5 Photo Books We Loved From 2023

Photo books consolidate the union of storytelling and images, making sequencing the last arduous challenge a photographer has to face to complete a project. They are also a lasting form that allows a vast audience to see and know a photographer's work.

These assemblies are works of art in themselves and the ultimate medium for a photo to be experienced. We have compiled a list of 5 photo books that have been published in 2023 and that have struck a chord with us.

Tuck and Roll -by J. Houston (GOST BOOKS)

The photographs in Tuck and Roll by J Houston envision a utopic community in the American Midwest. Existing outside formal narratives often stereotyping the region, the portraits, and domestic landscapes in the book are interwoven with hints of magical realism and implicit connections between people and symbols. GOST BOOKS.

The rural setting of these images places the people portrayed in familiar contexts and places of the domestic environment. The use of large-format photography to slow down the process also slows down the viewer, who is welcomed into this warm and inviting environment where we get to know the community members, one by one, one cup of coffee at a time.

The photographs tell the stories of each resident in the intimate setting of the Midwestern utopian town. The photographer introduces each person in this community, and shows us the close relationship between them.

The landscape, which serves not only as a backdrop but also as a metaphor for the inside and outside of trans people's lives, invites us to reflect on complicated private and external dynamics faced every day. It reminds us of the challenges this duality poses to the queer community, and to the trans community in particular.

Replikant by Uta Genilke (Witty Books)

I was very afraid to fall asleep because then the dreams came, the nightmares, in which a white Mercedes Benz was slowly chasing me down a lonely country road, or I heard a voice from a ditch, from a crashed car, it was him calling for help, but I suspected he was just trying to lure and capture me. Witty Books

They say that dreams are a way for the unconscious to talk to us. Through the tumultuous event that ignites those dreams, just like in a Kafkaesque voyage, we unfold the layers of the unconscious in a raw and poetic supernatural adventure.

Holding a powerful grip on our state of mind, the mysterious meaning of our dreams can reveal important aspects of our psyche. In Replikant, Uta Genilke puts a dream in our hands, and we descend into the abysses of the mind, holding the author's hand.

When Black is Burned by Marguerite Bornhauser (Simple Editions)

When Black is Burned is a series somewhere between reality and fiction, poetry and everyday life, that plays with the codes of abstraction and photographic figuration to plunge us into a chiaroscuro universe, brightly colored and populated by shadows, ghosts, and daydreams. Simple Editions

When Black is Burned is an ode to colors and the depth and vibration they bring. When you look at these images, the colors are such a strong presence that they break the fourth dimension by submerging us in a visceral, magmatic feeling of being material.

These colors are not gentle, but they all have a story to tell. The raw poetry and synergistic harmony of this book unleashes pleasure. This book tells not just a color story, but the story of colors – an intimidating task for any photographer. But in this book each image is loud and powerful with its waves of color.

BEING THERE Omar Victor Diop x The Anonymous Project (Textuel Editions)

A jubilant collaboration: director Lee Shulman, creator of The Anonymous Project, asked Senegalese self-portraitist Omar Victor Diop to slip into the anonymous photographs in his collection of American slides from the 1950s and 1960s. Omar Victor Diop.

This publication keeps you glued to its pages, where the dynamics unfold with marvelous humor as the viewer is confronted with issues of class, race, inclusion, and privilege. We are forced to reflect on these important issues of recent history right up to today's society.

It is not an easy task to approach the themes in this book with such a deft sense of humor and goliardic performance, yet this is what Omar Victor pulls off in each image with the clever and cunning delivery of a great storyteller.

Ejercicios mínimos para un Jardín de invierno by Inés Molina Navea. (Ediciones Posibles)

This project studies the relationship between the representation of the savage in the 19th century and colonial history in contemporary aesthetic and political thought.

Inspired by a photographic triptych in the Quai Branly Museum, composed of portraits of women following the rules of nineteenth-century anthropology, Molina Navea questions the representation of the "savage." The book is made of several techniques: digital photography, analogue, photocopies, photoengraving, engraving, and experimental techniques, as well as some text.

Found by chance in a small box in the anthropological archives of the Musée du quai Branly in Paris in 2014, the image that started this project shows three women standing naked, arms at their sides, gazing into the lens. At first glance, the background suggests that the photo was taken outdoors, and makes the viewer believe it is from a tropical country.

With a second look, we see the stamp on the image, which shows that the scene takes place in Paris. The appearance deceives the viewer and forces a judgment upon the women. Throughout the book, Molina Navea questions the scientific context of those images and compares the aesthetic and allegorical meaning of the female and nature, such as the palm tree's representation throughout history.

Do you have a favorite photo book published in 2023? Share them with us below!

written by eparrino on 2024-01-13 in #culture #art-book #photo-books #published-in-2023 #gost-books #witty-books #star-photobook-dummy-award