A tour ends. The photos stay on someone’s phone or on a hard drive. The posters roll up in a corner. The programme gets lost. In five years, the tour that defined a band will exist in the memories of those who were there — and nowhere else.
A book changes that. It doesn’t have to be a two-hundred-page hardcover volume. It can be a forty-page photobook, a tour journal, an editorial compilation. But when it exists, the tour stops being a memory and becomes an object. Something that can be passed around, read, given as a gift, sold, collected.
Who this project is for
Bands on tour. The classic. The tour book you give to the musicians, the crew, the collaborators. The photographic record of months on the road, the moments backstage, the places, the people. A treasure for everyone who lived that experience, and a document for everyone who wasn’t there.
Musicians recording an important album. Recording an album is not an invisible process. Studio hours, musical decisions, session photographs. A photobook of the album’s creation process is a complement to the record itself that many fans value more than any merchandise.
Performing arts companies. The documentation of a production — rehearsals, tours, the moments between shows — is invaluable material for the company’s archive and for programmers. A well-made production book for an important piece is both an archive and a professional presentation tool.
Visual artists. The exhibition ends but the catalogue remains. A well-made catalogue is the piece the visitor takes home, the reference they’ll consult, the document that will appear in bibliographies if the work matters.
Photographers. The photobook is the natural presentation format for a photographer who wants to show a body of work as a coherent series.
Photography: the foundation of everything
A good editorial book begins with the photographs. You don’t need a celebrity photographer for studio sessions or tour coverage — but you do need someone with a vision, who knows how to be present at key moments without interfering.
Recommendation for tours: hiring a tour photographer for the main performances is different from hiring one for the entire journey. The first gives you quality concert photos. The second gives you the tour diary — the hours in the van, the dressing room, the conversation between songs. Both things together make a book.
Process photography is different from result photography. A well-photographed studio session is not “photos of people playing instruments”. It’s the tension of getting the take right, the exhaustion of the long night, the joy of a moment that works. Ask the photographer to have freedom — the best moments are never the posed ones.
From material to book: the editorial process
1. Material selection. A two-month tour can generate ten thousand photographs. The editorial work begins by reducing to one hundred or one hundred and fifty, eliminating redundancy and choosing the ones that tell the story.
2. Sequence and narrative. A photobook is not a chronologically ordered album. It has a narrative arc: a beginning, a point of tension, a resolution. The sequence of photos builds a reading experience. This is where editorial work makes the difference.
3. Texts. Optional, but when they work they add enormously. It can be a personal diary (first person, very effective), literary captions, or an introduction from someone who lived the experience from outside. Avoid descriptive, flat texts (“the first concert was in Barcelona…”). The texts should earn their place.
4. Design and layout. Black and white cuts differently than colour. Bleed changes the energy of each page. Typography communicates the aesthetic of the project. Design is not decoration — it’s the tone of the visual narrative.
5. Paper and print. Decisions here are very relevant to the final result. Matte vs glossy paper, weight, binding type (sewn, glued, luxury spiral). Working with a local printer who can show you physical samples is essential at this stage — photos of paper swatches on screen bear no resemblance to the actual result.
Possible formats
A4 landscape photobook. The classic format, the one that lets images breathe. Between 48 and 96 pages. Sewn or glued binding. Soft or hard cover.
Tour journal / zine. Smaller format (A5, DL), lighter paper, much lower production cost. It self-finances easily and is cheap enough to sell or give away at concerts. It doesn’t aim to be a collector’s object but is very effective as a tour memento.
Exhibition catalogue. Variable format. What matters is the quality of the artwork reproduction — it requires quality printing and a paper that does justice to the colours of the original work.
Numbered limited edition. For projects where rarity has value (vinyl records in special editions, memorable performances, unique exhibitions). A print run of 100 or 200 numbered and signed copies is a powerful merchandise asset.
Where to start
Define the objective. A book to give to the crew and close fans is different from a catalogue for programmers and galleries, which is different from a commercial edition. The format, budget, and process change completely depending on what the book is for.
Hire the photographer from the beginning. Most failed photobooks fail because the source material isn’t strong enough. If you know you want to make a book, plan the photography from the start of the project — not after everything has ended.
Talk to a printer before designing. The design must adapt to the possibilities of printing, not the other way around. A conversation with the printer at the start saves revisions at the end.
Ressona works with Pocallum for tour and process photography, and with 112Books for the editing and printing of books and catalogues for artists. Get in touch.
See also: