What Makes a Photobook Sustainable?
CONTACT Photobook Lab, CONTACT Festival, Toronto, Canada (1-10 May 2025)
Based on the publication of the same name, What Makes a Photobook Sustainable? is a reading room exhibition inciting conversation on how photography books are made and circulated. With the exponential growth of the photobook industry and the book’s portability, more than ever before, publishing mobilizes processes connected to local and global ecologies, through materials, money, labour, and transportation. This reading room presents more than 20 books illustrative of the Sustainable Photobook Publishing (SPP) network as a global platform, illuminating how photographers and publishers worldwide are navigating sustainability questions, ethical social practices, and decolonial initiatives, and, critically, also features a special section highlighting local approaches to these concerns.
1 May: Exhibition Opening
5-6 May: Workshop - Developing Ecological Photobooks
6 May: Discussion - Ecological Photobooks, with workshop participants
Contact Photobook Lab Library
The reading room has been designed to use the existing library shelves, and to play with their positions and frequency. Design and curation by Tamsin Green.
Exhibited Books
- 67-P - Magdalena Wysocka / Claudio Pogo (PogoBooks: 2019)
- Beyond Drifting - Mandy Barker (Overlapse: 2017)
- Book Waste Book - Temporary Services (Half Letter Press: 2022)
- Contranatura - João Pedro Lima (Selo Turvo: 2022)
- Eternal U - Hubert Humka (BLOW UP PRESS: 2023)
- Extraction: In Conversation with Anna Atkins - Marie Smith (Self-Published: 2023)
- Geometric Forests: Struggles on Mapuche Land - Ritual Inhabitual (Actes Sud: 2022)
- Guftgu - ed. Anshika Varma (Offset Projects: 2020, 2022, 2024)
- H is for Hemp - Maren Krings (Self-published: 2022)
- Iconoclastic Inventory of the Chilean Insurrection - A.A.V.V. (SED Editorial: 2021)
- In Pieces - Sophia Bulgakova, Lia Dostlieva, Ola Lanko, Katia Motyleva, Kateryna Snizhko (Growing Pains: 2023)
- La playa de los juguetes perdidos - Alfredo Blasquez (Inframundo: 2021)
- Monsanto - Mathieu Asselin (Actes Sud / Verlag Kettler: 2017)
- NECK volume 3 - 38 contributors (NECK: 2022)
- re.source - The Sustainable Darkroom (Folium: 2022)
- The Banda Journal - Muhammad Fadli x Fatris MF (Jordan, jordan Édition: 2021)
- The Problem Horse & Other Stories - Julie Sleaford (Self published: 2022)
- The Silent Land - Jesse Alexander (VIKA: 2021)
- this is how the earth must see itself - Tamsin Green (manual.editions: 2021)
- Trinity - Oliver Raymond Barker (Loose Joints: 2021)
What Makes a Photobook Sustainable here?
Canadian Photobooks, Collaboration with CONTACT Festival
- Crossing Time - Kristan Klimczak (Self Published: 2024)
- Displace - Cristian Ordóñez (Another Earth: 2023)
- Freddy and Ceydie - Cince Johnston (Self-Published: 2022)
- How to Understand a Rock - Kate Schneider (Self Published: 2023)
- Souvenir (Issue No. 1 – 3) - Eric Francisco (Reflex Editions: 2022–2024)
- Two Rivers - Matt Horseman (Axis Mundi Press: 2020)
Events
1 May 2025: Exhibition Opening, alongside "Flashpoint! Protest Photography In Print" by 10x10 Photobooks
5-6 May 2025: Workshop - Developing Ecological Photobooks
6 May 2025 (6pm): Discussion - Ecological Photobooks, with workshop participants
Developing Ecological Photobooks
5-6 May 2025 / Daily 10-5/6pm
CONTACT Photobook Lab, Toronto
Max 8 Participants
This two day workshop will develop ecological frameworks for the making of photobooks. We will explore the physical aspects of the book (materials, binding, size) and how these relate to methods of circulation. The workshop will combine short talks, practical activities, group discussions, and engagement with the wider photobook ecosystem through conversations with guest speakers, and is facilitated by Tamsin Green.