What Makes a Photobook Sustainable?
CONTACT Photobook Lab, CONTACT Festival, Toronto, Canada (1-10 May 2025)
What Makes a Photobook Sustainable? is a publication and hands on reading room that opens up vital conversations about how we are making and circulating photography books.
The photobook industry has grown exponentially over the years, there are now photobook fairs and awards on every continent, as well as a broad range of publishers, from small imprints and self-publishers to medium and large-scale dedicated photobook publishers. The portability of the book means that they can travel all over the world (although often at prohibitively high cost).
Publishing a book mobilises many processes that connect to both local and global ecologies through materials, money, labour and transportation. The selection of books in this reading room are representative of the Sustainable Photobook Publishing (SPP) network as a now global platform. They illustrate how photographers and publishers are navigating practical sustainability solutions, ethical social practices, and decolonial initiatives that suggest ecological futures for the photobook.
The exhibition is supported by a display of local books, to ask the question - What makes a photobook sustainable here?
The exhibition opening will take place on Thursday 1 May, alongside the opening of "Flashpoint! Protest Photography In Print" by 10x10 Photobooks.
Contact Photobook Lab Library
The reading room has been designed to use the existing library shelves, and to play with their positions and frequency.
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)
Local Books
- Displace - Cristian Ordóñez (Another Earth: 2023)
- Freddy and Ceydie - Cince Johnston (Self-Published 2022)
- How to Understand a Rock - Kate Schneider (Self-Published: 2023)
More coming soon...
Events
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.