Local Heroes is a photography book project about the men and women of America’s volunteer fire departments. The book is meant to celebrate what we see as a group of individuals who protect our towns and cities, risk their lives and give up their free time to watch over our respective communities.
The project began as an idea between an award-winning professional photographer, Ian Spanier, www.ianspanier.com, and Florian Bachleda, www.fbdesign.com, a highly regarded veteran of the design community, and a much-celebrated award-winning designer of magazines.
The first department we photographed was Spanier’s home town department, The Riverview Manor Fire Department from Hastings-on-Hudson, NY. Twenty-seven men and women were shot over two days, one of whom turned out to be a NY Times writer and author, named Marek Fuchs. Marek soon became the third member of our collaboration and will be writing the brief stories of the subjects of the shoots, as well as summarizing the history of the departments we photograph.
We self-published a version of the book of twenty-seven portraits along with individual’s answers to Proust’s questionnaire, which was to be our written part before Marek signed on to help. This is the version you can see at http://www.ianspanierphotogallery.com/local_heroes
We pitched the book idea to a few publishers and Schiffer Publishing out of Pennsylvania was interested. We agreed to terms for a 150-page book, and went on to photograph a volunteer department in Sparta, GA, one of Atlanta’s poorest counties. Twenty members showed up for the one-day photo shoot, a great turnout for the town of less than 1500 people. We will also be photographing departments in the mid-west and west coast to have one representation from each part of the country, (for National marketing purposes).
From a visual and written standpoint, ambitiously we are allotting very little time to make the portraits of however many numbers of members we can get. This is quite a challenge to both photographer and writer. From a logistical standpoint, we are on the fast track to research willing fire departments, coordinate the dates, and all work around our individual schedules for this labor of love. From a monetary standpoint, the cost of getting ourselves to and from the locations, and cost of equipment is quickly adding up in the time of high-priced flights, rising gas prices and general travel expense.
We are seeking financial assistance for this reason, so that we can just cover our costs. Being a well experienced photographer and former photo editor, Spanier is well versed in getting a photo shoot done for the bare minimum, however the costs listed above are out of our control.
Ideally, we will, and the publisher agrees, sort out a way to give a portion of any proceeds of the published book toward America’s volunteer firefighter organization, be it retired firefighter funds or burn survivors or other.
The book is due to the publisher August 1, 2011, and is due out in early 2012.
We are not involved in this project to make any profit, each of us are doing this for the great experience of meeting these unique individuals, get ourselves a beautifully photographed, written, and designed coffee table book, and hopefully to help some fire fighters or fire victims in need. Thank you in advance for the consideration!
