Photobook Week Aarhus 2017
21-24 Sep

Introduction

In this edition, Photobook Week Aarhus will reach out to new publics with an event called Design Night, which features the exhibition Let’s Judge the Book by its Cover, which will be presented at distinguished design shops in Aarhus.

In the digital realm, we will start a collaboration with Unseen Book Market in Amsterdam.

As the 2017 editions of Unseen Book Market and Photobook Week Aarhus take place during the same weekend, we will launch a joint discussion about the role of the photobook market today. The project Market? What Market? will kick off with a series of Unseen blog entries made by guest contributors involved in both events. Then, the issues raised by the blog post authors will be taken up during the round table discussions in Aarhus and Amsterdam.  

The panel discussion to round up the themes will be moderated by Claus Peder Pedersen and Jesper Rasmussen.

As in earlier years, the booksellers’ section will showcase galleries, publishers and institutions such as Antipyrine, Galleri Image, Space Poetry, Museumsbygningen, ARCHITEGN, Archipelaget, KATALOG – Journal of Photography & Video, PhotoIreland, The Jutland Art Academy, and bt:st verlag, with selected titles from their shelves.

Also on offer this year are two workshops: our popular Photobook Dummy Doctoring Workshop, which allows artists to present their dummies to international professionals to gain valuable feedback and advice; and a Cyanotype workshop with the artist Claudia Hausfeld to be held at Godsbanen in collaboration with Mørkekammeret.

The past three editions of Photobook Week Aarhus have made the event known as an open forum for discussions around the medium, featuring artist talks, debates and conversations, during a weekend packed with interesting events. This year we will kickstart the debate on distribution and markets with a keynote lecture by Gerry Badger, photographer, writer and architect, who has become well known for his three-volume publication The Photobook. A History, co-written with Martin Parr. He will be introduced by the renowned researcher and member of the festival’s advisory board, Mette Sandbye.

The first panel discussion will be called Getting it out there. Publishing and Distributing the Photobook. Moderated by festival curator Moritz Neumüller, it will feature international experts and try to shed new light on the role of the distributor, the bookseller, the online markets and, of course, the collector.

Following the great success of his lecture last year, we have once again invited Thomas Wiegand (author of Deutschland im Fotobuch) for a presentation, this time on Collecting Photobooks: Schmidt & Company, which will also refer to his exhibition on Michael Schmidt’s books, to be shown at Aros Aarhus Art Museum during the festival.

Other presentations will be held by Katrin Elvarsdottir, presenting her selection of Icelandic Photobooks for Photobook Week Aarhus 2017, Tom Nielsen, on Danish Suburban Architecture of Late Modernity, and an artist talk with Hein Heinsen on his contribution to Institut for Skalakunst and the book Scale Art.

Another highlight will be the lecture The Danish Art Scene of Late Modernity by Carsten Juhl.

Within the framework of the special programme, The Librarian’s Choice, Irene Attinger, head librarian at the Maison de la Photographie Européenne in Paris will present her personal selection of favourite books, to be published by Actes du Sud in early 2018. The Royal Danish Library will also join the programme with a selection of books from their collection and Research Librarian Mette Kia Krabbe Meyer will give a talk about these artefacts.

Browse the programme of events, workshops and exhibitions.