Photographer Carol Golemboski has taken the idea of an electronic book - or any sort of electronic presentation of photography, farther than any I’ve yet seen. Her iPad app Psychometry combines images, text, video, interactive panoramas, extensive background on how the images were produced, a virtual darkroom experience and myriad other amazing details. It is like a book in that it’s a presentation of Carol’s work, but it’s unlike any book you’ve ever seen because it’s so comprehensive, engaging and filled with so many different ways of showing us the photographs and helping us interact with and learn about them.
Many photographers who grew up in my generation understood the monograph to be one of the solid culminations of a photographic project. In today’s world of publishing, we are confronted with an interesting yet challenging landscape where anyone can produce a print-on-demand book of their work on their own, even as hard copy books seem to be less popular than they were in the past. Electronic books have arrived, yet are often one-dimensional; a simple screen-rendering of the hardcover book that came before.
What’s even more interesting is that Carol’s photography is completely darkroom based. The Psychometry series of images is completely dependent on the darkroom process to make the images look and feel the way they do. What the app presents, then, is a completely digital-age way of looking at the old-world method of making photographs using silver-based materials. The app’s design takes advantage of the tactile nature of the images themselves, giving us a sense of a hand-made environment, even as we interact with it on our glossy-screened iPads. If you have an iPad, this app might be one of the most inspirational and engaging apps you can find.
Check it out here: Psychometry – Photographs by Carol Golemboski

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