Photobooks We Love From 2023

As we approach the year-end, enjoy a curated selection of titles handpicked by PhMuseum's team, contributors and masterclass professors.

The Future Without You By Max Pinckers & Thomas Sauvin

Beijing Silvermine & Lyre Press | Selected by Giuseppe Oliverio (PhMuseum Director)

In a recycling center in Beijing, Max Pinckers and Thomas Sauvin discovered an analog archive of 50.000 transparencies used by a US company aiming to market their new Chinese subsidiary. These quality images were produced in stocks at a cheap price to avoid the higher costs of customs photoshoots. A guy gets out of a personal computer monitor. Another guy in a suit mimics the act of thinking with an electric circuit as background. Another one is on his knees over a bed of clouds looking down. Every page is a piece of this surrealistic capitalistic mosaic where images are just another commodity already before the advent of digital cameras and social media. In this beautiful and anxious mess, enhanced by the book design whose cover can be folded like a tablet cover and images flipped horizontally, we are left with many questions on corporate culture, our relationship with technology, and eventually our nature as human beings.

One Bed, Two Blankets, Seventy-Six Rules by Sabine Hess & Nicolas Polli

Ciao Press | Selected by Tommaso Parrillo (Witty Books Publisher and PhMuseum Folio Head Professor)

One bed, two blankets is a set of rules for living life as a couple to the fullest, a personal manifesto for how to grow together. The new book by Sabine Hess and Nicolas Polli was born during a residency in Switzerland, the same place where the two authors had met a few years earlier.

Nightairs by Samuel James

Fw:Books | Selected by Giulia Boccarossa (Graphic Designer, Illustrator and PhMuseum Folio Head Professor)

Samuel James' photographic exploration, Nightairs, invites the viewer into the enchanting world of the Lampyridae family, commonly known as fireflies, inhabiting the foothills of Appalachian Ohio. This 80-page softcover photobook unveils the intricate and mesmerizing bioluminescent displays of nineteen out of the twenty-six identified firefly species in the region. The work transcends traditional photography, evolving into a language that communicates the silent poetry of firefly light displays. The emphasis on the nineteen species of fireflies highlights the biodiversity within the Lampyridae family, showcasing their unique bioluminescent dialects. The diversity within unity becomes a metaphor for the delicate balance of ecosystems, illustrating how these tiny insects play a vital role in the larger ecological tapestry.

Dirty by Magdalena Wysocka

Outer Space Press | Selected by Rosa Lacavalla (Photographer, Visual Artist and PhMuseum Assistant)

The collection of images, deemed ‘schmutzig’ (eng. ‘dirty’) by Clarifai AI, unveils historical images from the late XIX century, capturing the interplay between nature and human intervention during the Industrial Revolution. Wysocka challenges conventional landscape perceptions, incorporating elements of the sublime and the Biblical paradise. Beyond conventional photography, the book focuses on the unwanted - dirt, scratches, and imperfections - transforming them into a study of time's passage. Utilizing offset and risograph printing techniques enhances faded colors, providing a nostalgic visual experience. Dirty transcends traditional photobooks, evolving into an elegant art object that explores the transformative nature of photography, offering a different perspective on the medium. I loved it since when I had the opportunity to see the dummy in the Outer Space Press' studio, for the care in blending different printing techniques, the choice of paper, and the printing that embellishes the concave cut of the pages.

You Run Around Town Like A Fool And You Think That It's Groovy 2 by Chantal Rens

Pantofle Books | Selected by Erik Kessels (Artist, Designer, Curator and PhMuseum Curae Head Professor)

100 animals and their drinks. A follow up to You Run Around Town Like A Fool And You Think That It's Groovy which was published in 2016. This second volume features 100 new animals and drinks (reproductions of analog collages made between 2016-2022). One of the most hilarious artist books I’ve seen recently. Chantal Rens is a Dutch artist that makes great analog collages and shows how vernacular photography can be great fun.

L’Amoureuse by Anne de Gelas

Editions Loco | Selected by Colin Pantall (Writer, Photographer, Lecturer and PhMuseum Editorial Contributor)

First published in 2013, this is the first book Anne de Gelas made following the sudden death of her husband on a beach in Belgium. The feelings of loss, how she comes to terms with this, how she recalibrates her relationship with her son make for a heartbreaking story that also talks of survival, resilience, and creative endeavour. Truly wonderful.

Shadow Over Shadow by Vitor Casemiro

MASA & The PhotoBookMuseum | Selected by Talita Virginia (Storyteller, Cultural Worker and PhMuseum Social Media Manager)

Drawing on the extensive United States Library of Congress archive, Shadow Over Shadow by Vitor Casemiro delves into the realm of clichés and bypasses genre conventions in 1940s Hollywood crime cinema. The book, awarded the Kassel Dummy Award and published by MASA & The PhotoBookMuseum, transforms moving images into pages, emulating an illustrated film script. It engages with our perception in a post-truth era, delving into conspiracy theories, crime, and fake news.

I Am Not A Robot by Andrea Alessandrini

Witty Books | Selected by Camilla Marrese (Graphic Designer, Photographer and PhMuseum Visual Editor)

In a year where AI has increasingly influenced the way we work, look at writing, and think of images, I Am Not a Robot takes a step back. We are walking around the streets of a town. But bricks, pipes, and branches are abstracted from their context, and become something else. They are illustrations for a machine’s thinking process. They are visual clues for an essay that gets at the very roots of computer science - a path starting from binary logic, going through algorithms, turing machines, and recursion loops. Yet, the city is still there with its flawed landscape, and so are traces of our presence. Everything is drenched in humanity and imperfection. Photographs, texts and drawing blend in a textbook for our survival during a time of 0s and 1s. It is designed as a flexible, floppy and light object, smoothly accompanying us as we change the way we are looking at urban landscapes and at computers - all at once.

Les Joueurs de Billard by Jaime Sebastián

Self Published | Selected by Erik Kessels (Artist, Designer, Curator and PhMuseum Curae Head Professor)

24 photographs of snooker players from the Paris tournament between the years 1910 and 1922, collected and collated by Jaime Sebastián. Photographs from the public archive of Gallica. This small singer stitched book is a beautiful example how you can play with an archive and make a very nice work out of it. I found it recently on the independent publishing fair called ‘SPRINT’ in Milan.

22 Days in Between by Salih Basheer

Disko Bay | Selected by Colin Pantall (Writer, Photographer, Lecturer and PhMuseum Editorial Contributor)

The title of the book tells a story of loss, the 22 days being the space between the death of Basheer’s father and mother. Basheer was 3 years old at the time. Through photographs, drawings, pictures from the family album and a beautifully written text, Basheer tells the story of his home in Sudan, the places he visited and the continuing story of how grief affected him and his siblings. It’s a beautiful book.

Tagadà - Paolo Zerbini

Skinnerboox | Selected by Talita Virginia (Storyteller, Cultural Worker and PhMuseum Social Media Manager)

Even if one has never visited a summer amusement park in an Italian province, leafing through Paolo Zerbini's photobook Tagadà transports us to a familiar time and place. Published by Skinnerboox, it captures the essence of the theatre where young individuals grapple with and comprehend the intricacies of their initial independent social interactions. This narrative unfolds amid a backdrop of heat, sweat and playground toys illuminated by neon lights.

Bilateral by Samuel Gratacap

Poursuite Editions | Selected by Camilla Marrese (Graphic Designer, Photographer and PhMuseum Visual Editor)

Bilateral silently deconstructs the images we think of when talking about migration, and traces the lines of something new. Something that powerfully articulates the distance between institutions - here abstracted, distanced figures - and the physical reality of displacement. In Gratacap’s narrative, migration isn’t violent nor de-humanised: it’s as natural as the movement of bodies. It’s an actor in the landscape, just as any other, that leaves marks in the memory of the earth. The border between Italy and France blurs in this survey showing pine trees, paths, rocks, and people making their way between them - all represented with the same attention to detail and care.

12321 by Yao Yuan

Self Published | Selected by Giuseppe Oliverio (PhMuseum Director)

Chinese photographer Yao Yuan followed a friend over the course of two years to narrate her pregnancy and early motherhood in the shadow of Mount Fuji in Japan. The book poetically narrates what it meant for the protagonist to expect a child and give birth in an Asian town of the 21st century. The visual approach is quite intuitive and free, unveiling their relationship as human beings, their spiritual connections revolving around Taoism, their worries and hopes, their ways of living nature. Flowing between genuine curiosity and a delicate sensibility, the author ponders on the theme of identity, on the concept of borders and explores the mystery of life where beauty opens up to infinite possibilities.

What's Ours by Myriam Boulos

Aperture | Selected by Lucia De Stefani (Writer, Editor and PhMuseum Editorial Contributor)

In one expansive tale, Myriam Boulos's monograph, What's Ours, unveils an intimate portrayal of a city and its society amid revolution, weaving a tapestry of intertwined stories—personal and public, private and political—merging multiple perspectives that condense the complexity she bears witness to and confronts regarding the state of affairs in Lebanon, teeming with unfiltered authenticity the essence of youth, reclamation, and protest. This compilation encapsulates a decade of Boulos’s work, spanning from 2013 to 2023, chronicling the evolution of her homeland, through Lebanon’s 2019 uprising, extending to the aftermath of the catastrophic explosion that rocked Beirut in August 2020. Through her lens, Boulos captures the palpable presence of the body in public spaces, symbolizing reappropriation and resistance, culminating in what embodies the larger essence of the book: reclaiming the streets, the bodies—“Everything that belongs to us.”  In a bilingual diary-like format, her diptychs speak of contradictions: A flight of birds painted against white clouds echoes a cluster of gunfire leaving ominous black trails—a menacing claw poised to ensnare the city, freedom itself. Blending the intricate beauty of the mundane, the poetic, with the injustice and revulsion of oppression, Boulos paints a portrait of a city and souls in turmoil—upset, weary, yet fiercely alive.

El Retrato De Tu Ausencia by Alejandro "Luperca" Morales

Kult Books | Selected by Tommaso Parrillo (Witty Books Publisher and PhMuseum Folio Head Professor)

In El Retrato De Tu Ausencia, Alejandro “Luperca” Morales collected hundreds of images depicting murders from the local newspaper of Ciudad Juárez, Mexico, one of the most violent cities in the world, and "famous" for its murders. The author intervenes manually by manually deleting all the corpses from the photographs, these new images intend to guarantee an occasion for mourning, a more dignified form of death.

Vital Mud by Hiske Altena

The Eriskay Connection | Selected by Rosa Lacavalla (Photographer, Visual Artist and PhMuseum Assistant)

Hiske Altena explores the theory that life on Earth began in clay. Inspired by her geologist uncle's discovery of organic structures in an unusual rattle stone, the project delves into the "clay hypothesis," suggesting its role in the evolution of early life forms. Altena examines various elements, including rattle stones, clay crystals, bacterial life cycles, and oval shapes in the American landscape, as potential evidence. By using this theory as a foundation, the project prompts viewers to reconsider their perspectives and contemplate the mysteries of human capability, emphasizing the continuous search for the unknown in both science and art.

The Lottery by Melissa Catanese

Witty Books & The Ice Plant | Selected by Giulia Boccarossa (Graphic Designer, Illustrator and PhMuseum Folio Head Professor)

Melissa Catanese's photobook, The Lottery, published in March 2023 by Witty Books and The Ice Plant, unfolds a mesmerizing tapestry of speculative fiction, skillfully weaving together recent photographs, anonymous vernacular snapshots, press images, and archival NASA visuals. An exploration of human civilization caught in the tumultuous currents of an uncertain future and the lingering echoes of its past. The seamless integration of disparate images transforms the dormant surfaces into a living narrative that recalls both Shirley Jackson's The Lottery and the enigmatic uncertainties of our present reality. The photographs unveil a society suspended between serenity and chaos, tenderness and horror. The dichotomy of lone figures, portrayed as haunted and creaturely, clawing, swimming, and bending in primordial landscapes, suggests an isolation immersed in the cosmic uncertainties of our existence. The incorporation of brief fragments of text from Virginia Woolf adds another layer of complexity to the narrative.

Mirabilia by Silvia Camporesi

Corraini Edizioni | Selected by Lucia De Stefani (Writer, Editor and PhMuseum Editorial Contributor)

In her photobook, Mirabilia, published by Corraini Edizioni 2023, photographer Silvia Camporesi guides us on an Italian journey, revealing the mystique of unique landscapes and lesser-known public and private spaces. She uncovers hidden spots beyond the tourist trail, inviting us to discover the quieter, yet equally captivating essence of these lesser-trodden paths. Her lens illuminates enigmatic corners that quickly transform into a realm of the mind, where unrecognized landscapes paint vivid imagery that transcends the boundaries of time and space, merging earthly with ethereal. A blanket of clouds mimics a tranquil sea caressing an airy theater, while mountain peaks emerge as islands in the surreal expanse. Pointed breast of a woman’s bare torso, with elongated wires mimicking flowing curls swept by a breeze, evoke an image of her face, though unseen. In the realm of photography, beauty lies not only in the captured image but in the varied tales told by the observer. Camporesi guides us to the ethereal landscapes of our reveries, that we’ve once encountered and now rediscover. These photographs beckon us to delve deeper, inviting to an endless voyage of imagination, where the allure of uncharted realms ignites our wanderlust.

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