The Photo Book Saga

I'm under a serious deadline, people.

The photo book's seriously delayed and the publisher's having a fit. I've got a deadline of having to have everything done by March 31st. My editor – sort of like my case manager – told me last week that the version of Chapter 2 I had previously submitted to her had veered totally in the wrong direction – and I agreed with her after she explained why. I had gone way too deep into photo history and kind of academic esoterica.

But the one problem is that she hadn't actually seen the pictures that went with the translation file she had received from my assistant; it only held the text translation sans pictures. So a lot of the explanative power of the pictures is lost there. She actually saw the pictures for the first time with me last weekend during our meeting.

So, I totally reworked two new versions of chapters 1 and 2, cutting out and replacing a lot of the old chapters 2 and 3 with new stuff and rewriting a point into the whole thing, one that I made as an answer to one of the questions posed by Kim Ki Chan, the photographer I had interviewed in one section of that chapter. I think both chapters gel together now, so as I pound out new versions of chapters 3 and 4, the entire book will have an overall consistency, rather than look like a string of collected essays.

Lessons learned as I skirt the pit of having the number crunchers at the publishing house cancel the book contract while my book editor struggles to hold them at bay?

– Don't procrastinate.

– Write consistently.

– Old essays don't always fit together into a whole as well as you hope they will.

Anyway, dear readers, please take a look at these totally revamped, much more cohesive essays that are now standing ready to be translated by my people into Korean. Luckily for me, small errors in spelling and typos will get lost in translation.

Chapter 1 (revised)

Chapter 2 (revised)

Chapter 1 (original)

Chapter 2 (original)

Chapter 3 (original)

If you have some time to kill, please take a read of both and offer your comments. I'd really appreciate comments related to the overall flow of the pieces, if there is any repetitiveness (I have the sinking feeling that there is, but I am fast losing perspective and the ability to see the work as a bigger whole), as well as parts that may be too esoteric to understand. Also, are there parts of it that just don't work or are just plain boring?

This is where you, my faithful and appreciated readers, can be most helpful. Thanks in advance for the help.

Comments

[jeehyun]

Your work, or what I've read and seen of it, is very impressive. I'm a bit struck by your tone, though. Maybe because I hear from time to time (and from American liberals too) that it often does not pay to adopt a strident, accusatory tone--so maybe I'm projecting when I say this--but you sound a bit accuastory in the beginning of the first essay. I'm not finding fault with it, esp. if it is an intended effect, but I've personally found the rhetoric to frequently construct a monolithic audience, and thus, preempt the possiblity of a diversity in the audience. I acknowledge that a lot of writers do it, though, for the rhetorical force of it.

Your pictures reminded me of Nikki Lee. Probably just because of the contrast--Nikki Lee crossed the Pacific in 1994 to study in the U.S.
Does the fact that Korea saw a humongo disaster with this past winter's snowstorms change your views on the Korean perception of how dangerous snow can be?:)

Good luck with the book!