TAMSIN
GREEN

Giorgia Lenzi: In 2021 you created manual.editions, an independent platform making environmentally conscious handmade photobooks. Could you tell us about the start of this project and when you first became interested in applying sustainability to your practice? I also wonder if you currently get a general sense of serious environmental awareness in the publishing world…

Tamsin Green: Handmaking anything brings you into very close contact with materials and processes. It makes you very aware of waste and how easy it is to unmake something. Quite naturally I began to think about where the materials were coming from and how I could design books to minimise waste. Through this research and experimentation I began connecting with other book makers who were searching for sustainable approaches. In 2021 these connections grew into the Sustainable Photobook Publishing (SPP) network which I now host through manual.editions. This year we started sharing case studies on our website to showcase how photographers, designers and publishers are thinking through the making of their books. What are they learning, what are the challenges, would they do anything differently next time? Collectively these case studies are starting to piece together an interesting picture of where we are. In this way manual.editions is both a home for my own books and a reference resource for others to use when developing their own environmentally conscious approach.

GL: In your efforts to minimise waste, from avoiding adhesives and reusing paper off-cuts, to printing locally and making the object easily recyclable, there are many steps to consider in the process of ecological book making. What are the challenges or obstacles you still find in pursuing sustainable publishing?

TG: There is a lot that can be done to design out waste and to creatively reuse it. The area that I find most problematic is the sourcing of materials, and in particular paper. There is little transparency around where materials come from and how they are made. A paper ‘made in’ Europe can be made from wood pulp that has travelled all the way from South America, or a paper ‘made from’ Post Consumer Waste (PCW) is actually 80% virgin wood pulp, and only 20% PCW. Often this level of information is not readily available and you have to request technical data sheets from the paper supplier to gather more data. There are carbon calculators and the Environmental Paper Network (EPN) has a great database for comparing papers. But I wish for greater transparency within the supply chain to enable book makers to make more informed choices.

GL: In your recent exhibition Scale and Substance, you showed books on the walls of the gallery space, deconstructing them and leaving them exposed, inviting the viewer to handle the object and participate in its modification. Also, in the book that accompanied the exhibition were included two manuals with instructions on how to make an open spine book and how to disassemble the book and re-use it as a wall-mounted object. It seems that you create a great space for practical interactions of the viewer with your work, I was wondering if you could share your thoughts on this encouraged participation.

TG: Books are made to be touched. They are objects that require a reader to activate them and bring them to life. The first deconstructed book was shown at a group show at the photography festival FORMAT21 in Derby. The idea was to reuse the printers test print of the book to create a new book form that could be viewed by one person or multiple people simultaneously in a space. The work was exhibited for a second time at the group show SELECT/21 at Photofusion Gallery in London. This installation was incredibly interesting because the space had a very different environment with direct lighting, air conditioning and higher humidity. When the same work was installed there it came to life with the curling paper pages creating long dancing shadows. When it came to my solo show at Photofusion I was excited to work again with this space and to encourage interaction both with the environment of the gallery and the visitors to the space. 

GL: It’s very interesting to me how you question the traditional photobook, placing it on the wall or deconstructing it, and how you explore this platform and interact with materials in a playful, experimental way. How do you think the limit of the photobook can be pushed further and redefined in the future?

TG: There is an obsession in the photography world that things must be archival and last forever. This leads to limiting handling and necessitating the using of gloves. This goes for photographic prints as well as photobooks. But paper by its nature marks, it wrinkles, and humans by their nature want to touch things. By treating photography on paper as something to be kept pristine we both deny the paper its paperness and the viewer the joy of touch. Perhaps paper isn’t the right material if something does need to last forever? 

For my recent exhibition, Scale & Substance, in addition to deconstructed books and maquettes I also showed large scale photographs printed on fabric. These prints were made by Metro Imaging in London, using a UV curing process for the ink which makes them waterproof and highly durable. I sourced the cotton fabric from the bookbinding manufacturer and supplier, J.Hewit & Sons. The prints can be rolled up into cardboard tubes for transportation and storage, and any creases can be ironed out for installation.

GL: You shared that you mostly think about photographic representation in black and white, influenced by your early studies in architecture and making pencil drawings. Do you think this background had an impact on other aspects of your photographic process, like your interest in the landscape and the way you approach it?

TG: The pencil drawings that I made before architecture were very abstract studies of natural forms. They were about looking closely at texture, tone, structure. Some of these drawings hang on the wall in my kitchen and when I look at them now they are not dissimilar to some of the photographs in the last two bodies of photographic work. And in this way they also relate to one of the key ideas that I explored in ‘this is how the earth must see itself’ around the ambiguity between the mediums of drawing and photography. In this body of work I paired my own photographic archive with archival drawings made by the Ordnance Survey team when they were surveying the South Coast of England. This was a play on how map making has developed from drawings created in the landscape to abstract graphic representations of the land now drawn from satellite photographs. When these two archives are paired it encourages a conscious looking at the images, although in this context I’m not sure that deciphering the medium is important.

GL: Both your photography projects this is how the earth must see itself and born of the purest parents, which include mapping natural spaces and objects, both the editions you make, binding each book by hand, made me think of a reflective or meditative process, a way to engage for long with the physical object. Could you tell us more about your creative approach?

TG: Thank you for picking up on this. There is a meditative aspect to both the making of my work in the landscape and the making of the books. The projects often involve repetitive walks, and walking itself is a repetitive action. When book making I have been known to fold paper for 15 hours straight. Through repetitive action we can reach a meditative state. Both with walking and making books I often lose all sense of time and become completely focused on the present action. But within these activities there is also time for reflection and for your mind to wander. Although this is often when the big mistakes happen, especially with bookmaking. Sections end up upside down or I trim the same edge of a book twice! 

GL: What is the process you prefer using in your photography projects from a more technical perspective?

TG: I have minimal tools and like the restrictions that this brings. I use one camera body and one fixed lens and no tripod: canon 5D MKII and a 28mm. I acquired these in 2011. In 2017 I damaged the lens beyond repair and replaced it with the same model. All of my work has been made using these tools, whether I’m photographing objects in the studio or out making work in the landscape. The fixed wide angle lens means I have to physically move to compose and create images, and this is an important part of my process. Being so familiar with the way this camera sees enables it to also become an extension of my own way of seeing. I know the distance I need to be from things and often how an image might look before looking through the viewfinder.

GL: You have shared that walking is an important resource in your artistic practice. I was wondering if you could tell us something about this outdoor research, how you approach exploration and if there is planning involved or rather an intuitive, more impulsive way of interacting with nature and the landscape.

TG: The projects all start with walking and observing things in the landscape that make me curious. Walking is both about inwards and outwards connections. It connects me to the ground on which I tread, and it connects me to my own thoughts in a way that only putting one foot in front of the other repeatedly can. Because of the wish to be able to spend time seeing and thinking I try to limit the amount of walking to no more than 7 hours a day and to avoid too much need to navigate. I might follow the coastline, or a river, or a mountain ridge. I plan the walks but leave space to be taken in unexpected directions or to change course when the weather and the conditions require it. 

GL: Would you like to tell us what is the next project or idea you are excited to research about?

TG: Last year I began making a body of work about map lichen, or to use their Linnaean latin name, Rhizocarpon Geographicum. I have been returning repeatedly to three sites in the UK to spend time with the lichen and to understand their territory. I’m actually responding to these questions from the Bothy Project in Inshriach, close to the third site in the Cairngorms in Scotland. The project involves walking and fieldwork much like the last two bodies of work, but with this new work I am also sleeping out in the landscape for up to a week at a time. Often with a tent, sometimes without. This extended time alone in places has really influenced the work and has led to extensive writing. An extract of this text was included in my last publication and was called ‘Walking out of sleep’. I’m still very much figuring out how the story will come together but I’m very excited to see where this will go as I continue to work with the material in book form over the coming months.