Categories
EVENTS MEET-UPS

World Photobook Day — #AnnaGoesGreen

#AnnaGoesGreen
OCT 14/2018

Anna Atkins — Photographs of British Algae, 1843

Back in 1843, someone wrote a date on a book at the British Museum Library: October 14th, 1843. This book is titled Photographs of British algae. Cyanotype impressions, by Anna Atkins. And six years ago we transformed this simple gesture into a global event — the World Photobook Day.

On the 175th anniversary of the acquisition by the British Museum of the first ever published photobook, we’d like you to join and celebrate with us. You can just share the #photobookday hashtag or you can organize anything you like in your city, with your Photobook Club, publishing company, with your just released self-published photobook, your photography school mates, friends, etc.

This year we’d like to focus your energy into a global concern and ask you to remember global warming, the environmental impact of our lives, books on plants and nature, links to earth and of course, the first book on seaweed!!! As with every year, we know there is not much time to organize large events. We can propose some easy activities you can undertake to celebrate locally this global event:

  •    Post a #PhotoBookDay Selfie or a Shelfie on social media: an image with you and your current favourite photobook.
  •    Ask your local library to buy local self-published photobooks and photozines, we are sure you can give them some ideas.
  •    Buy a photobook. Many bookshops and publishers will make special discounts for the day. Follow your favourite bookshops on social media or search for #PhotoBookDay for offers and discounts.
  •    If you make or sell books, offer your customers discounts or some special goodies. If you run a bookshop a special 5% discount, or free shipping costs, will make your clients happy. Don’t forget to announce it with #PhotoBookDay on your usual social media channels.
  •    Search for a PhotoBook Club in your city to meet with like other people and share photobooks. If there is no one, PhotoBookDay can be a good day to start one. We’ll make a list with activities organized by clubs all around the globe.
  •    Discuss your love of photobooks via the twitter hashtag #PhotoBookDay. Or on instagram, too.

We have some visuals you can use to add to your posters and social network communications that you will find on this site. And please, tell us what you did for World PhotoBook Day 2018. We hope we all have fun this day with photobooks.

Organise! Participate! Celebrate! World Photobook Day has been set up as a collaboration between the organizers of Photobook Club Madrid, Doug Spowart and Matt Johnston. Celebrating the photobook, born in 1843.

Best,

Juan Barte
Juan Cires
Bonifacio Barrio Hijosa
Matt Johnston
Doug Spowart

P.S

This seems like a great time to share How We See: Photobooks by Women produced by 10×10 photobooks. It’s kinda pricey but maybe one to suggest for your local/institutions library as it is probably the most important book on photobooks for some time.

http://www.10x10photobooks.org/2018/05/30/how-we-see/ 

 

Categories
EVENTS

Berlin Photobook Club meeting #1

Great news from Zoopark in Berlin who are hosting their first Photobook Club meeting on July 11th.

Bring a photobook (or photobooks) you like and let’s have a close look at them trying to answer these questions. There will be no leaders in this discussion: all participants are equal and every opinion matters.

The only rule: not to bring and present your own photobook 🙂
Please drop us a message on Facebook or e-mail to zooparkpublishing@gmail.com if you would like to take part in the Club.

Head over to their Facebook event page here and the Zoopark publishing collective page here.

Categories
EVENTS MEET-UPS NEWS

The Photobook Club Leeds launches in January

‘Z’ of the newly founded Photobook Club Leeds has been in touch to let me know that their first meeting will take place on the 10th January at Left Bank Leeds. Of course, as all Photobook Club events are, this is open to all and free to participate in. For more information or to show support for the Photobook Club Leeds, head over to their Facebook page here. 

Of course a first report will follow.

Categories
EVENTS HISTORY MEET-UPS NEWS Uncategorised

The 5th annual #PhotoBookDay

Welcome to the 5th anniversary of World #PhotoBookDay! A Toast To Anna Atkins

So this year, we have a double celebration. As you may know since 2013, every October 14th, we are celebrating the anniversary of the purchase by the British Museum of the first known photobook: Photographs of British algae. Cyanotype impressions, by Anna Atkins. This first copy is now in the British Library.

October 14th was a Saturday in 1843, and the person that wrote this date on the book couldn’t imagine that 174 years later, a bunch of photobook enthusiasts around the globe would remember this small gesture. On this 2017 Photobook Day also falls on Saturday, and what better occasion to celebrate it and toast the creator of this wonderfull publication: Anna Atkins. This will be our motto for this year #AToastToAnna.

We celebrate our passion for photobooks, we rejoice that Anna Atkins bound some cyanotypes, we commemorate every book we have on our shelves, we applaude all the libraries buying photobooks and photozines, we love every person who loves photobooks!

And we’d love you to join us to celebrate this global event by organizing an action related to photobooks in your own city. Spread your love for photobooks around your community. Please share your activities on social media using the hashtag #PhotoBookDay, it will be the best way for everyone in your local community to reach your activity.

On this map see how others celebrate!

As every year, we know there is not much time to organize large events. We can propose some easy activities you can take to celebrate locally this global event:

  • Spread the love by sharing something you think someone will like, not something you think they should like.
  • Post a #PhotoBookDay Selfie or a Shelfie on social media: an image with you and your current favourite photobook.
  • Ask your local library to buy local self-published photobooks and photozines, we are sure you can give them some ideas.
  • If you are in charge of a library, consider purchasing and supporting self-pulished photobooks and photozines on this special day, and mark your book record with a special note to PhotoBookDay.
  • Buy a photobook. Many bookshops and publishers will make special discounts for the day. Follow your favourite bookshops on social media or search for #PhotoBookDay for offers and discounts.
  • If you make or sell books, offer your customers discounts or some special goodies. If you run a bookshop a special 5% discount, or free shipping costs, will make your clients happy. Don’t forget to announce it with #PhotoBookDay on your usual social media channels.
  • Search for a PhotoBook Club in your city to meet with like minded people and share photobooks. If there is no one, PhotoBookDay can be a good day to start one. We’ll make a list with activities organized by clubs all around the globe.
  • Discuss your love of photobooks via the twitter hashtag #PhotoBookDay. Or on instagram, too.


Use the image of the 5th anniversary stamp with the profile of Anna Atkins with lots of her seaweed on her head, that you will find on this site, to add to your visuals. And please, tell us what you did for World PhotoBook Day 2017. We hope we all have fun this day with photobooks.

Organise! Participate! Celebrate! The World Photobook Day has been set up as a collaboration between the organizers of Photobook Club Madrid and Matt Johnston. Celebrating the photobook, born in 1843.

Best,
Juan Barte
Juan Cires
Bonifacio Barrio Hijosa
Matt Johnston

Categories
EVENTS

Send Photobooks a Birthday Card!

From Doug Spowart and Victoria Cooper of the Photobook Club Brisbane…

Categories
BOOKS

Books for sale

Moving on a few books as have less collectible versions, available at local library or just not so into them anymore. Email for more details or photos.
All prices + postage.

Larry Sultan – The Valley
Some minor dust cover marks, otherwise very good (£60)

Alec Soth – Looking for Love, 1996
Pristine (£85) SOLD

Carlos Spottorno – The PIGS
Still in sleeve, got another signed so selling this (£35)

Christian Patterson – Redheaded Peckerwood
Signed 2nd Edition, as new (£90)

Watabe Yukichi – A Criminal Investigation
1st Edition, pristine still in shrink wrap (£130)

Categories
NEWS THOUGHTS ON BOOKS

The Photobook Club in SOURCE

The SOURCE photobook edition has been out for a wee while now and the full online archive of ‘great’ photobook selections is available to all for free so a little late sharing this but do check it out. For one, it is a valuable insight into the photobook and the way in which we think about it. Two, it shows who the ‘characters’ of the photobook are. Three, the Photobook Club is in there (and shown below)[and din’t quite follow the ‘greatest’ request]…

Check it out here

While there is definite merit in list forming as a means of introduction and suggestions, it is something I am a little uncomfortable with. The Photobook Club was set up in part as a pragmatic response to canonisation without qualification and seeks to enable open and non-hierarchical discussion. So with this in mind I have asked a number of Photobook Club organisers from around the world to suggest the photobook(s) that their community has had the liveliest discussion around. These choices come from Photobook Clubs in Barcelona, Buenos Aires, Coventry, Madrid, Monterrey, Montevideo and Tokyo.

  • Julián Barón, Dossier Humint, 2013.
  • Martin Bollati, La forma Bruta, 2016.
  • Will Steacy, Deadline, 2016.
  • Musuk Nolte, La Primera Piedra, 2013.
  • Xavier Miserachs and Horacio Fernández, Miserachs Barcelona, 2016.
  • Txema Salvans, The Waiting Game, 2014.
  • Nozomi Iijima, Scoffing Pig, 2013.
  • Rodrigo Ramos, Ex Corde, 2015.
  • Paul Gaffney, We Make the Path by Walking, 2013.
  • Vasantha Yogananthan, Early Times, 2016.
Categories
CONTEXT INDEPTH NEWS THOUGHTS ON BOOKS

2015; a year in the photobook’s life

2015_year_in_photobooks_life_crop2015; A Year in the Photobook’s Life
A survey of photobook-specic happenings in the US and Europe.

Access the PDF here
Access the JPG here

This survey intends to visualise and in a sense, flatten, the many events, competitions and workshops that are taking place around the photobook right now. In doing so, a lineage — or at least a chronology — can be established, demonstrating a growth of interest and increasing institutional support in the medium.

It has been put together with the view that it will act as a record not just of 2015 but the new age of the photobook (golden or otherwise). is research is concerned only with photobook speci c events and only covers the US and Europe. is is not because these geographical areas can be seen as the home of the photobook – not by any means, but because this is both the focus of my broader research project, and provides an opportunity, through networks, to realistically claim con dence in correctly recording and listing the vast majority of appropriate events. e choice to begin with the year 2015 is similarly bene cial. While of course many events have run in earlier years, or are starting up in 2016, the single year provides a baseline from which to work back in establishing the aforementioned chronology and origin.

Only photobook-speci c events have been recorded — a choice which, if aiming to build a picture of the variety of spaces in which the photobook is present, would be disastrous. Here, art book fairs and non-medium-speci c zine workshops for example, have been excluded. In doing so it is hoped that clarity is improved and subjectivity removed.

Fairs and festivals are subject to a further limitation in that they must be multi-day events. Once again a choice of clarity and con dence and not a suggestion that single day events are not a part of the photobook world. Many single day events have been arrived at during this research, the transient and o en independent nature of which have on many occasions presented quite di erent ideas on what the photobook, and what a photobook event should be.

A list of thanks can be found on the right hand side of this visualisation — these are people who have contributed to this survey and without whom many omissions would have been made. ere are likely still some errors or misses so please do get in touch if you have any: matt@photobookclub.org. A scroll of this document will be produced in Autumn of 2016 on lightweight poster paper, if you are interested in having a copy, please email the above address.

Matt Johnston

Acknowledgements

Despite a relatively strict set of criteria for the events listed here, it was inevitable that I would miss over signi cant happen- ings. In sharing beta versions of this research I was grateful to receive help from a number of contributors. My sincere thanks to Tommy Arvidson, Bonifacio Barrio Hijosa, Ana Paula Estrada, Sarah Greene, Jose Félix Liébana, Hermann Lohss, Malcolm Raggett and Hannah Watson who all got in touch to share information. If you see absences and would like to aid the building of this resource, please get in touch – matt@photobookclub.org.

Categories
EVENTS NEWS

Photobook Club Aarhus, Books and the City

Great to hear from Moritz Neumüller about the possibility of setting up a Photobook Club Aarhus — something which would extend the great conversations that happen around Aarhus Photobook Week throughout the year. If anyone is interested in attending, or has any ideas/locations etc. to share, please get in touch with Moritz.

Elsewhere, on Wednesday 22nd I will be presenting the Photobook Club’s Box of Books at an exciting conference called ‘Books and the City‘ in Maastricht. Along with a discussion of the box and intent, I will highlight the fantastic variety of events and outcomes of Photobook Club communities all over the world. It is only a brief paper but will be a good way to begin a more thorough survey of the Photobook Club, its organisers, attendees, conversations and locations.

All for now but if you have not already, get your hand on max Pinker’s PDFs here and if you have other examples of free PDFs, please let me know! (matt@photobookclub.org)

Categories
THOUGHTS ON BOOKS

The Shift?

It is silly to try and predict the turning point of the photobook – and of course there need not be one. But in cutting for sign we can surely see something is moving against the photobook – in a positive manner. I wrote about the photobook’s dull hierarchical conversations and the trend for contribution of content (and books) to a pointless cycle around the photobook for Code-X recently (a short chapter I hope to have online for free). It seems perhaps there was something in the water, or else everyone got fed up of hearing and seeing the same stuff again and again. A number of notable posts recently pick away at the veneer of the photobook scene as we see it represented by production, consumption, miss communication and poor thought.

These are some great starting points for a critical perspective…

Harvey Benge – Link
Craig Atkinson Pt I – Link
Craig Atkinson Pt II – Link
Lewis Bush – Link

In the spirit of thought over reaction, i’m not going to add much here for now but spend more time with these pieces. I will finish with this though…

Craig Atkinson comments that

The main problem to my mind is that so much photography is made with no intent. People don’t know what to do with their pictures. Naturally, they want people to see them, so they head for Blurb, or Lulu and often never speak to a printer, never consider paper stock, typography, sequence, size, fold, edit…

To which it might be worth adding that perhaps worse than those who don’t make well made books, are those who do – who speak to the printer and get on the latest trendy designer – the artist formally known as SYB? They get gorgeous paper and interactive elements, only to realise that the book costs £40, they don’t have an audience beyond family and friends, and the book says nothing other than that they value style over communication.

Oh, and if this is all a little negative. This will make help…

The continuing presence of SPBH as an arbiter of the DIY spirit affirms Ceshel’s belief that self-publishing is an independent state of mind, an attitude as much as an aesthetic. “DIY culture,” he says, “is by its nature an ethic in opposition to society’s rules at large. It flourishes in environments of communitarian support, collaboration, and even informal barter economics. It is rooted in self-affirmation against a conformist and normative system … An army of young artists is undermining the greed-run system at its foundations, one page at a time.” Long may it flourish.