Participants in this dense one-and-a-half-day course will create a personal series with an eye towards developing it into a possible book. They will bring photographs from which Fabienne Pavia will help them select images designed for the book form. The goals will be to lay the groundwork for a photographic narrative, define a framework and confirm the relationships, interactions or tensions between the images while integrating pauses and breaths.

This will be followed by a discussion of the ground rules governing book design: a set of structuring modules that shape the vision for the series. The focus will be format, beautiful pages and false pages, rhythm, blended or not, the place of the text, the importance of a title, etc. The decisions will then be quickly tested on a dummy book allowing them to validate some editorial choices and discriminatingly approach a self-publication or a contact with a publisher.

Fabienne Pavia will share her 20 years of experience as director of ÉDITIONS LE BEC EN L’AIR, which has published nearly 250 books.

Participants must bring:
A series of 80 photographs (at the most) and, if possible, a short presentation on paper (simple) and corresponding digital files in jpeg format.

FABIENNE PAVIA
Fabienne Pavia was a magazine journalist before turning to publishing, first as a writer and freelance editor for various houses. In 1999 she started Le Bec en l’air, a publishing company focusing on photography. For several years, she has taught photo publishing courses and workshops on a regularly basis and co-directed a literary festival in Marseille in which images play a key role.

Based in Marseille, Le Bec en l'air has published nearly 250 titles. The editorial line strikes a balance between image and text, photography and writing, contemporary layout and author’s photographs.

Over time, the catalogue has been enhanced with various kinds of photography that are nevertheless editorially cogent: photography as a tool to question the contemporary world, whether the concerns are documentary, aesthetic or private.

In 2015 Le Bec en l'air won the prix Nadar for Algérie, clos comme on ferme un livre ? by Bruno Boudjelal.

Le Bec en l'air publishes several festival catalogues, including Circulation(s) and ImageSingulières. In 2017 it published the catalogue of the national photography commission “La jeunesse en France” coordinated by the CNAP and CéTàVOIR.

->becair.com