This text is split into two distinct parts, the first is about the Asia-Pacific Photobook Archive and its short history, how it operates and serves its community today, and the context of the Asia-Pacific region within which it sits; and the second part is a bringing together of some thoughts and writing I have been doing lately, after 12 years of running the Archive, about the nature of libraries, archives, and collections and what it means to bring things (in this case photobooks) together in one place, the importance of photobooks, and the responsibility implicit in being a collector, and some ideas about the future of this library of books I have created.

The Asia-Pacific Photobook Archive (APPA) is an arts initiative based in Melbourne, Australia. It may come as no surprise, but arts funding in Australia is in a dark place; intermittent harsh funding cuts to the arts community and to independent arts organisations are not out of the ordinary, both here and internationally, but the rhetoric and narratives being played out feel different this time. Our centrist/conservative Australian government consistently performs linguistic and numeric gymnastics to convince us that the funding figures and ‘support’ in dollar terms are at the same level or better than in past years, when, in reality, it’s clear from a perfunctory glance at the landscape that, in real terms, funding has decreased significantly across the board. Larger state and national government institutions (state galleries, museums) continue to receive significant capital funding, while no mind is paid to how the arts are supported at grassroots levels and where the next generation of artists will come from in this environment. At my ‘day job’ (I am also the Director of the Centre for Contemporary Photography based in Melbourne), despite presenting exhibitions that set record attendance figures in recent years, with a huge and engaged audience, and with clear and tangible positive outcomes for the creative community via mentorships, events, workshops, and other programs–we recently saw our Government support and funding cut to zero, forcing us to look for new and alternative models through which to operate. As politics lurches towards the right here in Australia, following the patterns in other countries, there is little chance of governmental funding returning to any healthy levels any time soon for most small and medium-sized arts organisations. Indeed, the same tightening of purse-strings is also true for individual creative grants for artists, who are, likewise, struggling to make ends meet. However, times like these make it clear that independent organisations like the Centre for Contemporary Photography and grassroots initiatives like APPA are all the more important, and that their function is to fill the void left by short-sighted state and federal art policies. APPA, since its inception, has been about coming together to share, to create space for learning, to listen, and to open up photobook dialogues outside of the restraints of a formal institutional structure. As the photobook emerged (over the past twenty years) as a legitimate and valid vehicle for expression, storytelling, and experimentation, this community initiative was vital to providing education and sustenance to the arts community, but now, twelve years later, what does the future of the APPA look like?

Established with a clear and singular goal in 2013 the APPA has changed much in scope and direction over the past twelve years. The first five years of the APPA were marked by the sense that it was filling a void. At the time, there were no photobook festivals or fairs in the Asia-Pacific region, and of the very small number of photography festivals–Chobi Mela (Dhaka), Angkor (Siem Reap), and Obscura (Penang) being the biggest –none of them had a photobook section or events. The APPA had a simple collecting method, we attended festivals, ran workshops, organised talks, met people, built connections, and received books (as gifts), or bought them with our own money (at least a third of the books in the Archive were purchased). In the early days we worked with those festivals above, and others to provide photobook exhibitions and events as part of their festival schedules. The plan at the outset was always to have a resource to share, and to ensure that the books (particularly self-published books) in the APPA were seen (in their physical form) in different countries and at different events around the world–something we achieved at a large scale between 2013-2016. The goal at the start was not to be a static collection, but one that popped up in different locations, servicing the need for books to be seen, held, experienced and touched. The APPA hosted events and sent books to festivals and fairs in Sweden, Ireland, USA, Japan, Malaysia, Cambodia, India, New Zealand, UK, Germany, France, and Indonesia (and probably some other places I’ve forgotten). Sales were never a part of the conversation, the books were provided to look at, and to then move on to the next event–it was, in essence, a traveling library that changed for each iteration, depending on what the theme of the festival was or what we decided to send.

Since 2016, the focus of the Archive has changed organically, we have always had a small physical space here in Melbourne, where the books that weren’t currently travelling nationally or internationally were stored, displayed, and available to peruse, use, and reference. This space has now become the main focus of the Archive, the collection grows slowly these days, mostly for positive reasons. In contrast to our early days, most festivals and community-focused photo organisations in the Asia-Pacific region now have their own photobook library, run their own photobook events, and some even publish their own photobooks. The region is also now full of people with significant experience in photobook making and publishing due to the amazing educational programs and work of festivals in Singapore, Angkor, Auckland, Kathmandu, Chobi Mela, Melbourne, Penang, and others. Photobook clubs also operate across the region, and some have morphed into larger and more influential communities and organisations. This rapid change since 2016 is due to a number of factors–the rise of self-publishing and the acceptance of small run, digitally printed books as legitimate publications has meant a meteoric rise in the numbers of zines and books being published and shared in the region; secondly, the internet has allowed for an uninterrupted interaction and exchange between photobook makers and producers in the Asia-Pacific region with their counterparts in Europe, the Middle East, Africa, and the Americas, thereby allowing those who are interested to educate themselves and discover more about photobooks in different parts of the world; thirdly, this period has also seen an explosion of publishers focusing on the region, not just European publishers who are keen to publish photographers from this part of the world, but more vitally those publishers based in the Asia-Pacific region–Imageless (CN), Jiazazhi (CN), Perimeter (AUS), and many more have invested their own money to focus on photographers from this part of the world, as well as attending festivals internationally, acknowledging the healthy interest in a more diverse landscape of photobooks from global audiences and, more importantly, demonstrating their own commitment (despite meagre financial returns) to support the communities of which they are part. A special mention also should go to Offset Projects, which sits outside of these distinct categories, but is all the above; driven by Anshika Varma, this organisation based in India publishes books, runs a photobook library, exhibitions, events, workshops, and outreach programmes.

The exponential growth of photography festivals worldwide, and in particular photobook fairs as part of these larger events, has meant a growing hunger from all parts of the globe to feature and show new work from the Asia-Pacific region. This is particularly true for photobook competitions–the increase in opportunities to submit to these competitions has created a more even playing field for photographers for previously underrepresented parts of the world. This has meant that the APPA’s role is no longer the same as it was, we do not need to send books off around the world, as there are a dozen different channels for this to occur. For those interested and keen to learn there are ample opportunities to see and be exposed to a range of work from photographers from this part of the world, even those who may have only self-published their book in a relatively modest edition. The APPA’s job now is to collect, to watch from the sidelines, and to continue to slowly build the collection. We now remain static and strive to be a resource to ensure the continuing steady growth of the interest in photobooks–and to guarantee that smaller publishers, independent and self-publishers are represented in the APPA on an equal footing to the bigger names and more established publishers.

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Given the changed nature of the APPA, one that I hadn’t really considered at the outset, I have been doing a lot of thinking. I find myself in charge of a library of thousands of photobooks, of all different kinds, some handmade editions of one, some incredibly delicate, many waiting to be discovered. As a result I have been reading a lot recently about libraries and collections and writing on how and why the APPA exists–this eclectic collection of photobooks in Melbourne that represents photobooks from a particular part of the world, at a particular moment.

I recently read Peter Cornell’s The Ways of Paradise, first published in Swedish in 1987 (and only recently translated into English by Saskia Vogel), in which the disorganised notes and unfinished manuscript of an unnamed researcher are presented. This fictional researcher was, we are told in the foreword, a familiar figure in the National Library of Sweden, sat reading and collating every day for more than three decades, and was “occupied with an uncommonly comprehensive project, a work that–as he once disclosed in confidence–would reveal a chain of connections until then overlooked”. Cornell’s text is part-Walter Benjamin, part-Stephane Mallarme, part-Susan Sontag, part-Roland Barthes, and as I read it, I connected to Cornell’s staccato and cyclical exploration of what it means to collect fragments. This has focused my understanding of how a collection of books should be thought of–not as a library but as an unruly labyrinth, a collection of moments, spiraling in all directions. I realised that the collection of books I have been amassing was something other than I thought it to be. This realisation has come at a key time for me–twelve years after setting up the Asia-Pacific Photobook Archive, and after seeing a few dynamic early years in which we voraciously collected, networked, and shared the books, we have come to the Archive’s teenage years–where any attempt to reign it in, control it, or understand will prove futile (believe me, I know! I have two teenage children).

It is only now that I am aware that the concept of bringing photobooks together into a library was always going to be an amorphous and elusive task. In Invisible Cities as Italo Calvino sets the relationship between the explorer Marco Polo, and the emperor Kublai Khan, he writes “there is a moment which follows pride in the boundless extension of the territories we have conquered, and the melancholy and relief of knowing we shall soon give up any thought of knowing and understanding them”. The same can be said for libraries, and for the APPA, and my experience in particular as the person who set it up, and set it on its way. I am not in the position to consider knowing or understanding all the books it contains. I have come to the realisation that there are now too many books to make sense of; that this is a job for someone else, later, perhaps tomorrow, perhaps never. It is enough that this collection exists, and my job is to ensure it has a home, a physical space to occupy, grow, and inhabit. I continue to find meaning and solace in the parts of the Archive that I experience, in the new photobooks submissions that creep in, and find their way onto the shelves, and the books I rediscover as I organise and browse. There is a peaceful comfort (which manifests as a driving force) in knowing that I will never fully comprehend or understand all the books in the APPA (to paraphrase Calvino). I am particularly besotted with the idea that, once conceived or established, a library never stops growing, it has no end. Behind tightly closed eyes, I envisage a library pulsing in a cyclical movement, not with walls and shelves, but instead one that is freely circulating and ever-widening.

Daniel Boetker-Smith
Director of the Centre for Contemporary Photography in Melbourne, Australia.