Elinor Carucci & Alan Rapp : Publishing a Photographic Book

Last weekend’s workshop was packed with information about what goes in to getting your own photography book published. While I am very far from being ready to publish anything, I still took a handful of really great points out of it. This workshop was a good example of something that I never thought I’d be interested in, but still managed to learn a lot from.

Elinor Carucci is an Israeli born photographer, currently based in NYC. She told us an incredibly endearing story of how she went about publishing her first book. After getting her BFA in Jerusalem, she moved to the city with the intention of staying for 3 months in order to get a book published. She made a maquette, which is basically a mock-up book of what you envision for your work, and went around the city trying to get a meeting. After lots of work, she met Alan Rapp of Chronicle Books. He believed in her project and eventually got everything into the works - 8 months later, the book came to fruition. Throughout the weekend, Elinor constantly reminded us that she just needed one person to believe in her (= Alan). The two of them were a perfect balance of technical, professional advice and the heartfelt, emotional journey.

Elinor has been exhibited around the world from NYC to Israel, London to Prague. She is currently living in NYC and teaching at the School of Visual Arts. Her first book, Closer, is a collection of intimate photographs of her and her family in the most honest, emotional way. After her Saturday night lecture, the other interns and I all agreed that her raw honesty is really appreciated. Her photographs prove that she is open about everything that happens in her life. When asked “how far is too far?” she responded saying for her nothing is too far. If it is real, how can it be too much?




A lot of the workshop was spent going over very specific questions about publishing. This group was a little more advanced and wanted to know more detailed answers than broad questions. One of the more interesting parts to me was when Alan went over the different parts involved in the proposal to a publisher. In order to propose your idea, you need to know a lot about the business and competition behind your project. It seemed to me as though proposing your idea to a publisher is a similar act to how the publisher will sell your book to the public. Alan has more than 15 years of experience in publishing and has worked with a number of well-known photographers.


We spent part of both days giving everyone a chance to show their work and get specific advice on what might be a good next step. It was really interesting to compare Elinor’s comments on the project concept and quality versus Alan’s advice on ideation for a book.





We also went over a lot of self-publishing options such as blurb, lulu, etc. Alan brought along a lot of examples so we were able to pass around each one and compare print quality, size, paper type, and more.


It was really great to meet Elinor, someone whose work I’ve admired for years, and Alan, someone with a lot of experience and valuable real world advice. They were very relaxed and excited about how well the workshop went. Even though I might have to hold on to this information for years until it is personally useful, it was still a great weekend.