ONLINE COURSE
Make Your Own Handmade, Hardcover Photobook
If you’re thinking about creating a photobook, making the physical book by hand can be super-satisfying and can add another level of creativity to your project. In this class, you’ll learn how to make three types of hardcover bindings that are suitable for both short and longer photo projects — a hardcover pamphlet, a flat-backed case binding, and a hardcover concertina album. If you don’t know what these are, don’t worry, you’ll find out in this hands-on class!
We’ll discuss how images work in a book, as well as strategies for including content that is both printed directly onto the page or tipped onto the page after binding. There will be homework prompts and group feedback and we’ll also look at examples of photobooks using these different structures.
Elizabeth Castaldo is an artist, printmaker, and bookbinder based in Peekskill, NY and New York City. She has completed residencies at the Center for Book Arts (New York City) and Printmaker’s Open Forum (Oxford, PA). Castaldo received her MFA from Savannah College of Art and Design (SCAD) Atlanta where she was a Dean’s Fellow in Printmaking, and her BFA from the School of Visual Arts. In November 2020, her solo exhibition, Proximate Magic, was presented at Saint Joseph’s College in Patchogue, NY. Her work was included in the traveling exhibition, Freed Formats: The Book Reconsidered and she organized the exchange portfolio Earth/Mother for the SGCI 2020 conference “Puertografico.” She teaches printmaking and book arts at Parsons School of Design, Nassau Community College, and the Center for Book Arts. Her work is held in many private and institutional collections including SCAD, Yale University, The University of Alberta, and Carnegie Melon University.
Elizabeth teaches hand-made books for StrudelmediaLive.