Photobook Phenomenon

Published to accompany the exhibition of the same name at Barcelona's Centre de Cultura Contemporània (CCCB), Photobook Phenomenon traces the rise of the photobook from an overlooked publishing format to one of the central forms through which contemporary photography circulates.

Edited by Vicenç Villatoro, Pepe De Mora, Moritz Neumüller, Lesley Martin and Martin Parr, the catalogue combines historical and critical essays with statements from photographers who work directly in the book form, including Laia Abril, Julián Barón, Alejandro Cartagena, Jana Romanova, Viviane Sassen, Thomas Sauvin, and Katja Stuke and Oliver Sieber, each discussing the creative process behind making a photobook. The exhibition itself explored ways of displaying and handling photobooks through interactive installations, letting visitors experience the object quality of the works rather than only reproductions of their pages.

Produced with Fundación Foto Colectania and published by RM Verlag, the book functions as both an exhibition record and a standalone survey of contemporary photobook culture, gathering curators, historians and practitioners around a format that has increasingly become the primary site of photographic authorship.