Books of Photographs or Photobooks?

I am grateful to Marin Parr and Gerry Badger for their work on the photobook. They have helped us realize that some photography books are collections of photographs while others are “photobooks” that use the book format and photographs to develop their subject into a whole larger than the sum of its parts. It was a truth hiding in plain sight. Some books of themed photos take you beyond their pages while others do not. 

Though the comparison is imperfect, think about a book of collected poems compared to a short story or novel. In the short story or novel individual sentences or paragraphs are not meant to function independently outside the context of the narrative. They take their meaning from their contribution to the flow. 

(In another website post, Photographs as Prose, I talk about how I came to an understanding of this several decades ago when I was working on my first photobook, A Second Year in France.)

I keep the distinction in mind when thinking about photography books, at least those with artistic intentions, and I try to decide if I would call them books of photos or photobooks. Am I looking at an album or organized collection of specimens or at a story with a message? Sometimes it’s easy to say, and sometimes it’s not. 

If a book uses image selection, sequencing, and format – and possibly other aspects of form unique to the book – as well as text strategically deployed in the service of meaning or message, those are clues that I am probably looking at a photobook. If on the other hand what I am viewing is basically a gallery show hung on the pages of a book, that is probably a book of photographs. 

Larry Sultan’s Pictures from Home is a good example of a photobook where images and texts work together and are not meant to stand alone. Pictures from Home is noteworthy for its omnivorous appetite for photographs (family snapshots, film stills, publicity photos from corporate America, formal fine art photographs, commercial portraits) as well as for its unifying narrative text.

A 1978 Bruce Davidson monograph I have is an example of a book of photographs. The images are grouped chronologically by project and each chapter functions as an independent portfolio. Though care was obviously taken in choice of images, layout, and sequencing, there is no intent to make the whole any different than the sum of its parts, and the book basically functions as a catalogue of Davidson’s work.

It should be pointed out that there is nothing wrong with books of photographs. I have more than a few on my bookshelf. The goal here is to distinguish between books of photos and photobooks, between books that function as containers and books that function as vessels.