For the complete list, please consult the Nearest Podcast in the following weeks, where I will MC over a much longer list of the great books published this year. For this list, I wanted to keep the books down to five that I feel will define the artist’s career or are crucial to the medium. I have many other fantastic books on my list that will bear remark.

I want to add that I have not seen Trent Parke’s Monument yet, which looks like it could be a scorcher. I have also not seen Carla Williams’s book Tender published with TBW, but people seem to enjoy it. It even won an award. I quickly looked at it from a distance and can see why people dig it, though I doubt it would end up on my list this year. I feel it’s pretty self-involved and doesn’t feel like there is much there to make it universal. When I take it all in, I am left with the opinion that I also do not think the photographs are outstanding or even very good. I understand it is more than that, but it simply doesn’t do for me what it does for others, and I hope that is ok with everyone. Who cares what I think anyway?

With Raymond Meeks’s The Inhabitants, another title people dig heavily, I feel too conflicted, not to mention the inherent problem with where the work was shot and what enters into the frames. The images are stunning, as always. That said, I feel like people are walking around the issue of power hierarchies when assessing the work and are ignoring the refugee question at the heart of the work, which is fine but something I can’t quickly look past. It has held me back in considerable measure from reviewing it. Knowing the artist, a genuinely kind individual, it pains me to lean into what I see as a challenging turn in his work that critics and fans of the book ignore. I am still putting my head around it to find a way to express my feelings without being too controversial. I heard Ray talk about the work with Tim Carpenter and George Weld in Paris. The question was lightly touched upon, which makes me feel as though there could be a more in-depth discussion about the photographs to illuminate the condition of their subject matter.

I am not including the Daido Moriyama retrospective catalog here, though I think that book is exceptional due to the texts by Daido Moriyama, Thyago Nogueira, Yuri Mitsuda, Masako Toda, Masashi Kohara, Yutaka Kambayashi, Satoshi Machiguchi, Kazuya Kimura. As an editor/curator, Nogueira hit it out of the park with the catalog. I have not seen the show, so I can’t be sure about that, but as a comprehensive survey of Moriyama in English, no other catalog matches it. That stated it is a catalog about an artist and not a monograph. This would be my choice if there were an exhibition catalog of the year category.

There are other great titles from this year, some exceptional, others very strong. It was a good year for books. I only had a few disappointments that I won’t mention here but have pointed to on social media previously. Other artists I will mention the podcast include Adriana Ault, Vasantha Yogananthan, Bertien van Manen, Morten Andersen, Tommaso Protti, Christopher Anderson, Trent Park, Rita Lino, Ed Panar, Michael Ashkin, Hans Wilschut, Maude Arsenault, Jungjin Lee, Anne Rearick, Nathan Pearce, Gabriele Rossi, Toshio Shibata, Wouter van de Voorde, Taka Mayumi, Stefanie Moshammer, J Carrier, Yoshi Yubio, Anne Lass, Simon Bray, Danny Franzreb, Yana Wernicke, Jack Latham, Paul Kooiker, Michael Ackerman, Anne Rearick, and more. With the podcast, I can get deeper into it all.

Given the state of a few lists I have seen already, I question more and more why we even bother with lists if people are, at the very least, unable to get the dates of publications correct. Add to that the apparent nepotism and possible manipulation of awards this year; I feel less and less like an interesting discussion is happening regarding the celebration of books and the integrity it takes to produce them. On the grounds of nepotism, I would love to include the Nearest Truth Editions titles here, but I have to refuse that as it would not be correct of me. I am proud of all those titles, but I would be, wouldn’t I? I worked on Simon Bray’s book but did not publish it here so I can go into that more roundly during the podcast.

As I spent most of my year headlong in Japanese books, I have had the privilege of going deep into a book culture quite different from the West, which I find refreshing. Ultimately, it doesn’t change how I view what is being produced in the West, but I do get a more profound sense of how conservative we are in our practice and how precious we are at times about conveying meaning, etc. I look forward to a time when we can pursue photobooks based less on personal identity and binary politics than seeking books that suggest, without authoritative dictation, the climate of our collective times. With the forceful application of meaning, there is less and less room to feel, to dialog, and to enjoy much of the material being churned out.

Japanese Photography Magazines, 1880s to 1980s

Kaneko Ryūichi, Toda Masako, Ivan Vartanian
with contributions by Fujii Yūko, Inokuchi Yoshio, Nariai Hajime, Soeno Tsutomu

Goliga

This kind of book comes along once in a very long time regarding photobooks and the associated fields of ephemera dealing with photographic literature. These types of books are trailblazing and dependent on several different voices who all put in magnitudes of passion and who deliver something unequivocal to broaden our understanding of our little corner of the world. Frequently, the information found within is accumulated over years, if not decades, of work consulting ( and often purchasing) primary resources, assembling them, creating categorical associations, footnoting, and digging further into existing texts to produce an incredible reference book for the rest of us. The love and foresight that has to go into a project like this is daunting. Exceptionally few people are equipped to handle the challenges, delays, distribution hiccups, and dissemination of such a tome, particularly from across the world.

I do not mind saying that this is one of the finest English-based books on Japanese photography that I own, and I own quite a few. The information is rich and dense, and it widens the history of photography and the photobook by linking the importance of periodicals to the printed word of the medium. Though the idea of the magazine, the serial, or the illustrated weekly/monthly is not new, it is not something that has a rich amount of literature devoted to it, mainly its mechanics and which highlights the apparatus, editors, and people that assemble such troves of information over the emphasis on the artists involved within. That is not to take anything from the brilliant artists in the magazines and this book. Still, instead, it is to note the importance of editors and how these periodicals informed Japanese photography as much as the careers of its better-known or more celebrated counterparts.

What the team has assembled here before the unfortunate passing of editor and photobook enthusiast Kaneko Ryūichi is nothing short of brilliant. This book, unlike others, will be found in libraries and serious places of scholarship for some time. This, in short, was a gift to the community this year, and I believe it is the most crucial catalog to have been published in 2023, despite what you may have been led to believe.

Corita Kent: Ordinary Things Will Be Signs for Us

Edited by Julie Ault, Jason Fulford, and Jordan Weitzman

J&L Books and Magic Hour Press

An incredible book on the fabulously creative life of Sister Corita Kent, whose teaching at the Immaculate Heart of Mary in Los Angeles between 1936-1968 tied together many people and ideas about art through passionate acts of looking. Her ability to see exuberant details in the most banal assemblages led to the creation of an incredible archive of thousands of photographic slides that she used in her practice as an educator and an artist. These reference slides considered practical images for explaining color, shape, and visual literacy at the time, have been re-assembled into this brilliant book edited by historian and writer Julie Ault, along with artists Jason Fulford and Jordan Weitzman. The results are brilliant.

As far as I can see, this is one of the big sleeper titles of the year. There are other books about Sister Corita available, notably a book from 2006 entitled Come Alive! The Spirited Art Of Sister Corita, also by Julia Ault, delivers slightly more in design. This book is paced in a way to be read as one-third biography and two-thirds imaginative art book. The editing is reminiscent of cinematic movie titles and, in considerable measure, evokes the spirit of the time when Sister Corita worked through clever editing and design. The book has no dull moment, and it is paced to ensure Sister Corita’s legacy and inspire anyone who picks it up.

I have no idea how this is not on every list. I put this title on the Big list for American Suburb X as it transcends many sub-par projects being pumped into the photobook world. It reminds people that there can be selflessness in producing art and that it can also be fun and defines what is best about the creative spirit. It offers humility in the deluge of watery dog shit that has come to pass for photobooks recently with outright egoism and an incessant narcissism found at the heart of it all. It is universal, and though Sister Corita is no longer with us, seeing others keeping her torch lit is fantastic.

Lua Ribeira

Subida Al Cielo

Dalpine

Subida Al Cielo, or Ascent into Heaven, is divided into four chapters: Ascent into Heaven, The Visions, Aristocrats, The Jungle, and The Fortunate Ones. It is my first encounter with Magnum member and Galician artist Lua Ribeira despite having previously seen the name. I acquired this from Kominek Books in Berlin this September and had likely seen it somewhere online when it launched earlier in the year, but I had never had a chance to see it in person. I picked the book up off the counter at Kominek’s during our Tod Hido Workshop with Nearest Truth and had probably thumbed through six pages or less before putting it down into the stack of things I wanted to purchase from Misha, the shop’s owner. In other words, the work/book was incredibly immediate for me. I did not even know what it was about until later. I bought it convinced of the strength of the portraiture and its endless number of images. It felt like a rare book that at once felt too full of pictures but, upon further review, felt uncomplicated by the abundance of photographs within. There is a beautiful arc to how the book is sequenced, which is quite rare given that its movements are in chapters, something that rarely works well to keep the flow of a book together.

Though the book has a documentary nature to it, its reductive format of portraiture and its hint at allegorical underpinnings make it a fascinating study. Though Ribeira suggests potential triggers to activate these allegories along an implied social landscape, the artist never brings to bear the total weight of her intentions in doing the work, instead allowing it to breathe. This is also something somewhat rare for an artist of Magnum status.

I am adding this to the list for several reasons. I believe it is Lua’s most successful work to date, from what I can see from her biography and our discussion of the work for the Nearest Truth Podcast. I think that this is the type of book for a relatively young artist that signals great things to come. I have a slight suspicion that the book will be seen for the substantial work that it is further down the line, as the epithets have been slower than they should be to come in to praise her and Dalpine for the tremendous job that they did. I expect great things from Lua in the future.

Sebastián Bruno

Ta-Ra

Ediciones Anómalas

There have been some great books over the year that I am not covering here. I have mostly picked books for ASX that I feel are deeply impactful, and I have been mindful not to wander into listing titles in which the author is young and whose book it is a first. With Sebastián Bruno, I went back and forth over whether to include his fantastic new book Ta-Ra or not, thinking that perhaps it is not his best book yet or the one that will break him into broader circulation, but I keep having a very particular itch about the work, which on its surface looks like a cross between British documentary image-making from the 70s and 80s and that cold German shit we love from the same period by artists like Michael Schmidt. What is even stranger is that I am currently editing and sequencing a similar project that oscillates between Ireland and Germany by another relatively young artist from those decades. Something is clearly in the air in the age of the musical YouTube mash-up; it only makes sense that our photographic styles are also getting the blender treatment.

With Ta-Ra, there are some insanely great images. The Schmidt side of the work is cold and ashen; the young artist has also been gifted with the power of making sheep-fucking Wales look like a speed-chasing Germany from the 80s. It is something else entirely, a superpower, perhaps. I almost cannot even read the terrain anymore. The fact that he is Argentinian adds to the unusual mix of elements. Also, before we all get butthurt, I do not think all Germans from the 80s did speed. Testing humor and nerves. STOPIO! In any event, lousy humor aside, this is an incredible book and one of two by the artist, filmmaker, and lecturer this year. As with Lua, I look forward to seeing more from Sebastián.

Jim Goldberg

Coming and Going

MACK

It is a no-brainer with this one. Like Deanna Dikeman or Seiichi Furyua (whose recent book will also be on a longer list), Goldberg has a way of making the story of his family somehow incredibly universal and easy to connect with, and like Dikeman and Furuya, even through death. Coming and Going is autobiographical, elegiac, and mournful in places, but that gravity is upended by the consistent celebration of Goldberg’s family, particularly his daughters and partner, Alessandra. Present, there is the text, the collaging, and the snapshot aesthetics found in many of his other works, but at the end, what is slightly different with this book is that it has a particular energy more akin to his opus Raised by Wolves, but without all of the problematic terrain regarding the lives of the young, down and out.

Though the book is an homage to Goldberg’s family, there is also an autobiographical strange whiff of mortal contemplation on behalf of the artist present that likely raises the prospect of the book’s universal appeal. Though it is never clearly defined, this book feels like a way to sign off, though we have no plans for Jim’s departure yet. There is a deep appreciation of life within the book’s pages, reminding one of how fleeting it is. As I said to Jim recently…The days are long, and the years are short…

If you have not picked up this absolute belter and behemoth of a book, don’t wait it out. It is not often that I get a bit emotional around a book. Coming and Going made me feel, and for my money in 2023, I have to say that it is one of the rarest of all possible outcomes.

I want to add that I have not seen Trent Parke’s Monument yet, which looks like this could be on this list. I have also not seen Carla Williams’s book Tender published with TBW, but people seem to enjoy it. I quickly looked and can see why, though I doubt it would end up on my list this year. I feel it’s self-involved and doesn’t feel like much is there. When I take it all in, I am left with the opinion that I do not think the photographs are outstanding or even very good. I understand it is more than that, but it simply doesn’t do for me what it does for others, and I hope that is ok with everyone. Who cares what I think anyway?

With Raymond Meeks’s The Inhabitants, another title people dig heavily, I felt too conflicted, not to mention the inherent problem with where the work was shot. The images are stunning, as always. That said, I feel like people are walking around the issue of power hierarchies when assessing the work, which is fine but something I can’t do. It has held me back in considerable measure from reviewing it. Knowing the artist, a genuinely kind individual, it pains me to lean into what I see as a challenging turn in his work that critics of the book ignore. I am still putting my head around it to find a way to express my feelings without being too controversial.

I am not including the Daido Moriyama retrospective catalog here because I think that book is exceptional due to the texts by Daido Moriyama, Thyago Nogueira, Yuri Mitsuda, Masako Toda, Masashi Kohara, Yutaka Kambayashi, Satoshi Machiguchi, Kazuya Kimura. As an editor/curator, Nogueira hit it out of the park with the catalog. I have not seen the show, so I can’t be sure about that, but as a comprehensive survey of Moriyama in English, no other catalog matches it. That stated it is a catalog about an artist and not a monograph. This would be it if there were an exhibition catalog of the year category.

There are other great titles from this year, some exceptional, others very strong. I only had a few disappointments that I won’t mention here but have pointed to on social media previously. Other artists I will mention elsewhere include Adriana Ault, Vasantha Yogananthan, Bertien van Manen, Morten Andersen, Tommaso Protti, Christopher Anderson, Trent Park, Rita Lino, Ed Panar, Michael Ashkin, Hans Wilschut, Maude Arsenault, Jungjin Lee, Anne Rearick, Nathan Pearce, Gabriele Rossi, Toshio Shibata, Wouter van de Voorde, Taka Mayumi, Stefanie Moshammer, J Carrier, Yoshi Yubio, Anne Lass, Simon Bray, Danny Franzreb, Yana Wernicke, Jack Latham, Paul Kooiker, Michael Ackerman, and more. With the podcast, I can get deeper into it all.

Given the state of a few lists I have seen already, I question more and more why we even bother with lists if people are, at the very least, unable to get the dates of publications correct. Add to that the apparent nepotism and possible manipulation of awards this year; I feel less and less like an interesting discussion is happening regarding the celebration of books and the integrity it takes to produce them. I feel less and less like having much engagement with the ongoing ridiculous tribalism and narcissism of many projects. On the grounds of nepotism, I would love to include the Nearest Truth Editions titles here, but I have to refuse that as it would not be correct of me. I am proud of all those titles, but I would be, wouldn’t I? I worked on Simon Bray’s book but did not publish it here so I can go into that more roundly during the podcast.

Finally, it is a bit of a challenging year to concentrate on lists, given the state of the world. I wake to photographs and videos on my phone of dead Palestinian children and pretty much go to bed with the same. I find the world not only troubling but fucking stupid, retrograde, and ill-managed. It makes it slightly harder to want to celebrate books when I have to watch and participate in this cruel and absurd theater. I do not feel like I need to explain this to people, nor will I further join in any reductive backpedaling in the wake of having to espouse my credentials and side-taking. We live in anti-human times as the most affluent culture ever to have walked this rock, and all we can manage to do is argue and blow each other up over little pebbles.

Kaneko Ryūichi, Toda Masako, Ivan Vartanian with contributions by Fujii Yūko, Inokuchi Yoshio, Nariai Hajime, Soeno Tsutomu