URBAN FRAGMENTS BOOK PREVIEW

MARCH 13, 2026

This week I would like to announce the impending arrival of my new book of photographs, “Urban Fragments”, which is a compendium of more than one hundred images created over fifty years as an explorer of cities around the world. This is my fifth book of images, and breaks my usual mold in that it is closer to a traditional book of images with limited commentary. I let the images speak for themselves, if you ignore some of the puns in their titles. I have always abhorred the appearance of “untitled” in a caption, as if that is not a title in and of itself. 

I will take the opportunity in many blog post this year to briefly comment on these images, their origins, their modification beyond the original capture, and why they have come to represent important examples of my particular photographic vision. I have chosen these images not as a “greatest hits” collection, but as examples of what I have come to call “Rich Photos” - those that I feel exemplify what I do best with a camera and a computer. It is okay if they do not follow the accepted imagery of their locations. In fact, because of the overwhelming amount of imagery assaulting our eyeballs these days, I consider it a victory if my attempts to capture a city do not conform to what is expected.

I have had the privilege to visit the nineteen cities that make up this collection. It took many years for me to realize that the initial sensory overload did not represent my best efforts. It was only when I became comfortable making the kind of images that I was used to making at home that I found that they seemed to come from me rather than the collective brain found on Instagram. 

The process of creating a photo book is a joyful collection of images, some of which I have even “lost” over the years, and the eventual trial of culling them so as to allow for a book that at least doesn’t cost me far more than I can reasonably charge for it on the open market. It was only when I explored the publishing world that I realized how delightful it was to just create images and sell them as a photo artist. In the short time I have written these five books, the entire market for photographic books has completely collapsed. The most popular titles, by world famous photographers, rarely sell even two thousand copies around the entire world. After production and sales that saddled most photographers with losses in the thousands of dollars, and untold numbers of unsold books costing them even more money renting storage lockers, most people abandoned the effort. These days when a “book” is offered for sale, it is almost always an “e-book”, which I admit is a category I really don’t even understand. A collection of photographs should occupy even a little space on a bookshelf rather than as just another forgotten download on a hard drive, in my humble opinion.

Only the advent of publishing on demand allowed authors like me to produce printed work that was close to a “real book” without paying for print runs that would never possibly be sold.   None of my customers has any idea that the short stack of books that I display at the market represents the totality of the existing copies of each work. I only need to print more when I am close to selling out a particular title. Even though I make far less selling a book than a print or even a coaster, it is undeniably a boost to the ego when someone graciously decides to purchase a collection of my photographs as a keepsake.

I use a company called “Blurb”, like an author’s recommendation of a book on the back cover of a paperback, as my printer of choice. Their particular combination of quality printing, customer service, and reasonable pricing works for me. I am sure that some of the other companies could also fit the bill, especially if you never could conceive of actually selling your work. Most of these outfits allow you to try out their software and products for very little cost, and then email coupons incessantly to reduce the real outlay once you eliminate that last typo in your trial copy. While making money by producing a photography book is another example of a “fool’s errand”, any of you could produce a coffee table book of your work that would outshine any photo album that you could produce in the past. It will elevate your work in the eyes of anyone who sees it - and they do not have to know that it is thew only copy that exists in the entire world.