On the Shelf 2026

"In truth, I’m slow to things. I miss chunks of films or lectures, group conversations even, while processing all that I’m seeing and hearing, all that is being shared with me, and all that is being called to mind. Photobooks are different. Good ones—the best combination of visual and tactile, content and container—are immersive, keeping me from drifting elsewhere. I can navigate them at my own pace, and they remain one of my favorite conduits for learning, understanding, commiserating, engaging, cracking up, or tearing up. The combination of images (in all forms), text (sometimes), paper (or whatever), and binding (or not) is timeless; it’s one of the technologies humans got right. I’ve looked at hundreds, and I’m still enamored with all of the decisions, big and small, that it takes to realize one. The selected projects, like the best photobooks in my collection, were a joy to sit with, to revisit multiple times, to come back to days later after a particular image got stuck in my head, and to “flip through” from front to back and then back to front, all the while imagining their physicality and materiality, what they would be like to hold. While I’m hesitant to make any sweeping characterizations about the breadth of the submissions, there were a few things that were undeniably present as I worked my way through them. First, grief. So much grief. Sometimes for the person closest to the photographer, sometimes for a relationship to a person they never knew. Similarly, there was a strong sense of reflecting on place, whether that be a place the photographer is seeing for the first time through a camera or a place that’s so deeply embedded in who they are that it’s become a character in their story. Many also mined, referenced, recreated, or challenged an archive—found or personal, fictive or scarily real. I will be thinking about a number of the projects for some time, and I can’t wait to see, and touch, the selected books in person during the exhibition. Thank you for sharing your work with me."