Photobook Week Aarhus 2017: 4th Edition: Distribution and Markets

The discussions of the festival concentrated on distribution and markets. Using a regional axis, which mapped the Scandinavian practice in the global context, discussions were on themes related to publishing, distributing, buying, trading, and collecting photobooks. There was also a focus on urbanism and landscape, which included architectural practices, as well as an exhibition on Icelandic photobooks.

Gerry Badger (UK) was the keynote speaker of the festival. Lectures were held by Katrin Elvarsdottir (IS), Tom Nielsen (DK), Carsten Juhl (DK) and Carsten Juel-Christiansen (DK), among many others.
The main hub of the festival was the Aarhus School of Architecture, together with venues such as Galleri Image, and Aros Aarhus Art Museum. In this edition, Photobook Week Aarhus reached out to new publics with an event called “Design Night” and the festival also started a collaboration with UNSEEN Photobook Market in Amsterdam.
The festival included a Dummy Doctoring Workshop, gallery talks, and the selection of shortlisted dummies from both the FotoBookFestival Kassel and the Nordic Dummy Award. Local and international booksellers offered the best from their shelves, and research based exhibitions were curated by Anne Elisabeth Toft (DK) and Claus Peder Pedersen (DK).

As a special feature for Photobook Week Aarhus 2017, German collector and photo historian Thomas Wiegand curated an exhibition on the late German photographer Michael Schmidt’s photobooks, on shown at Aros Aarhus Art Museum.