提起“摄影书“（Photobook），中国的读者们已经渐渐有了一个共识：这是一种以书为载体通过图片编辑来建构叙事的艺术形式。几年前人们还称这种动辄数百元的艺术载体叫“摄影画册”。而“摄影书籍”因为仅仅比摄影书多出了一个“籍”字，便仍可囊括摄影史、摄影理论、摄影展览图录等任何与摄影沾边的书。从“画册”到“摄影书”这个模糊的变动过程不仅反映了摄影书作为艺术形式获得了更多独立关注，也说明了这个变动背后涌动的艺术实践。本文主要回顾14年至今摄影书的发展。

近年来随着几个中国摄影领域的艺术家书展览相继展开，国内摄影书出版、收藏和批评的氛围也日渐浓厚。其实在海外，摄影书早已成为当代摄影除展览外最重要的呈现方式之一，并且与图片编辑、平面设计、书籍印刷等其他艺术相结合，成为一种完整、独立、时间长久而易于流传的艺术形式。在英国坎布威尔艺术学院（Camberwell College of Arts）还有一个两年制的书籍艺术硕士（MA Book Arts），许多艺术家就是在摄影实践之后意识到书籍制作对自己的艺术呈现的重要性才前来进修。在国内，摄影评论家、OFPiX创始人任悦一直以工作坊等形式传播摄影书文化以及摄影书编辑和制作方法，并且通过博客1416教室翻译和引介国外优秀摄影书。她于2013年在丽水摄影节的“摄影与书”展览将中国摄影书呈现到主流视野。香蕉鱼书店、假杂志、Same Paper、无早书店等国内自出版社和摄影师们的长期合作也真正长期推动着国内摄影书的出版。当然在这些努力中，最重要的是使用图片的艺术家们不断“做书”的实践。各个群体对“做书”的推动和坚持，终于使摄影书文化缓缓升温，渐至沸点。如果说近两年摄影书发展有什么阶段性标志，可能就是大型摄影书展览的增加。

2015年初，策展人何伊宁在英国FORMAT 15摄影节上呈现了“来自中国的50本摄影书 2009-2014”展览，集中展示了近期中国当代摄影中艺术家手工书、自出版和小型出版的各类型摄影书。[1] 此展览经过调整之后又在3月份的中国兰州谷仓当代影像馆展出。何伊宁也在文章《影与纸的奇遇——中国当代摄影书观察》中梳理了中国当代摄影书的的发展过程。[2] 针对摄影书近年来的持续上升的热度，该展览的目录设计师祖宇说，“伴随越来越多的中国摄影师或艺术家对制作作品目录或个人作品集的需求上升（毕竟只有少数摄影师或艺术家作品可以被选中在画廊或博物馆展售），中国摄影画册的风格和传播形式日益多元，并开始游走向‘主流’摄影出版途经之外的广袤空间，例如摄影画册的小型出版，摄影师的私人出版，艺术家或摄影师的手工书等。这些‘独立’的当代摄影画册在推广过程中，摄影师能够擅自运作的余地空前加大。”[3]

2015年4月，“中国摄影书集”展览在北京尤伦斯艺术中心开幕。“中国摄影书集”基于英国摄影家、马格南摄影基金会主席、收藏家马丁·帕尔的摄影书收藏，工作、生活于北京和伦敦的荷兰摄影小组鲁小本&泰斯在项目中承担了收集工作。展览源起于帕尔对政治宣传和社会现实主义摄影的兴趣，也与他当时正在进行的世界摄影书历史的研究相关。快速扩充起来的中国摄影书收藏，成为了他之后的研究基础，也为在2015年由光圈出版社和中国摄影出版社共同出版的《中国摄影书集》（Chinese Photobook）进行了铺垫。[4] 此次在北京的展览，也是继法国阿尔勒摄影节首次亮相、纽约光圈基金会的二度展览之后的第三次公开展示。形式上，法国阿尔勒摄影节版本的展览上，观众需要手拿荧光板进入漆黑的展场中自己发掘和探索，北京版本则中规中矩。该展览被国内媒体大量报道，《新视线》杂志制作了“中国摄影书集”五月专刊，并纳入了对马丁·帕尔和鲁小本的采访。但也有评论家认为，马丁·帕尔的编纂带有政治猎奇以及殖民视角，中国需要梳理出有自己观点的摄影书史。

严格来讲，《中国摄影书集》不能算“摄影书”，它只是一个摄影书的合集。但马丁·帕尔的摄影师而非学者的身份又让这本书成为“摄影师（眼里的有关中国摄影书的）书”，我们也可以简称为“摄影书”吧！伴随着这股总结中国摄影书的热潮，《中国摄影》5月刊杂志做了“中国摄影书”专题，“瑞象馆”也推出了“自出版”专题。其中值得一提的是批评家张涵露通过对早期当代摄影中的由摄影家荣荣和刘铮共同创办的《新摄影》杂志的回顾，论述《新摄影》为中国摄影史和摄影独立出版史带来的变革。张涵露也在附注内提到了中国摄影协会的出版历史与当代摄影出版的割裂，“‘摄协’的意识形态与现实活动的孤立性导致了讨论语境的分离”[5]。如果说摄影家协会的出版历史主要是摄影文化的经典学术、历史文献整理，那么张涵露所说的“现实活动”即当代艺术领域的以摄影为媒介的艺术家的探索，则是以书为艺术的载体，也就更像西方语境下的“艺术家书”。

2015年11月，兰州谷仓影像馆在连州摄影节上设立的谷仓摄影样书奖及展览，邀请了在中国风头正劲的马丁·帕尔作为评委。艺术家孙彦初的《虚构集》从帕尔选出的六本入围样书中脱颖而出，摘得一等奖，样书进入了假杂志出版计划。其余五本入围摄影书为：杨圆圆《几近抵达，几近具体，重庆》、戴建勇 《影像太极拳》、严怿波《暗流》、尹征航《Hang No.1》、黎晓亮《Lonely PLanet》。[6] 在《虚构集》中，孙彦初在他收集来的一些中国家庭生活照片或者景点留影照上进行了涂绘。这种形式让人想起2013年艺术家刘小东在《在和田》展览中在照片上的涂绘。具体对获奖六本书的介绍可参看PhotoFans编辑吴栋的报导[7]。

2015上海艺术影像展中出现了由假杂志策划、《艺术界》（LEAP）支持的“中国独立摄影书阅览室”，此次展览以直接展出手工书实物的方式，呈现国内优秀独立出版的摄影书籍及摄影艺术家的自制手工书。假杂志创办人言由也在过去几年策划过“中国独立摄影书展”、“手工摄影书展”等展览。独立出版在国外往往又叫小型出版，多数情况下它所指的是出版者个人的主导，从内容编辑、排版设计到印刷装订都由个人完成，因此也带着强烈的个人风格。可以理解这样的独立出版被当做艺术品严肃对待，并渐渐成为一种小众的出版文化。在国内“独立出版”和“手工书”一直是摄影书领域的重头戏，然而其实独立与否的标志往往只是“书号”的有或无。我想，如果书号可以被更低廉、易得，可以大出版商的发行渠道可以更容易进入，如果大出版公司的出版门槛更低，如果那里的图片编辑和摄影师更近，那么或许就不需要强调独立出版。

假杂志近年来密集地推出了一系列摄影独立出版，也参加了纽约、巴黎、东京、香港等地的摄影书展。假杂志出版的摄影书也被不同网站或博客列入年度摄影书的名单：2014年Photo-eye 提名了张克纯的《北流活活》，Jörg M. Colberg 的摄影博客 Conscientious 提名了木格的《回家》，Peter Evans 的摄影博客 microcord 提名了张晓的《海岸线》[8]，2015年托马斯·苏文的作品《双喜》入选了2015年的Photo-eye书单。《双喜》的图片来自于“北京银矿”（Beijing Silvermine），这是一个由50万张从北京边缘垃圾站逐年抢救回来的废旧底片组成的资料库，而《双喜》挑选了这些照片中有关婚宴上新娘子给宾客点烟的场景。书籍因此做成了一本封面是烟的小书，可以恰好装在真的双喜烟盒里，这样带着幽默感的精巧小型装置在近期的摄影书中的确难得。假杂志自15年还出版了国内摄影师蔡东东的摄影装置作品集《泉》、林舒的《鼩鼱》以及陈哲的《蜜蜂&可承受的》。而在假杂志最不受关注的作品里，可能是与斯洛文尼亚摄影师马蒂阿士·坦契奇（Matjaž Tančič）合作出版的摄影师在安徽黟县拍摄的3D摄影作品集，算是摄影以某种方式参与到了欧宁的碧山计划中。另外，假杂志出版社目前正在筹划出版《假杂志》，内容为“影响中国摄影师的人、物”。[9]

由王义军和袁小鹏发起的位于上海的Same Paper出版工作室在近年出版了几本小书，或者说Zine（杂志书）。《Food Issue》是从近年来曝光率攀升的摄影师任航的未公开照片中筛选出的照片，这些照片中“他拍照时不经意露出了脚，或是用脚给男孩们喂食和踩脸”，算是以美食为主题的情色书。《Trend Issue》的灵感来源于一个流行的论调，“穿A&F和Hollister的男生多半是gay ”，而他们做书的照片来源于网络，从几个热门社交软件中寻找出穿A&F和Hollister热门款的男孩，再“筛选出最符合品牌形象的图片，以旅行和自拍为线索进行编辑，再按照服装颜色的受欢迎程度来分类，并模拟社交软件的界面来排版。”[10] 另外一本Zine《Daddy and Son》同样是关注日常事物中的情色意味,关注中国14-18周岁的男孩处于的刑法性侵害保护的真空地带。制作人把从情色网站和主流电影中取得的素材进行穿插编辑，反思“父与子”不同层面的语意。《lifestyles》同样是一本以图片为语言的zine，使用包括Charlie Engman、Jeremy O'Sullivan、咖小西、谌利、袁小鹏、王义军和许正东在内的七位国内外年轻摄影师的作品。“lifestyle应媒体为炒作消费而诞生，是一个在当下常常被时尚媒体滥用的词汇。以上来自我们身边和所关注的摄影师，都惯于从自己的生活中轻松获取画面，但每个人的观看方式几近雷同，构图和关注点等拍摄喜好高度重合。所以时常很难辨认哪张照片是出自于谁，如同大家都在追赶一种“时髦”的lifestyle。”[11]

可以看出，在Same Paper的创始人王义军和袁小鹏这里，摄影书并非为某个摄影师的项目而作，而是书本身成为独立的一个艺术项目，摄影书的编辑比项目中的摄影师（或者网络照片的创作者）有更多的贡献（authorship）。假杂志的编辑言由则主要是帮助摄影师把已经完成的项目编辑成书。这是两种不同的编辑方式并不能被互相比较，但是前者的创作者的地位却比后者更明显。在独立出版中，书籍编辑当然会影响书籍呈现，如何保全、保持、揭示书籍编辑的作用呢？或许更多对独立出版的工作方式甚至是出版个案的追踪需要被更多的报道和显露出来。

与独立出版平行发展的，还有摄影书制作工作坊。三影堂摄影艺术中心在2015年举办了由日本著名平面设计师和出版人町口觉带领的摄影书制作工作坊，学生全程参与了中文版森山大道写真集《Dazai》的策划、设计、印刷、发行的过程。2016年町口觉摄影书工作坊将举办第二期。而与这样印厂出版相对的，手工书的热度也一直不减。相比起需要团队合作和更多资源的大量出版，手工书更易制作，也因为可脱离电脑排版而有了更多有趣的玩法。2014年获得三影堂大奖的朱岚清的《负向的旅程》就是以手工书为载体（该书也是OFPiX“还乡”手工书计划的一部分），《负向的旅程》的获奖也让“手工书“的概念被许多人熟知。2014年，彭永坚发起的广州书墟也邀请艺术家张文心和杜扬担任手工书工作坊导师，让人们能在做书的过程里与书产生更亲密的连结。

任航2015年和维也纳OstLicht Gallery合作出版了画册《野生》，摄影集《新欢》则集结了任航15年2月初探访纽约的作品。编号223（林志鹏）的独立个人影像Zine《Versitile》在2014年出版了第二本《beautiful things out of the dust》。在这一系列里缩减了223往常图片中的情色属性。旅美摄影师张文心在2015年制作了手工书《五夜，水族馆》，这本书是基于作者试图重建自己在中美之间往返的旅居感受的半虚构项目。该书和其他三本中国摄影书《在克拉克夫的十日》《人工剧团》《Koan》一起在卡塞尔摄影书节亮相。目前就读于英国的艺术家文非易的《In a Manner of Speaking》则关注的是日常生活中的诗意，特别是生活中的“现成物”。曾留学于纽约的摄影师黄东黎的手工书《表象之外》，由关注东西方文化差异和相同之处的摄影项目出发，希望通过对照片的编辑在不同的被摄事物之间建立联系。杜扬在2014年制作了《瘦夏》，进入了法国图书馆收藏项目。郑川的手工书《废园》则是关于拆迁，作者并未直接对准房屋，而是挪用、拼贴老照片。年轻的摄影师邬烈威则在2015年制作了《shizhen》、《副作用》、《一封情书》、《不可思议的酒力》、《WULIEWEI》等书。

2015年，摄影师朱岚清、杨圆圆和设计师杨鹿童合作发起了Zine《次根》，这是一个基于对既有图像的兴趣而展开的计划，其题目来自德勒兹的“树喻文本”概念。在这里，“次根”指的是画面中主体之外的其他细节，它们通常是被拍照者无意捕捉到画面中的部分，尽管它们的层级低于“主根”，有时却具备更深远的讨论意义。目前《次根》已经发布了第一期，主题为“照片中的照片”与“照片中的时间标记”。这种关注画面中主体之外的其他细节的内涵的方法和2015年三影堂摄影奖大奖获得者陈萧伊的艺术家书《云词典》互相呼应。在《云词典》中，艺术家搜集了一些偶发性重大事件（与人的意志无关）的图片，却将关注点放在新闻照片中的云。“在事件/现象的偶然发生和判断因果之间存在着距离，这段距离是有限的，可是时间无限。自然的灾难与自然的祥和，有时候竟然不可思议地融洽。”[12]

在回顾中，我们不难发现摄影书已经渐渐与摄影艺术本身有了一定距离，它不再局限于摄影师的某个摄影项目而更多探索着书本身作为艺术形式的自由与限制。在摄影书图片编辑中，使用不同来源的图片进行挪用、拼贴以构建新语境的做法已不鲜见；与平面设计师合作，让书籍装帧设计与图片内容、阅读体验结合也被更多艺术家接受。

但在摄影书实践流行起来的同时，针对国内摄影书的报导和批评仍滞后，信息渠道少而窄。大众对许多摄影书的了解方式仅限于艺术家个人网站的简短介绍，而摄影书展览通告中也往往缺乏对具体参展书籍更丰富的文字描述，翻书视频、做书访谈更难得一见。如此信息封闭，很难让摄影书走出艺术家和出版人的小圈子。同时，摄影书在以摄影书展览和互联网为渠道为人所知的时代如何确保自身在传播中不落入在场（实体出现）却不发声（没有自我阐释空间）的怪圈，和今天的艺术家在群展中的困境相似。但在摄影书的情境中更值得我们注意的是，策展人在对待流通于市场上的摄影书时不需要像在群展中那样考虑艺术家的意见，因为摄影书作为出版物的独立性、其作为物的沉默都让策展人有了更多的话语空间，可没有阻碍地为书代言。另一方面，摄影书展览也有其无可比拟的便捷，即艺术家往往不用到场、展览承办方无需专门为某个展览输出、装裱展出版本其后再销毁。在今天摄影节动辄输出几千幅图片的的情况下，摄影书展览更显出其环保与高效。而作为一个读者，我期待在今后有更多的主题性的摄影书展览，摄影书本身的内容、立场得到更多关注。

1. 何伊宁, 《来自中国的50本当代摄影书 2009-2014》, UK Now - British Council, 2015年3月2日, http://uknow.org.cn/50-contemporary-photobooks-from-china-2009-2014-exhibition-2/.

2. 何伊宁, 《自出版专题 | 何伊宁：影与纸的奇遇——中国当代摄影书观察》, 瑞象馆, 2015年6月12日, http://www.rayartcenter.org/?p=7942.

3. 祖宇, 《“出血”的照片》, 中国摄影, 5月刊 : 66.

4. 《中国摄影书集》, UCCA, 2014年11月12日, http://ucca.org.cn/exhibition/the-chinese-photobook/.

5. 张涵露, 《〈新摄影〉：当代中国摄影自主表达与自出版的早期范例》, 瑞象馆, 2015年6月12日, http://www.rayartcenter.org/?p=7942.

6. 吴栋, 《连州国际摄影年展各展区开幕 谷仓样书奖揭晓》, PhotoFans, 2015年6月12日, http://article.photofans.cn/article-40248-1.html.

7. 吴栋, 《连州年展上哪六本摄影样书被马丁-帕尔选中了？》, 见于2016年1月30日, http://article.photofans.cn/article-40269-1.html.

8. 《十本半，及新年红包》，言由，“假杂志”豆瓣小站，http://site.douban.com/120159/widget/notes/4144773/note/474354357/，2014年12月26日。

9. 《色影无忌专访假杂志言由》，色影无忌，http://vision.xitek.com/interview/201412/17-167314.html，2014年12月17日。

10. 《Same Paper》, 见于2016年1月30日, http://www.samepaper.com.

11. 《Lifestyles》，Same Paper，http://www.samepaper.com/lifestyles-1，2014年春。

12. 《XIAOYI CHEN》, 见于2016年1月31日, http://chenxiaoyi.net.

Machine translation (AI) of the Chinese original, not yet reviewed by the author. Please cite the original.

When it comes to the “photobook”, Chinese readers have gradually arrived at a shared understanding: it is an art form that uses the book as its vehicle and builds a narrative through the editing of images. Only a few years ago people still called this art object – which easily costs several hundred yuan – a “photo album” (sheying huace). Meanwhile the term sheying shuji, “photography books”, differs from sheying shu, “photobook”, by just one character, and so can still cover anything with a connection to photography: histories of photography, photographic theory, exhibition catalogues and so on. This blurry shift from “album” to “photobook” reflects not only the growing independent attention paid to the photobook as an art form, but also the artistic practice surging behind it. This essay mainly looks back at how the photobook has developed from 2014 to the present.

In recent years, as a number of exhibitions of artists’ books in the field of photography have opened one after another, the culture of publishing, collecting and critiquing photobooks in China has grown steadily richer. Abroad, the photobook has long been one of the most important ways – besides the exhibition – of presenting contemporary photography. Combined with other arts such as picture editing, graphic design and book printing, it has become a complete, independent art form that lasts and travels easily. Camberwell College of Arts in the UK even runs a two-year MA Book Arts, and many artists enrol after years of photographic practice, having realised how important bookmaking is to the way they present their work. In China, the photography critic Ren Yue, founder of OFPiX, has long spread photobook culture and methods of photobook editing and production through workshops and other formats, and has translated and introduced outstanding foreign photobooks through her blog, Classroom 1416. Her 2013 exhibition “Photography and Book” at the Lishui Photography Festival brought Chinese photobooks into mainstream view. Long-term collaborations between photographers and Chinese self-publishers and bookshops such as Bananafish Books, Jiazazhi, Same Paper and Wuzao Bookshop have also genuinely driven photobook publishing in China over the long run. Of course, the most important of all these efforts is the continuous bookmaking of artists who work with images. Thanks to the push and persistence of these different groups, photobook culture has slowly warmed up and is now nearing boiling point. If the past two years of photobook development have a milestone, it may be the rise in large-scale photobook exhibitions.

In early 2015, the curator He Yining presented the exhibition “50 Contemporary Photobooks from China 2009–2014” at the FORMAT15 photography festival in the UK, bringing together artists’ handmade books, self-published books and small-press photobooks from recent Chinese contemporary photography.[1] After some adjustments, the exhibition was shown again in March at the Lanzhou Barn Contemporary Image Museum in China. In her essay “A Strange Encounter between Image and Paper: Observations on Contemporary Chinese Photobooks”, He Yining also traced the development of the contemporary Chinese photobook.[2] Commenting on the photobook’s steadily rising popularity in recent years, Zu Yu, who designed the exhibition’s catalogue, said: “As more and more Chinese photographers and artists need to make catalogues or portfolios of their work (after all, only a few photographers’ or artists’ works get selected for exhibition and sale in galleries or museums), the styles and forms of circulation of Chinese photobooks are becoming ever more diverse. They have begun to wander into the vast space outside ‘mainstream’ photography publishing channels – small-press photobooks, photographers’ private publications, artists’ or photographers’ handmade books and so on. In promoting these ‘independent’ contemporary photobooks, photographers have more room than ever to operate on their own terms.”[3]

In April 2015, the exhibition “The Chinese Photobook” opened at the Ullens Center for Contemporary Art (UCCA) in Beijing. It was based on the photobook collection of Martin Parr – the British photographer, collector and president of Magnum Photos – with the Dutch photography duo Ruben Lundgren and Thijs groot Wassink (WassinkLundgren), who live and work between Beijing and London, doing the collecting for the project. The exhibition grew out of Parr’s interest in propaganda and socialist realist photography, and was also linked to his ongoing research into the history of the photobook worldwide. His rapidly expanding collection of Chinese photobooks became the basis of his later research and paved the way for The Chinese Photobook, co-published in 2015 by Aperture and China Photographic Publishing House.[4] The Beijing show was the collection’s third public outing, after its debut at the Rencontres d’Arles in France and a second showing at the Aperture Foundation in New York. In terms of display, visitors to the Arles version had to carry light panels into a pitch-dark exhibition space and discover things for themselves; the Beijing version was by the book. The exhibition was widely covered by the Chinese media, and New Vision (《新视线》) magazine devoted its May issue to “The Chinese Photobook”, including interviews with Martin Parr and Ruben Lundgren. But some critics argued that Parr’s compilation carried a political exoticism and a colonial perspective, and that China needed to work out a history of the photobook from its own point of view.

Strictly speaking, The Chinese Photobook isn’t a “photobook” – it is simply a compendium of photobooks. But because Martin Parr is a photographer rather than a scholar, the book becomes “a photographer’s book (about Chinese photobooks, as he sees them)”, so we might as well call it a “photobook” for short! Riding this wave of summing up the Chinese photobook, the May issue of Chinese Photography magazine ran a special feature on “The Chinese Photobook”, and Ray Art Center launched a feature on “self-publishing”. Particularly worth mentioning is the critic Hanlu Zhang’s look back at New Photo, the magazine founded by the photographers RongRong and Liu Zheng in the early days of contemporary photography, in which she argues for the changes New Photo brought to the history of Chinese photography and of independent photography publishing. In a note, Hanlu Zhang also points to the rupture between the publishing history of the China Photographers Association and contemporary photography publishing: “The ideology of the ‘Photographers Association’ and the isolation of its actual activities have led to a separation of the contexts of discussion.”[5] If the Photographers Association’s publishing history consists mainly of canonical scholarship on photographic culture and the compiling of historical documents, then what Hanlu Zhang calls “actual activities” – the explorations of artists working with photography in the contemporary art world – use the book as a vehicle for art, which makes them more like the “artist’s book” in the Western context.

In November 2015, the Lanzhou Barn Contemporary Image Museum set up the Barn Photobook Dummy Award and exhibition at the Lianzhou Foto Festival, inviting Martin Parr, then riding high in China, to serve as judge. The artist Sun Yanchu’s Ficciones (《虚构集》) stood out from the six dummies Parr shortlisted and took first prize, and the book entered Jiazazhi’s publishing programme. The other five shortlisted photobooks were Yang Yuanyuan’s Almost Arrived, Almost Concrete, Chongqing (《几近抵达，几近具体，重庆》), Dai Jianyong’s Image Tai Chi (《影像太极拳》), Yan Yibo’s Undercurrent (《暗流》), Yin Zhenghang’s Hang No.1 and Li Xiaoliang’s Lonely PLanet.[6] In Ficciones, Sun Yanchu painted over Chinese family snapshots and tourist-spot souvenir photos he had collected. The approach recalls the painting on photographs in the artist Liu Xiaodong’s 2013 exhibition “In Hotan”. For more on the six shortlisted books, see the report by PhotoFans editor Wu Dong.[7]

At Photo Shanghai 2015 there was a “China Independent Photobook Reading Room”, curated by Jiazazhi and supported by LEAP. By displaying the handmade books themselves, it presented outstanding independently published photobooks from China alongside photographers’ own handmade books. Jiazazhi’s founder Yan You has also curated exhibitions over the past few years such as the “China Independent Photobook Exhibition” and the “Handmade Photobook Exhibition”. Abroad, independent publishing is often also called small-press publishing. In most cases it refers to publishing led by an individual, who handles everything from editing the content to layout, design, printing and binding, so the results carry a strong personal style. It is understandable that such independent publications are taken seriously as works of art and have gradually become a niche publishing culture. In China, “independent publishing” and “handmade books” have always been the main event in the photobook world, yet in reality the mark of independence is often just whether or not a book has an official ISBN (in China these are allocated through state publishers). I suspect that if ISBNs were cheaper and easier to get, if the distribution channels of big publishers were easier to break into, if the threshold for publishing with big publishing houses were lower, and if their picture editors were closer to photographers, then perhaps there would be no need to stress independent publishing at all.

In recent years Jiazazhi has put out a dense series of independent photography publications and taken part in photobook fairs in New York, Paris, Tokyo, Hong Kong and elsewhere. Its photobooks have also appeared on various websites’ and blogs’ lists of the year’s best: in 2014 photo-eye picked Zhang Kechun’s The Yellow River (《北流活活》), Jörg M. Colberg’s photography blog Conscientious picked Mu Ge’s Going Home (《回家》), and Peter Evans’s photography blog microcord picked Zhang Xiao’s Coastline (《海岸线》).[8] In 2015, Thomas Sauvin’s Until Death Do Us Part (《双喜》, “Double Happiness”) made photo-eye’s book list for that year. Its pictures come from the Beijing Silvermine, an archive of half a million discarded negatives rescued year after year from a waste recycling site on the edge of Beijing; the book selects scenes of brides lighting cigarettes for guests at wedding banquets. It was therefore made as a small book with a cigarette on the cover that fits neatly inside a real Double Happiness cigarette packet – a witty, finely made little device of a kind that is genuinely rare among recent photobooks. Since 2015, Jiazazhi has also published the Chinese photographer Cai Dongdong’s Fountain (《泉》), a collection of his photographic installation works, Lin Shu’s Qu Jing (《鼩鼱》, “shrew”) and Chen Zhe’s Bees & The Bearable (《蜜蜂&可承受的》). Perhaps the least noticed of Jiazazhi’s books is the collection of 3D photographs taken in Yi County, Anhui, by the Slovenian photographer Matjaž Tančič, published in collaboration with him – a way in which photography took part, of sorts, in Ou Ning’s Bishan Project. Jiazazhi is also currently preparing to publish the magazine Jiazazhi, about “the people and things that have influenced Chinese photographers”.[9]

Same Paper, the Shanghai publishing studio started by Wang Yijun and Yuan Xiaopeng, has published several small books – or zines – in recent years. Food Issue is a selection of unpublished pictures by Ren Hang, a photographer whose profile has been soaring lately. In these photos “his feet casually appear in the frame as he shoots, or he uses his feet to feed the boys and step on their faces” – an erotic book on the theme of food, you might say. Trend Issue was inspired by a popular claim that “boys who wear A&F and Hollister are mostly gay”. Its images come from the internet: the makers searched several popular social apps for boys wearing A&F and Hollister’s best-selling styles, then “selected the pictures that best matched the brands’ image, edited them along the lines of travel and selfies, sorted them by how popular the colours of the clothes were, and laid them out to mimic a social app’s interface.”[10] Another zine, Daddy and Son, likewise looks at the erotic undertones of everyday things, focusing on the gap in criminal law that leaves boys aged 14 to 18 in China without protection from sexual assault. Its makers intercut material taken from porn websites and mainstream films to reflect on the different layers of meaning in “father and son”. lifestyles is another zine that uses images as its language, bringing together work by seven young photographers from China and abroad: Charlie Engman, Jeremy O’Sullivan, Ka Xiaoxi, Chen Li, Yuan Xiaopeng, Wang Yijun and Xu Zhengdong. “‘Lifestyle’ was born of the media’s hype for consumption and is a word constantly abused by fashion media today. The photographers above, from around us and whom we follow, are all used to easily taking pictures from their own lives, but their ways of seeing are almost identical, with heavily overlapping preferences in composition and focus. So it is often hard to tell who took which photo, as if everyone were chasing a ‘fashionable’ lifestyle.”[11]

It is clear that for Same Paper’s founders, Wang Yijun and Yuan Xiaopeng, a photobook isn’t made for a particular photographer’s project; the book itself becomes an independent art project, and the photobook’s editors contribute more authorship than the photographers in the project (or the makers of the online pictures). Jiazazhi’s editor Yan You, by contrast, mainly helps photographers edit already finished projects into books. These are two different ways of editing and can’t really be compared, but the creator’s role is more visible in the former than in the latter. In independent publishing, a book’s editor naturally shapes how the book is presented – so how can the editor’s role be preserved, maintained and revealed? Perhaps the working methods of independent publishing, and even individual publishing cases, need to be followed and reported on far more.

Developing in parallel with independent publishing are photobook-making workshops. In 2015, Three Shadows Photography Art Centre held a photobook workshop led by the renowned Japanese graphic designer and publisher Satoshi Machiguchi, in which students took part in the entire process of planning, designing, printing and distributing the Chinese edition of Daido Moriyama’s photobook Dazai. A second edition of the Machiguchi workshop will be held in 2016. In contrast to such print-shop publishing, the handmade book has also stayed popular. Compared with large print runs that need teamwork and more resources, handmade books are easier to make, and because they can do without computer layout they allow for more playful approaches. Zhu Lanqing’s A Journey in Reverse Direction (《负向的旅程》), which won the Three Shadows Photography Award in 2014, took the form of a handmade book (it was also part of OFPiX’s “Homecoming” handmade book project), and its win made the idea of the “handmade book” familiar to many people. Also in 2014, the Guangzhou Book Market, started by Peng Yongjian, invited the artists Wenxin Zhang and Du Yang to lead handmade book workshops, so that people could build a closer bond with books through the process of making them.

In 2015 Ren Hang published the book Wild (《野生》) with OstLicht Gallery in Vienna, while the photobook New Love (《新欢》) gathers the work he made on a visit to New York in early February 2015. The second issue of Versatile, the independent personal image zine by No.223 (Lin Zhipeng), beautiful things out of the dust, came out in 2014; this series tones down the eroticism usual in No.223’s pictures. Wenxin Zhang, a photographer based in the US, made the handmade book Five Nights, Aquarium (《五夜，水族馆》) in 2015, a semi-fictional project based on her attempt to reconstruct her feelings of living back and forth between China and the US. The book appeared at the Kassel Fotobookfestival together with three other Chinese photobooks: 10 Days in Krakow (《在克拉克夫的十日》), Artificial Theater (《人工剧团》) and Koan. The artist Wen Feiyi, currently studying in the UK, made In a Manner of Speaking, which is concerned with the poetry of everyday life, especially life’s “readymades”. Huang Dongli, a photographer who studied in New York, made the handmade book Beyond Appearances (《表象之外》), which grew out of a photographic project on the differences and similarities between Eastern and Western cultures and aims to build connections between different subjects through the editing of photographs. Du Yang made Thin Summer (《瘦夏》) in 2014, which entered the collection programme of a French library. Zheng Chuan’s handmade book Ruined Garden (《废园》) is about demolition, but rather than pointing his camera straight at the houses, he appropriates and collages old photographs. And the young photographer Wu Liewei made shizhen, Side Effects (《副作用》), A Love Letter (《一封情书》), Incredible Drinking Power (《不可思议的酒力》), WULIEWEI and other books in 2015.

In 2015, the photographers Zhu Lanqing and Yang Yuanyuan and the designer Yang Lutong jointly launched the zine Secondary Roots (《次根》), a project growing out of an interest in existing images. Its title comes from Deleuze’s notion of the “arborescent” tree-like text. Here, “secondary roots” are the details in a picture other than its main subject – usually parts the photographer captured unintentionally. Though they rank below the “taproot”, they sometimes carry more far-reaching significance. The first issue of Secondary Roots is already out, on the themes of “photographs within photographs” and “time markers within photographs”. This way of attending to what the details beyond the main subject mean echoes the artist’s book Cloud Dictionary (《云词典》) by Chen Xiaoyi, winner of the 2015 Three Shadows Photography Award. In Cloud Dictionary, the artist collected pictures of major chance events (ones that had nothing to do with human will), but focused her attention on the clouds in the news photographs. “Between the chance occurrence of an event or phenomenon and the judgement of cause and effect there is a distance. That distance is finite, yet time is infinite. Natural disaster and natural calm are sometimes, incredibly, in perfect harmony.”[12]

Looking back, it is not hard to see that the photobook has gradually moved some distance away from photographic art itself. It is no longer confined to a photographer’s particular project; instead it increasingly explores the freedoms and limits of the book itself as an art form. In editing photobooks, it is now common to appropriate and collage images from different sources to build new contexts, and more artists have come to accept working with graphic designers so that the book’s binding and design come together with the image content and the reading experience.

But even as photobook practice has become popular, reporting on and criticism of Chinese photobooks still lag behind, and channels of information are few and narrow. Most people know about many photobooks only through brief introductions on artists’ own websites; announcements for photobook exhibitions often lack fuller written descriptions of the individual books on show, and page-flip videos and interviews about bookmaking are even rarer. With information so closed off, it is hard for photobooks to get beyond the small circle of artists and publishers. At the same time, in an era when photobooks become known through photobook exhibitions and the internet, how can a photobook avoid falling into the trap of being present (physically there) yet voiceless (with no room to explain itself) as it circulates? This is similar to the predicament artists face in group shows today. What deserves more attention in the case of photobooks, though, is that when curators deal with photobooks circulating on the market, they don’t have to consider the artist’s views as they would in a group show: the photobook’s independence as a publication and its silence as an object give the curator more room to speak, and to speak for the book without hindrance. On the other hand, photobook exhibitions have unmatched convenience: artists usually don’t need to be there, and organisers don’t have to produce, frame and then destroy exhibition prints for a particular show. At a time when photography festivals routinely print thousands of images, photobook exhibitions look all the more eco-friendly and efficient. As a reader, I hope to see more themed photobook exhibitions in future, with more attention paid to the content and positions of the photobooks themselves.

1. He Yining, “50 Contemporary Photobooks from China 2009–2014”, UK Now – British Council, 2 March 2015, http://uknow.org.cn/50-contemporary-photobooks-from-china-2009-2014-exhibition-2/.

2. He Yining, “Self-Publishing Feature | He Yining: A Strange Encounter between Image and Paper – Observations on Contemporary Chinese Photobooks”, Ray Art Center, 12 June 2015, http://www.rayartcenter.org/?p=7942.

3. Zu Yu, “‘Bleeding’ Photographs”, Chinese Photography, May issue: 66.

4. “The Chinese Photobook”, UCCA, 12 November 2014, http://ucca.org.cn/exhibition/the-chinese-photobook/.

5. Hanlu Zhang, “New Photo: An Early Example of Autonomous Expression and Self-Publishing in Contemporary Chinese Photography”, Ray Art Center, 12 June 2015, http://www.rayartcenter.org/?p=7942.

6. Wu Dong, “Lianzhou International Photo Festival Opens across Its Venues; Barn Photobook Dummy Award Announced”, PhotoFans, 12 June 2015, http://article.photofans.cn/article-40248-1.html.

7. Wu Dong, “Which Six Photobook Dummies Did Martin Parr Pick at the Lianzhou Festival?”, accessed 30 January 2016, http://article.photofans.cn/article-40269-1.html.

8. Yan You, “Ten and a Half Books, and a New Year Red Envelope”, Jiazazhi Douban site, http://site.douban.com/120159/widget/notes/4144773/note/474354357/, 26 December 2014.

9. “Xitek Interviews Jiazazhi’s Yan You”, Xitek, http://vision.xitek.com/interview/201412/17-167314.html, 17 December 2014.

10. “Same Paper”, accessed 30 January 2016, http://www.samepaper.com.

11. “Lifestyles”, Same Paper, http://www.samepaper.com/lifestyles-1, spring 2014.

12. “XIAOYI CHEN”, accessed 31 January 2016, http://chenxiaoyi.net.