Gary Saretzky Photo Books
Kunsman, Eric T. Exposing Saints: A Roadmap to the Photography Saints in the United States by Eric T. Kunsman.
Kunsman, Eric T. Exposing Saints: A Roadmap to the Photography Saints in the United States by Eric T. Kunsman.
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Booksmart Studio, 2004. #98 in an edition of 1,500 (although it is likely that far fewer copies were produced). Oblong cloth bound artist's book, 42 pages, clothbound, with maps and fold-out two page panoramic black-and-white landscape photographs. [Eric Kunsman, owner of Booksmart Studio, a custom printing firm in Rochester, New York, has taught photography at Mercer County Community College, New Jersey, the Rochester Institute of Technology, and other institutions. He has exhibited widely throughout the U.S. According to Kunsman, "This book was partly inspired by my students from the Southwest Photography Workshop held in the summer of 2004."] Summary:
Exposing Saints: A Roadmap to the Photography Saints in the United States (published in December 2004 by Booksmart Studio) is a playful, satiric artist's book and narrative concept conceived by photographer, educator, and publisher Eric T. Kunsman. Uniquely constructed to mirror the physical size and format of a traditional highway roadmap, the publication blends "photo-geek" humor with historical photographic terminology, functioning as a whimsical survival guide that fits easily inside a photographer's camera bag.
Core Themes and Content
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RIT Photo Humor and Creative Origins: The book's concept was sparked during a 2004 academic expedition to the American Southwest that Kunsman took with his Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT) students and fellow faculty. Inspired by the spiritual, expansive qualities of the desert landscape and the amusingly desperate moments that led his students to "pray to the saints" for good shots, Kunsman translated the experience into an exploration of our impulse to master the natural elements through photography.
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The Pantheon of Photography Saints: The core narrative introduces a fictional pantheon of "Photographic Saints," each serving as a direct reflection and personification of a particular historical photographic process. The text playfully tracks the medium's evolution, pairing specific saints with distinct eras ranging from early 19th-century chemical chemistry to modern digital workflows.
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An Interactive, Functional Roadmap: Structurally innovative, the volume uses specialized hybrid printing—offset lithography on one side of the sheet and inkjet on the other. As readers flip through the pages, they are presented with specific roadmaps that dictate appropriate camera settings, humorously showing the recommended -stops for each geographic location. As the map progresses toward the bright, harsh lighting of the Southwest, the suggested -stops get progressively smaller to demand a greater depth-of-field.
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Visual Devotion and Photographed Prayers: To further lean into the spiritual satire, the pages are engineered so the viewer can physically fold up individual maps to reveal custom-written "prayers." These tongue-in-cheek invocations are designed for real-world photographers to recite in the field, helping them symbolically harness the specific technical powers of whichever Photographic Saint is required to save their exposure at that exact moment.
By transforming technical camera mechanics and darkroom history into a lighthearted spiritual lexicon, Exposing Saintsstands as an inventive, interactive piece of photographic bookmaking that brilliantly satirizes the obsessive anxieties and superstitious rituals of the dedicated photographer.
Eric T. Kunsman is an acclaimed American contemporary photographer, digital printmaster, and academic educator based in Rochester, New York. He serves as an Assistant Professor in the Visual Communications Studies Department at the National Technical Institute for the Deaf (NTID) at the Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT), while also operating Booksmart Studio, a fine art digital printing and publishing house he founded in 2005. Holding an MFA in Electronic Media from the University of the Arts in Philadelphia, Kunsman’s photographic practice elegantly bridges sociological documentation and conceptual art. He is best known for his deeply researched, long-term visual essays that explore cultural erasure, societal misconceptions, and the evolution of technology, such as his celebrated project Felicific Calculus, which documents the lingering presence and socioeconomic context of public payphones across the United States. His work has been exhibited internationally, held in numerous permanent museum collections, and featured in prominent art publications, cementing his reputation as both a vital voice in contemporary documentary photography and a master craftsman of the photographic print.
