What is a photo-book? Exploring winning concepts in contemporary photobooks

Topic: What is a photobook?

A photobook is much more than just an exhibition catalogue or a place where photographers put their photographs, one after the other, for documentary reasons. It’s an autonomous body of artistic work which has many more possibilities for communication than traditional gallery or museum exhibitions. It’s a medium which provides photographers with a concentrated form in which to tell stories. It’s very easy to share, available worldwide, reasonable, and democratic. Photobooks have rich potential thanks to the use of a wide range of binding materials, covers, papers, printing technics and, most importantly, image editing, layout and design. Today, the book is widely accepted as the most important photographic medium, enabling the photographer to spread his or her ideas in a very easy, physical, and sensual way.

One can see the most up-to-date ways of using photobooks in the wide range of the books that have been registered for the annual photobook dummy award – from an extremely simple scrap-book to the book which looks as if it were issued by a big publishing company, from single experimental art pieces which cannot be easily multiplied to simple book forms for cheap and high circulation production.
 
A good photobook draws its substance from a unique, individual photographic language. That’s the basic necessity. An extraordinary photobook combines this unique photographic language with a particular dramaturgy in the image sequencing and the subtle editing of double pages in interaction with the materiality of papers, binding, covers and format. 

Often the process of becoming a unique photobook involves interaction between photographers, editors, designers and publishers. The talk will show examples of award-winning books, possible ways of learning to make photobooks, work with photobook designers, participation in photobook competitions, photobook festivals and international photobook exhibitions. Followed by discussion with Q&A session,  moderated by Dustin Shum

Dieter Neubert (born 1956) is from Kassel, Germany. He has studied visual communication and photography at the Kassel University and is the Founder and Director of the INTERNATIONAL FOTOBOOKFESTIVAL KASSEL and Founder of the BEST PHOTOBOOK AWARD Kassel and the Kassel DUMMY AWARD. He edited and published several photographic books like the Daido Moriyama anthology ON DAIDO, the artist book KASSEL MENU by Martin Parr and several volumes of the annual catalog BEST PHOTOBOOKS. He is also the chief editor of the new monographic periodical PHOTOPAPER.

For the past seven years, Kassel in Germany has been home to the most important annual forum on the world of photography books, the Fotobookfestival Kassel. The festival is a long weekend full of artist lectures, book exhibitions, a booksellers and publishers market, portfolio reviews, book workshops and awards for the best photobooks from the previous year. For photographers hoping to find people interested in their yet-to-be-discovered book projects, the main attraction of the FOTOBOOKFESTIVAL KASSEL is its photobook dummy competition for the best unpublished photobook mock-up. The winner of the first prize receives a publishing contract with the German artbook publisher Verlag Kettler. In 2016 the 8th Fotobookfestival Kassel took place as a special edition from 11 June until 3 July at the Three Shadows Photography Art Centre in Beijing.

Dustin Shum is a Hong Kong based documentary photographer. He graduated from the Hong Kong Polytechnic University with a Bachelor of Arts (Honours) Degree in Photographic Design. In his work, Shum focuses on the relationship between individuals and urban spaces, the living conditions of local disadvantaged groups, and the transformation of Chinese cities and towns in rapidly developing economy. His works have been collected by the SFMoMA, the Hong Kong Heritage Museum, and private collectors. Shum has also published several photobooks including Live Alone a Life: People with Mental Illness (2007), and Themeless Parks: Photographs by Dustin Shum (2008), Life and Times (2014) and BLOCKS (2014). He is also a co-founder of The Salt Yard, an art space dedicated to photography cum online photobook store.

To know more about the exhibition „Exquisite” - printed photography in exhibition, please click here.