ALLAND, Mitch - Frog Leaping

PRICE ON REQUEST!

Flip-through video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W9veELxluqU
Limited to 500 copies

"Some of pictures in 'Frog Leaping' were already published online in 2016.
In the comments to his photographic essay 'Alone in Bangkok' (Burnmagazine, https://www.burnmagazine.org/essays/2016/05/mich-alland-alone-in-bangkok /), ALLAND wrote about his idea to make a book.
Now, three years later, with the idea making a high-quality photo book out of the earlier and subsequent images and to self-publish, 'Frog Leaping' has appeared. This book is formally inspired by haiku, a traditional Japanese poetry form.

“’Frog Leaping' is a photo book that prompts the viewer to be attentive to the photographs and the feeling arising when they are viewed.
The effects of opening the many foldouts, in layered sections, are just great, sparking new views, insights, connections, and emotions.
With 'Frog Leaping' Mitch ALLAND together with Sybren (SYB) KUIPER has done a superb jobb, which is also perfectly produced. Unfortunately the pictures you can see online are limited, you must see the physical book, it's amazing!" (© Richard G. SPORLEDER)" (© Richard G. SPORLEDER)

”The point of departure for the book was the thought that photographs speak the same way as haiku poems: a haiku has an image or two but no explicatory information; the effect, the emotion, the meaning come from the image itself: like the Zen feeling you get from Matsuo Basho's 'frog haiku', written in 1686, the most famous haiku in the world, and one that every Japanese schoolchild learns.

Then, I had some 100-odd images that, as a group, has some 40 different themes, some of which were leitmotifs running throughout the sequence. In these photos I also had a variety of genres: nudes, still-lifes, landscapes, portraits: this was intentional — I wanted this diversification, and wanted street-photography to be only one of the elements of the book.

Now, how to sequence this? How to organize this in a book? I felt that too many photo books today are obsessed with trying to 'tell a story' — an effort that can easily result in a boring book. I wanted a sequence that worked poetically, like Ralph GIBSON's first three books; in fact, also like Robert FRANK's 'The Americans', and also like some of the books of Daido MORIYAMA.

To me, that meant sequencing by gut-feel, letting the themes, threads, leitmotifs run through the book in a nonlinear way, with the layering of images that Sybren (SYB) KUIPER achieved brilliantly through his sequencing and design. I found that SYB and I were on the same wavelength throughout the editing process, so that many of the themes worked in the same way as the similar sequences that I had originally, but increased in impact through SYB’s layered design and by his initiative to cut 30% of the images: indeed, it’s virtually impossible for a photographer to edit out that much (in an effective way) from his own work in a project. But such cuts, I think, always strengthen the impact of the final book.

So now, it's up to the reader to look and form his or her own connections in the book — which I feel encourages, and needs, continuing exploration and re-exploration, like reading a book of haiku, or a book of modern poetry." (© Mitch ALLAND)

About the photographer, Mieczysław 'Mitch' ALLAND:
Mitch ALLAND spends his time as a nomad, moving annually between Thailand, France and the United States.