The New York Public Library's Wallach Division of Art, Prints, and Photographs is pleased to host the How We See Reading Room, a public space to browse and view the 100 21st-century photobooks selected for the How We See: Photobooks by Women book and tour. The Reading Room will be open October 25-27, 2018, 10 AM-5:45 PM at The Margaret Liebman Berger Forum (Room 227) in the NYPL Stephen A. Schwarzman Building at 42nd Street and Fifth Avenue.  

As part of the program, please join us October 25 at 6:30 PM for a conversation with two of the ten experts who selected the photos for the series, and one of the editors from the 10X10 team, as they examine how important the photobook is as a medium for women today, 175 years after the publication of the first photographically produced book. Learn more or register for the event.

More on How We See: Photobooks by Women

How We See: Photobooks by Women, the latest project in the nonprofit 10x10 Photobooks’ ongoing series of reading rooms, presents a global range of 100 21st-century photobooks by female photographers.

With historical records establishing 19th-century British photographer Anna Atkins’s British Algae: Cyanotype Impressions (1843-1853) as the first photobook, it is not surprising that women have consistently contributed to the rich history of photobook making. However, despite their significant presence within the photobook community, the women have a relatively small place among top prizes, within prominent photobook publisher inventories, and among widely promoted books compared to their male peers.

10x10 Photobooks has organized How We See—a hands-on reading room, 'books on books' publication and series of public events—to explore the distinctive qualities of photobooks created by women photographers. The goal is not to isolate these books, but rather to closely examine their content, design, and intellectual attributes as a means of understanding and re-establishing their place within the larger photobook practice.

How the 100 How We See Reading Room Books are Selected

The project’s reading room selection of 100 books was chosen by 10 women (either in teams or individually) from around the world, who have each selected 10 photobooks (hence, the organization’s name, 10x10). The project’s selectors are specialists in the photobook field, and have focused their selections on photobooks published in the 21st-century, with 60% of their selections coming from their respective regions.

The How We See Reading Room launches on October 25, 2018 at the New York Public Library’s Margaret Liebman Berger Forum (Room 227) in the Stephen A. Schwarzman Building at 42nd Street and Fifth Avenue, and tour through 2020 to multiple venues including the Museum of Fine Arts (Boston, March 2019), PGH Photo at the Carnegie Museum of Art (Pittsburgh, April 2019), Fototeca Latinoamericana (Buenos Aires, December 2018), and other venues.

Talks and presentations on photobooks by women are planned for all venues. At the end of the tour, the books will be donated as a complete collection to the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston. A second collection of the 100 reading room books has been acquired by the Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Division of Art, Prints and Photographs at the New York Public Library.

As 10x10 Photobooks has done in their three previous reading room projects, a comprehensive 'books-on-books' publication with images and text for all the photobooks in the reading room, will be released on October 25. In addition to all 100 books in the How We See Reading Room, the publication includes an annotated history, reference lists of historical books by women photographers, author and visual indexes, and essays by Ishiuchi Miyako, Kristen Lubben, and Valentina Abenavoli.

Female photographers whose books appear in How We See include: Valentina Abenavoli, Laia Abril, Ying Ang, Olivia Arthur, Sophie Calle, Xiaoyi Chen, Zoe Croggon, Cristina de Middel, Laura El-Tantawy, Abigail Heyman, Hannah Höch, Dragana Jurišic, Kristina Jurotschkin, Pixy Liao, Susan Meiselas, Lucia Moholy, Zanele Muholi, Yurie Nagashima, Catherine Opie, Maya Rochat, Guadalupe Ruiz, Eva Saukane, Collier Schorr, Ketaki Sheth, Lieko Shiga, Dayanita Singh, Mitra Tabrizian, Carrie Mae Weems, and many others.

The women who selected books for the How We See Reading Room:

• Ilgin Deniz Akseloğlu (Middle East)
• Delphine Bedel & Frédérique Destribats (Western Europe)
• Federica Chiocchetti (Western Europe)
• Iona Fergusson (South Asia & Australasia)
• Amanda Ling-Ning Lo (China & Taiwan)
• Lesley A. Martin (United States)
• Oluremi C. Onabanjo (Africa)
• Mariela Sancari (Latin America)
• Miwa Susuda (Japan)
• Daria Tuminas (Eastern Europe)

Reference lists of historical photobooks by women photographers included in the How We See Reading Room publication include historical photobooks by women photographers from 1843 to 2010. These subjective lists (again, of ten books each) are provided by historians, librarians, curators, and writers in the photography and photobook field and lay the foundation for an historical context for the contemporary-leaning photobooks within the reading room and publication. Historical lists are provided by Sagrario Berti, Clara Bouveresse, Hinde Haest, Anne E. Havinga, Carole Naggar, Sayaka Takahashi, Barbara Tannenbaum, Jennifer Tobias, Stephanie H. Tung, and the women on the 10x10 Photobooks team.

More on 10x10 Photobooks

10x10 Photobooks is a nonprofit 501(c)3 organization based in New York City with the mission to foster engagement with the global photobook community through an appreciation, dissemination, and understanding of photobooks. Founded in 2012, 10x10 offers an ongoing multi-platform series of public photobook events, including reading rooms, salons, publications, and partnerships with arts organizations and institutions.

The 10x10 Photobooks Organization / How We See Project Team: Olga Yatskevich (10x10 co-founder/director), Russet Lederman (10x10 co- founder/director) and Michael Lang (10x10 director)

Laura Coombs (Publication Designer) Jeff Gutterman (Publication Photographer) Emily Rubin (Publication Copy Editor) Miyuki Hinton (Research Coordinator) Francesca Teodori (Senior Researcher) Felix Chan and Anna Kate Kelley (researchers)

More information available at 10x10photobooks.org/how-we-see.