Fuck the Midtones: How to Make a Book with Steidl

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Fuck the Midtones: How to Make a Book with Steidl

I waited for a very long time for the paperback of The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest to come out. Literally years. I’m not cheap, I just think that shiny silver foil cover they went with for the hardcover is horrendous. Seriously, who approved that? If you look at it head on, it has the effect of looking into one of those shoddy rest stop mirrors. You know the ones I mean? Fine for smoothing fly-aways but you wouldn’t want to rely on them for tasks requiring precision; applying liquid eyeliner for example. Unfortunately for me, someone is stuck on that design like dirty bubble gum on the bottom of a shoe. I ran out on the PB drop date to pick up a copy hoping they’d gone with something in the neighborhood of the previous two entries in the series. Nope. Hello again, my ugly silver friend.

In this era of proliferating creative commons cribbed jackets and business books that look like the evil spawn of PowerPoint and Photoshop, the work that Steidl is doing seems utterly holy. Gereon Wetzel and Joerg Adolph’s film about Gerhard Steidl’s church of print, How to Make a Book with Steidl, is equally marvelous. I caught it at HotDocs last year but keep an eye out for it on DVD soon. Steidl works with Ed Ruscha, Robert Frank, Jeff Wall, Joel Sternfeld, Karl Lagerfeld…the list goes on. The film is a rare insight into the process of collaboration, the philosophical tête-à-tête, between publisher and artist. It’s an ode to fine craftsmanship and book porn of the highest order.