I’m super excited about the release of Freesouls: Captured and Released, the first collection of photos by my good friend Joi Ito in book form. All of these photos are pulled from his flickr stream and all published under a CC-Attribution license making them free for anyone to use. I’m excited about this for so many reasons, and not just because I’m one of the portraits. I’ve known Joi for many years and have watched him grow as a photographer and I’m delighted to see him taking this next step. It’s also amazingly cool to have all of these photos together, because of who he is Joi has access to some amazing people and has captured intimate and candid moments with them. In Freesouls we get to see these people not as the world does, but as Joi does. These people are his friends and the photos show a different side of many of these people. Additionally, from a ideological stand point this book is amazing. Photography is a very guarded art, with rights and permissions being a massive clusterfuck. This book is proof positive that it doesn’t always have to be that way and that some of the sharpest minds out there know the value of sharing. We as a culture don’t benefit from things being locked up and out of reach. I hope this book will encourage more people to reconsider copyright, as well as consider some of the other options provided by Creative Commons.

I should mention that the book is being made in a limited edition only, so if you want one you should order it now.