Unseen Book Market and Photobook Week Aarhus are happy to announce the launch of What? Market? Market! - the second edition of a joint discussion between the platforms and invited contributors. While the first edition Market? What Market? (2017-2018) focused on the general role of the photobook market today, the current one (2018-2019) explores solutions for the field’s challenges. Artists, independent publishers, collectors and mediators reflect on new developments, the importance of reaching different audiences, and consider sustainable models of book production.
Download the free pdf version here.
The launch of the issue is on Sunday 22 September, 16:00 00 - 16:45 at the Living Room during Unseen Amsterdam 2019: on the occasion of What? Market? Market! second edition’s release, Unseen Book Market and Photobook Week Aarhus invite three speakers to share the stories of their projects and researches-in-progress.
Frederic Lezmi will spill light on The Chargesheimer Project in which the PhotoBookMuseum turns a book about a street into a street about a book. The Chargesheimer Project (to be fully realised by 2021) ranges in the experimental field between art space and experiential realm. It seeks new methods of a cross-generational and participatory dialogue surrounding the explosive question of how urban life is shaped. The public and dynamic space “street” is at the project’s focus: how do we want to jointly shape our urban co-existence in the future? Can a photobook like Chargesheimer’s legendary street ballad Unter Krahenbäumen, with its images of yesterday, inspire us today for tomorrow?
In response to How We See: Photobooks by Women, a 2018-2019 touring reading room, publication and series of public programs that explore 100 contemporary photobooks by women, 10x10 has embarked on an associated project that will document historical books by women photographers from 1843 to 2010. Russet Lederman will present an overview of this new project slated to launch in 2021 in New York City.
Sheng-Wen Lo will share the stories and experiences of Lightbox Photo Library in Taiwan, and how the space uses the principles of ‘participating’ and ‘crowd-sourcing’ in order to accumulate an organic and growing group of audiences. Founded in 2016, Lightbox Photo Library is the first nonprofit photography library in Taiwan. Expanding on the free, open and public-facing nature of both photography and library, they take on the work of collecting and organizing publications of Taiwanese photography. Lightbox has collected more than 3,500 photobooks, hosting over 100 events, and shares various photographic resources with the public for free.
BIOS
Frederic Lezmi is a founding member and artistic director of the PhotoBookMuseum in Cologne. As a not-for-profit organization it promotes the photobook as one of photography’s central forms of expression and is devoted to the research and teaching of contemporary photobook culture. The PhotoBookMuseum serves as a platform for collections, exhibitions and events. A museum of the 21st century, it understands itself to be a mobile, lively place that opens its doors to a broad and diverse public.
Russet Lederman is a writer, editor and photobook collector who lives in New York City. She teaches art writing at the School of Visual Arts in New York and writes on photobooks for print and online journals, including FOAM, The Eyes, IMA, Aperture and the International Center of Photography’s library blog. She is a co-founder of the 10×10 Photobooks project, co-edits The Gould Collection, lectures internationally on photobooks, and has received awards and grants from Prix Ars Electronica and the Smithsonian American Art Museum.
Sheng-Wen Lo is the creative director of Lightbox, a public photo library and a centre for contemporary photography at Taipei, Taiwan. Currently, he is an artist in residence at the Rijksakademie (2019/2020) in Amsterdam. As an artist, Sheng is interested in contemporary human-animal relationships, and attempts to spark off debates with still, moving images, video games and installations. He is a nominee of Foam Paul Huf Award and Prix Pictet Photography Prize (2019), and a fellowship recipient of Mondriaan Fonds (WJT), De Nederlandsche Bank and Prins Bernhard Cultuurfonds (2019). His works are shown recently in EYE Filmmuseum, World Press Photo, BredaPhoto (NL), ICP Museum (USA), MMCA (Korea), FORMAT, etc.
