First of all I needed to figure out what kind of work should go in the book. I excluded my commercial work as well as my fashion editorials because I figured they are too brand-oriented. I wanted to work with pictures that have their own merit regardless of one's familiarity with a model or a brand.

I also wanted to produce an object that is very personal, even secret. In fact, that's what was my main struggle with for this book - make it too silent and it will go unnoticed, but make it too loud and it will defeat it's own purpose. I wanted an object that would entice a viewer, but only a certain kind of viewer - someone who likes little mysteries and "easter eggs" and who wants to go deeper below the surface. The reason for this decision was, I already had a big audience and what I wanted to do is to pick people within this audience who would love to play this little guessing game with me - because that's how my work would become memorable.

So I had 2 pieces of inspiration for the book's overall aesthetics, first is Pink Floyd's "Little black book with my poems in" and a second is a small secret treasure game I used to play with my mom as a child. We would find little treasures like flowers, pieces of glass, foil from candies and we would place those treasures in a hole and cover them with glass. Then we would cover it with sand or dirt and poke holes in it with our fingers - like that we will see fragments of our secret treasure hidden underground.

So that was my concept - secret, beautiful, fine-art pictures in a black book.

Next I needed to see the set of pictures itself, I picked them according to the brief I gave myself earlier - model-independent, brand-independent fine art pictures. I pulled 351 of then and started to pair them on the wall.

(to be continued): https://alionakuznetsova.com/photobook-tutorial-design-and-first-prototype/