposal. 

Book description 

This edited collection explores the topic of using photography in the pursuit of producing projects which are self-motivated (and often self-funded) by the photographers, as opposed to work which is commissioned by a client. The ‘personal’ in the book title pertains to the personal motivation and connection between the photographer and the subject, rather than work which automatically contains an autobiographical slant, (though Personal Work can of course also be personal in both senses in the term).  

Photography is a peculiar discourse, with personal work often being the reason why a photographer is commissioned, and the two bodies of work often having no relationship either in content or aesthetics. This book examines this often taken for granted area of photographic practice, and charts how personal work is negotiated through different stages of photography education, and in the careers of professionals.  

The book contributors are all experienced photography educators and practitioners, and are well placed to bring the experiences and debates relating to personal work to the fore. Far from the assumption that the camera is a mere lens on the external world, this book argues that to photograph is to personalise, and photographers are as active in the pursuit of personal inner monologue as a novelist. In his book ‘Beauty in Photography’, Robert Adams states  

“Making photographs has to be, then, a personal matter; when it is not the results are not persuasive. Only the artist’s presence in the work can convince us that its affirmation resulted from and has been tested by human experience. Without the photographer in the photograph the view is no more compelling than the product of some anonymous record camera, a machine perhaps capable of happy accident but not of response to form.” (Adams, 1996: 15)  

This book is the first of its kind, to apply an in-depth analysis of the nature of personal work in photography, from the invention of the Daguerreotype in 1839, through to the present day in the age of social media and the promise of digital democratisation. 

Chapters 

Each chapter will be approximately *2000 – 5000 words, and can be written by individual authors or co-authored between 2 or 3 of you. You could choose from one of the themes below, or a suggest theme of your own. We do not expect you to write the chapters yet, we would first get the green light from the publisher, and work out a timeline for chapter delivery. (* We are encouraging chapters of relatively short lengths, to include more in the book, and also cope with waning attention spans!) 

Possible chapter themes are (but not limited to); 

  • The Self (personal work and negotiating the self) 
  • The Family (negotiating studies on your own doorstep) 
  • The Social (community, belonging, social life) 
  • In context (personal work in commercial practice, gallery curation, editorial, and audience consideration) 
  • The Process (the interior monologue and journey when pursuing personal work) 
  • The Impact (the personal cost of personal work on finances, relationships, time, sacrifices, obsession. (Maybe written anonymously) 
  • Personal as political (perusing personal work as a practice of activism and awareness) 
  • Self-initiated photography on social media platforms

Other possible themes include; 

  • Visualising vulnerability and intimacy  
  • Other people’s personal 
  • Health & wellbeing 
  • Everyday life 
  • Journey/walking 
  • Nature/environment 
  • Personal work in photography education 

This is a broad topic, so we are genuinely interested in how you interpret the brief, so please send your ideas even if you don’t think it fits with any of the above examples!

Chapter proposals 

If you are interested to write a chapter for this book, please send us a proposal on one side of A4, outlining the scope of your proposed chapter, the main arguments and points it will make, and what you would like the key takeaway of the chapter to be. Please give your chapter a title, and list whether it will be a single author or co-authored.  

Please send it to us by Friday 8th September 2023.  

Please do not include images in the proposal. 

Please send proposal to; 

personalworkphotobook@gmail.com 

Images 

Please note, this book will predominantly be a written book of essays, rather than a photobook. We will likely be allowed approximately 30 black & white images in the whole book, so please do not hinge your chapters on the inclusion of lots of images. Each chapter will likely be allowed approximately 1 maybe 2 images each. If you are using images that you do not own the copyright for, then copyright will need to be cleared before the final manuscript is submitted. We do not need further information about what those images will be at this stage, but you are welcome to mention it in the proposal if you already have a good idea of what they might be. 

We hope you are interested in this opportunity, and look forward to hearing from you.

Thank you, all the best, and have a great summer.

Professor Shawn Sobers – co-programme leader MA Photography, University of the West of England 
and
Jim Campbell – co-programme leader BA Photography, University of the West of England