I took these photos at the same time as the ones in my post, Everybody Loves Michael, February 27, 2013. Mike is my older brother who is autistic, low functioning and nonverbal.
Sleepy Mike, with Injury
Happy Mike, with Injury
One of Mike’s Gestures after Injury
The black and white style of these photos is haunting – they give off an aura of being from the 50’s or 60’s. They draw you in – I would love to see these and the Feb 27th photos together in a longer photo essay. Thank you for sharing these.
Thanks very much Marcy. I published a photo essay in a British Journal called Visual Communications ~2007. I have a 100+ page photo memoir that I tried publishing based on my 1995 photo exhibition called Brotherly Love (1995). It was my first show & got reviewed in Art in America.
I do have a lot of photos to work with.
I really appreciate your feedback!
Best regards,
Jack
That’s fantastic! Do either the photo essay or photo exhibition have any online presence/record/excerpts? I’d love to see them. I think a photo memoir with these would be stunning.
I think the journal essay is behind a paywall. A lot of my photos are on this blog in individual posts (mainly the 2013 posts). I have a book dummy but worry if posting it would hurt chances of future publication. Do you have any suggestions regarding publishers? When I tried in the late 90s, there was interest but no takers.
That’s true, publishers do sometimes get funny about material that is up on blogs – considering it “already published” – etc. I don’t know of any publishers for nonfiction work of this type, although I will keep my eyes peeled now! But something like this might be worth putting together a Kickstarter campaign to publish it yourself. I went to a seminar about using Kickstarter to fund book publication and it seemed to be a particularly effective strategy when the book had an emotional or intensely interesting backstory. Also, publishers do sometimes step forward when they see a successful Kickstarter campaign – they basically see that a market for the book already exists.
Years ago I submitted to Jessica Kingsley Publishers, but they didn’t seem interested in ‘another autism memoir’. I think I have something a little different since there hasn’t been much written on autism in the 1950s-60s, plus I was thinking of including some of my paintings as an epilog – not in the original draft. I did get an offer last year from a firm in the UK, but the terms didn’t seem favorable. What do you think of posting a draft book proposal on the blog? Bad idea??
Thank you so much for your support, Marcy.
best,
Jack
I don’t think that would be a bad idea – you could solicit feedback and see if others know of the right publisher. But I promised I’d keep my eyes peeled and then today I found and bought a book I think might come in handy for you (and for me and a few other folks I know too) – “Publish Your Photography Book” by Himes and Swanson. It has a lengthy list of publishers of photography books in the appendix as well as other informative passages. If you are interested, I’m happy to share the information.
Yes indeed. I am interested. As I may have mentioned, I sent out a book proposal years ago. I received interest, but no one who wanted to put up the money to publish. I have an idea to expand the original to include the fact that there hasn’t been much written about autistic adults or autism in the 1960s, plus the impact on my artistic life other than photography, including an epilog of some of my later portraits.
Thank you Marcy!
Jack
I haven’t forgotten about sending you information from the Publish Your Photobook – in fact, I took the book to work to use the scanner there after hours only to discover that our office scanner is broken! So, I will have to find another place to scan the appendices for you, thus it might take a few more days. Also, I’ve realized I don’t have an email address for you. If you go to Illustrated Poetry and use the Contact Me form, it will send me an email!
No hurry, Marcy. Thank you for thinking of me, though and look forward to seeing what you found out. Will use your contact form.
Thank you.
j
A really engaging set of photos. I agree with Marcy that a photo memoir would be a wonderful contribution to the current literature surrounding this disability.