Photobooks of 2018: Thomas Wiegand

Here are ten rather sophisticated photobooks with great photographs and serving layout including two new historical publications (Faminsky, Bártl). The order in this list is random.

TTP by Hayahisa Tomiyasu
As a son of an enthusiastic table tennis player and as a photographer who loves long-term projects of course this is one of my favorites in 2018.

Verstreutes Licht. Fotografie mit Lochkameras 1988-2005 by Dietrich Oltmanns
A new, beautifully designed and produced book of a great unknown of German photographic art, this time with a retrospective of his pinhole photographs.

German Business Plants by Frederik Busch
Gorgeous still lifes with office plants bearing the names of persons. To each one sentence, which indicates the fate of the creatures. For all who hate the waiting in the anterooms of the bureaucrats.

Všední den v české fotografii 50. a 60. let by Lukáš Bártl
Exhibition catalog about everyday photography in Czechoslovakia around 1960, congenially designed in the spirit of the time.

The Portraits by John Myers
The rediscovery of the year!

Berlin Mai 1945 by Valery Faminsky
Unknown images of a Soviet photographer from ruined Berlin 1945 – life in the ghostly war scenerys was rarely portrayed as poignantly as in this impressive publication.

Bogsteder by Kurt Rodahl Hoppe
Public and private libraries and some antiquarian bookstores photographed and presented in a laconic way. (Was published too late for the last year´s list).

Lietuvos kaimo turguose – Lithuanian Rural Markets 1968-1980 by Aleksandras Macijauskas
A long-time project about trading in the real socialistic province. Powerful!

Fast Cities by Morten Andersen
A swirl of impressions from megacities in a finely balanced sequencing.

Menschen im Fahrstuhl – People in the Elevator by Heinrich Riebesehl
A relaxed re-release of the series of Riebesehl´s elevator photographs created on only seven rolls of film in one day. The three exhibition catalogs with the pictures published at that time are legendary!

Out of competition:
The Gamblers by Martin Amis
The host of this blog turns out to be an excellent photobook maker. Keep it up!

Thomas Wiegand is a photographer and art historian specialized in photobooks. His „Deutschland im Fotobuch“, published 2011 by Steidl, is an attempt to reflect the image of a country based on a carefully selected choice of the huge amount of photobooks published since the First World War. He is still working on photo-illustrated company books and he planned a book about the photo books produced in the former GDR (DDR).

Images: top – Berlin Mai 1945 by Valery Faminsky, below – TTP by Hayahisa Tomiyasu