Inside the DIY Storytelling Workshop with Rob Hornstra

The DIY Storytelling weekend photography workshop with Rob Hornstra at Aperture.

Aperture News - June 5, 2014

Over the weekend of May 31 and June 1 at Aperture Foundation, photographer Rob Hornstra led a very informative workshop on self-publishing a photobook. Hornstra and Arnold van Bruggen are the creators of The Sochi Project, a “slow journalism” series focusing on the site of the 2014 Winter Olympics, and the authors of the 2013 Aperture book The Sochi Project: An Atlas of War and Tourism in the Caucasus.

At the workshop, participants learned about Hornstra’s process of financing, shooting, designing, promoting, and selling each of his self-published projects, allowing them to gain insight into the advantages and disadvantages of working as an independent book publisher. Students were also encouraged to share their own projects and were given advice on transforming their work into photobooks. The workshop ended with a discussion on the landscape of contemporary photobook publishing, which included some examples of successful and unique photobooks, and a look at the most prestigious photobook awards.