Encounters with Photobooks

The materiality of photobooks.

Photobooks are an art form on the move. They travel physically, as copies are bought, traded, treasured, forgotten, and rediscovered around the world. They move conceptually, as their meanings evolve through changing use and value. Photobooks combine languages of photography, text and design into a distinct medium that breaks from the confines of galleries and libraries, entering unexpected or intimate environments, such as our homes.

Encounters with Photobooks marks a shift in scholarship by showing how meaningful experiences with photobooks are shaped by the situated, material, and political circumstances of these encounters. Weaving together creative writing about photobook encounters with critical traditions in museology, phenomenology, art history, new materialism and feminist praxis, this innovative book illuminates the photobook’s multiplicity: its unique potential for its many copies to matter differently to makers and readers in each momentary encounter.

This book will be made open access within three years of publication thanks to Path to Open, a program developed in partnership between JSTOR, the American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS), University of Michigan Press, and The University of North Carolina Press to bring about equitable access and impact for the entire scholarly community, including authors, researchers, libraries, and university presses around the world. Learn more at https://about.jstor.org/path-to-open/