The photobook has become an essential part of how contemporary photography is shared with the world. This introductory course opens up new ways of thinking about this medium as an artistic practice and as a publishing culture. Blending theoretical ideas with hands-on examples, this course brings fresh perspectives to this dynamic medium.
Sessions will connect photobooks to wider photographic histories and ecologies, explore their materiality and politics, and reflect on their capacity for multiple interpretations. Together we will consider what happens when we read a photobook, at different scales, from the personal to the institutional.
Featured artists will range from emerging to more established names in photobook practice, including a number of contemporary and London-based practitioners such as Sunil Gupta, Liz Johnson Artur, Chris Killip, Celine Marchbank, Sakiko Nomura, Dayanita Singh and Dafna Talmor. This is subject to change.
This course is led by Dr Briony Carlin.
Course format
Taking place weekly at The Photographers’ Gallery, each session will combine presentations from the course leader with group discussions and hands-on activities. Participants are provided with lecture slides and a list of resources for further study.
Who is this for?
Open to all who are interested in the many histories of photobooks and photographic culture and practice. No prior knowledge necessary.
Week 1 | Perception on Thu 22 Jan
How do we read a photobook? We begin by looking attentively at the sensory and social aspects of how we personally read photobooks – how we experience them individually, and how our interpretations can differ. The session asks how photobooks can invite opportunities for more inclusive social interactions, from making and collaboration to distribution and reading.
Featured artists: Sakiko Nomura, Celine Marchbank and Ruby Wallis.
Week 2 | Politics on Thu 29 Jan
Photobooks serve far more diverse and unexpected functions than might first appear. This session explores unique formal and artistic strategies to consider materiality and design as political. The session will highlight the fascinating counter-cultural heritage of artists’ publishing, and how photobooks can disrupt established histories and economies of photography.
Featured artists: Liz Johnson Artur, Justine Kurland, Rosana Simonassi and Dafna Talmor.
Week 3 | Positioning on Thu 5 Feb
Photobooks can be hard to classify. This session examines where photobooks exist – physically, and conceptually, in the systems we use to organise them. Environments like book fairs or library reading rooms can shape the ways we encounter photobooks, which informs how they can be understood, used, accessed and valued.
Featured artists: Anne Geene & Arjan de Nooy, Tamsin Green and Sunil Gupta.
Week 4 | Potentials on Thu 12 Feb
As published multiples, each photobook exists as many copies, which can be variously treasured, damaged or revisited over time. This final session reflects on how to capture this multiplicity – the photobook’s unique potential to matter differently for makers and readers in each every encounter.
Featured artists: Lewis Bush, Chris Killip and Dayanita Singh.
Biography
Dr Briony Carlin is a researcher and curator who explores intersections of image, experience, technology and feminist theory through photobooks and other cultural objects. She is Lecturer in Art History at Newcastle University, where she teaches theoretical and practical study of art and curating. She runs Binder: Art Book Club at The NewBridge Project, a regular community event for visual books. She has previously worked at the Victoria and Albert Museum and Photo London, and her recent publications include Photographies journal and Burlington Contemporary. This course draws on research from Briony’s new book Encounters with Photobooks: How Art and Experience Matter, which is coming out in 2026 with Leuven University Press.
Details on how to access the event will be confirmed upon registration. Please check your junk folders if you haven't received an email from TPG staff confirming your place.
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