This Swedish photo book takes a different approach to the usual photobook format. Here the first 170 pages are Q&A's with thirteen people who are very broadly connected with such books followed by 138 pages of covers and inside pages from a selection of photobooks. Rather than present the titles historically they are shown in three ways: 'Ego' devoted to books revealing aspects of a photographer; 'Image' considers a photobook's formal aesthetic qualities; 'Society' (with the largest number of titles) as this title implies covers Swedish photographers work capturing their country and the world at large.
Niclas Ostlind in the introduction says that it wasn't until 1978 that a dedicated photo gallery and bookshop opened in Stockholm and it provided the stimulus for photographers to create books and many titles shown in the illustrated section are of limited print runs. I thought the Q&A was a clever editorial idea to reveal the thoughts of the contributors and as a publication designer I enjoyed reading art director Greger Nilson's and graphic designer Matilda Plojel's ideas on photo book design and their collaboration with photographers. The other contributors include a booksellers, photographers, book collector, translator, publishers and the librarian of the Hasselblad Foundation.
Swedish photobooks probably aren't too different from those of Denmark and Norway, the Scandinavian countries have a strong tradition of artistic creativity and this is the first book reveal the strength of their photobooks. It's a well designed title and my only criticism is that it's smaller than similar books on the subject so that the covers and spread illustrations are smaller than I would have preferred.
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