Camera Obscura: Candid Camera

Comic book creator Warren Ellis has created a book of his own photography. Comic book publisher Larry Young has published it. Alasdair Watson asks, is AVAILABLE LIGHT a shameless big name cash-in or a bold creative experiment?
08 March 2002

I saw two basic reactions on-line when Warren Ellis and Larry Young announced AVAILABLE LIGHT. Reaction number one, from the more rabid and frightening Ellis fans, was the predictable over-the-top cheering and general praise that one expects from the worrying fanboys who make up most of this industry's readership when their favourite creator announces a new project.

Reaction two was the inevitable, mean-spirited, "This is a vanity project for Ellis, put out by his mate. They're just doing it to gouge more money out of the sad geeks over there."

Neither one of them was dreadfully credible. There was, in what I saw, an alarming absence of reasoned thought about this.

Say what you like about either or these men, or their on-line personas or the work they do. The fact remains that they make their living from this business. It seems reasonable to assume that they have at least some idea of what they're doing.

Which made me wonder. I confess to a mixed reaction to the announcement, somewhere between the two caricatures I've outlined above. It's an unexpected project, to say the least. I mean, it's not like Ellis is known as a photographer, and it's not the sort of thing one expects to see from a comic publishing company. I'm not about to judge the work until I've seen a copy (and one was not yet available at time of writing), but still, I'm left trying to figure this one out.

Who is the audience? I confess, I have a hard time believing that even the most rabid of Ellis fans won't at least be given pause by a price tag that's only a little shy of 25 dollars for 64 pages. This, in comics terms, does not seem like value for money. Especially when, in comics terms, it's as a writer that Ellis' name sells, not as a photographer. On the face of it, this seems chancy.

Add to that dicey prospect the fact that it does Larry Young's business no favours to be seen to be a publishing system for his mate's vanity projects (regardless of whether or not that's an accurate description), well, again, I have to wonder...

The other day I was rereading LIGHTS OUT FOR THE TERRITORY by Iain Sinclair. It's a chronicle of his series of walks across parts of London in the company of photographer Marc Atkins. I own the companion volume, too. LIQUID CITY is a book of Atkins' photographs taken during the same walks. I paid 17 quid for it, in a softcover edition. I would cheerfully have paid twice that for a hardcover. By comparison, the hardcover AVAILABLE LIGHT is cheap.

But yeah, there are a couple of key differences here. Most pertinently, Atkins is a professional photographer of some reputation, and I didn't have to order his book from my comic shop.

But then, this isn't just going to be available through comic stores, is it? It's an AiT/PlanetLar book, which means it'll be available from Amazon and bookstores all over the place. And however much Young's marketing may grate on me at times, I can't deny, he does the job in getting the word out and putting his books in the right hands.

No, I don't think comics readers are the target audience for this book. I think that Ellis and Young will be only too happy to have comic readers buy this book, but I suspect they're aiming for something else.

As I've already said, AVAILABLE LIGHT's price tag isn't unreasonable for a photography book. Go take a look at the prices in the photography section of your local bookshop if you need proof. OK, it's not by a big name photographer, but then, nor are all the photography books in my local bookshop. Frankly, some of them seem to be by people who shouldn't have been allowed near a camera in the first place. Ellis, even should he have turned in something below the (at least passable, and often better) standard of the photos on his Strange Machine website, would not look badly out of place.

Another thought occurs, while looking for a marketing hook for this book: This is, to my knowledge, the first book of photos taken entirely with an Eyemodule, the tiny camera add-on for Handspring's Visor series of palmtop computers. The camera takes small, slightly grainy, fixed-focus black-and-white photos. It has no flash, and works only with the available light - hence the title.

That in itself sounds like a selling point. It's a book of hi-tech lo-fi photography, the like of which has never been published before. That strikes me as the sort of book that will market itself. There's an already existing audience for this sort of thing. I know a couple of places that sell nothing but overpriced books on art and design, whose clientele would absolutely lap up something like this.

I caught Young on Ellis' online discussion forum the other week saying that he'd been talking to the people at Handspring about this book. He hasn't yet revealed if anything has come of those talks, but I'd be surprised if it hasn't.

No, the more I look at it, the more viable this starts to look as a moneymaking exercise.

But, I can hear the tedious ranting already: "Creators should be aspiring to works or genius, or they don't deserve the name! If you're not aspiring to Art in you work, and you're only out to make money, then you're an evil money-grubbing businessman!"

Dull, isn't it? Of course it's possible to put out good work motivated solely by business. This is about reputation, after all. If either of the men involved gets a reputation for continuously putting out shit, then they're going to suffer. It's in their interests to put out the best work possible.

And of course, this filthy moneymaking exercise might have an added bonus - it might bring a few people from the photography section of the bookshop over to the graphic novels section, where they'll be easily able to find a familiar name.

Of course, I'm letting them off awfully easily here. I'm assuming the work will be of publishable quality, and that the marketing strategy will be one with it's head on right. I could just as easily have assumed that this book is just another cynical money gouging exercise. And I still might, to be honest. It all depends on the quality of the book, when it gets here.

But I can hold off deciding until then.

Alasdair Watson is the author of the Eagle Award-nominated RUST.

Ninth Art endorses the principle of Ideological Freeware. The author permits distribution of this article by private individuals, on condition that the author and source of the article are clearly shown, no charge is made, and the whole article is reproduced intact, including this notice.