RIT Photo Feature – School Starts Today
An Instant Photobook Celebrating the First Day of School
by Frank Cost
I was invited by Professor Angela Kelly to give a lecture to the first-year photo arts students during the fourth week of the fall semester. I had first met these students during their orientation at the end of August, and I took the opportunity to photograph the events of the day, including their introduction to the School of Photographic Arts and Sciences, and a field trip to the George Eastman Museum.
The topic of my lecture was “The Instant Photobook,” a project I started more than a decade ago, in 2006, with the publication of the first of many books published on the same day as the events depicted.
Knowing that I would be lecturing to the students soon after their arrival at RIT, I thought it would be fun to make an instant photobook about the day we first met: Thursday, August 23, 2018. After arriving home from our trip to the Eastman Museum, I selected approximately fifty images and, using a template I designed for my latest series of instant photobooks, created a book entitled School Starts Today. The book dimensions are 8.5 by 11 inches with 106 pages printed in black and white. Each image spans a two-page spread.
I uploaded the book to Amazon, and it was available for purchase the following day. I purchased copies of the book for all the students who would attend my lecture. My wholesale price for each copy is $2.15, and the book can be purchased by anyone from Amazon for $5.00.
The book captures the excitement and nervous anticipation of the day, and will hopefully become more precious to the students (and to all of us) as time goes by.
