Towards an understanding of the market for photobooks

This chapter (rooted in the collaborative project and research conducted with Daria Tuminas) describes the making of the research and publication project Market? What Market?, a collaboration between Unseen Amsterdam Book Market and Photobook Week Aarhus which in 2017–19 explored the role of the contemporary photobook market. Following a series of guest contributions, Neumüller and Tuminas designed an online booklet which brought together experts from the photobook community and their varied perspectives on the history of the photobook market as well as the recent challenges it has faced. In 2018, for the second edition, the focus was the solutions to the previously identified challenges. During the days of Unseen Amsterdam 2018, Neumüller conducted over forty interviews with artists and publishers, while Tuminas travelled to Denmark to conclude the research there with further interviews. Artists, (self-)publishers, collectors, distributors and booksellers were asked to contribute to participatory research, gathering cases and discussing ways of releasing the photobook from its self-imposed bubble, finding alternative audiences, and raising the awareness of the medium. The results of this research and longer-read interviews were made available both as a free download and as a printed booklet in April 2019. While the project speaks primarily to the photobook community and experts, this chapter addresses a more academic audience and outlines the methodology and the results.