Sunday 4th November 2007

This evening I went to a talk. Pat and Rosemarie Keough, recently-ish returned from a couple of summers photographing the white continent of Antarctica, were giving a slide show of their haul of images.

The husband and wife team were an incredible sight to behold. Pat, the husband, looked quite the retired explorer; beige trousers pulled up high around his waist with a slightly darker beige shirt, both covered in more pockets and buttons than anyone could really claim to need. Rosemarie had gone for a quite different effect: a large, floaty floral skirt, complemented with a black top over which was draped what looked like a huge tea cosy, made of the same garish floral material as her skirt. It appears that sewing quilted body armour was well within her skill set together with Antarctic exploration.

The photographs were really quite spectacular and, aside from the occasional twee comments about their too-perfect love for one-another (they looked longingly into each others’ eyes as they described their first and last professional separation, attacking Antarctica from opposite sides in order to try to get some images of the notoriously elusive emperor penguins), their presentation of them was interesting. You might’ve even forgiven their eccentric dress sense had it not been for the bigger picture which emerged as the evening progressed.

The pictures have been published in a book—titled Antarctica, logically enough—but to say that does not really adequately explain what’s happened. You might expect an impressive coffee table tome, coming in at fifty quid but probably worth it as a Christmas present for your photographically- or naturalistically-inclined friend. You’d be totally wrong—wrong to a degree you’ve never really before imagined it was possible to be wrong.

These two were keen to sing the praises of their publication. They regarded it as the culmination of their lives’ work. Fair enough. They also regarded it as the greatest book ever created. In every respect. It’s won a few awards, leading them to call it ‘the most celebrated book ever published’. But the way in which it is so far ahead of other competing works, like the Bible or The Lord of the Rings, is how it’s made.

The book is bound with a variety of techniques which would no doubt bowl over any book-binding nerd. It has been described as ‘indestructible’. The pages are hand-sewn together by an artisan craftsperson with Irish linen thread, the covers contain quarter-inch-thick boards of wood…it continues: there’s a lot more to it than I, a mere book-binding novice, could understand. What truly epitomises the absurdity and opulence of the product is that it is bound in Indian goat leather. Leather-bound I could understand…going to the trouble of using two whole goats’ worth of skin from Indian goats…per book seems like total over-engineering, over-specified madness. It’s a book, for fuck’s sake, not an Indian goat leather suspension bridge. Would it fall apart if the goat leather were from some other country?

Each book comes in its own presentation case, which is cushioned with French flocked velvet lest the indestructible book within suffer a knock. The Keoughs were also dissatisfied with the range of lecterns available on the market for their prospective posh twat customers to sit this glorious ode to pomposity upon. Their solution, heavy-handed and over-resourced as ever? Employ a carpenter to create an exceptionally luxurious bespoke book stand perfectly specified to hold this humongous thing without collapsing in uncontrollable laughter at the absurdity of the thing placed upon it.

So, how much will a book of admittedly rather good photos printed on paper squeezed from Brazilian extra virgin bats’ ears by the Zanussi tribe in Guatemala set you back these days? Go on, guess. I dare you.

$4,500.

Now, I know the dollar’s weak at the moment, but that’s still well over two thousand of your hard-earned quid for a book of photos. I don’t really care if the fabric used in the lining was salvaged from the intestines of a dying order of monks. And, if you want the custom-built stand to present your 8.7kg of book on, that will set you back a further $2,500.

This publication is limited to a run of one thousand copies, presumably because the market niche of rich idiots who are strong enough to lift the damn thing is a narrow one.

I got to see these images courtesy of the Oxford University Exploration Club having invited the Keoughs, and I quite enjoyed looking at them. So, the question I will beg on behalf of the photo-enjoying public is this: why couldn’t they at least make their 1,000 mad copies and then a second-class book for us plebs? Why should their photographs be confined to an elite who can afford to drop over two grand for a goat-leather-bound monstrosity whose ‘weight is that of a two-year-old child’? I don’t care if ‘the fine-grained leather is rich and sensuous’. I just want to look at some fucking photos of the last continent which could truly be said to belong to all of mankind. It’s an ironic shame that the same can’t be said of the photographs.

The whole idea has turned me into a slavering socialist…almost. The trouble is, I’m a terrible perfectionist and I can almost see how I’d end up not settling for second best even if it meant that the result started to become unwieldy and impractical. It’s the attitude with which I make sandwiches, and if I let it apply to something so mundane as lunch, I can see how it could grow dangerously out of hand if I felt something was the culmination of my life’s work. I suppose the difference is that, once my sandwich weighed eight kilos and was bound in Indian goat leather, I might realise that it no longer fulfilled its purpose as a sandwich: book or sandwich is much easier to enjoy if it can be held whilst you consume it without the help of a $2,500 lectern.

The final proof that it hasn’t turned me, though, is what I think the greatest shame is: the cover embossing is a bit naff. They should’ve used a strong, sensible font like Goudy Old Style instead of that wavy crap thing they’ve got, and a nice, strong map of the white continent rather than that shitty stylised rocky outcrop. That’s the real reason I’m not parting with my two grand.

That, and the fact that they incorrectly refer to it as an object d’art in a fit of perfectionism-undermining spelling disappointment. And, of course, the fact that it’s the only, albeit indirect, way that I can protest against her tea-cosy-orientated fashion sense.

 

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