Top 10 (+1)

Photobooks of 2024

Selected by Tim Clark and Thomas King

As the year draws to a close, an annual tribute to some of the exceptional photobook releases from 2024 – selected by Editor in Chief, Tim Clark, with words from Editorial Assistant, Thomas King.


Tim Clark and Thomas King | Top 10 photobooks of 2024 | 05 Dec 2024 | In association with MPB

1. Adam Broomberg & Rafael Gonzalez, Anchor in the Landscape
MACK

Studied witnesses to the State of Israel’s attempt to erase a people and their history, Adam Broomberg and Rafael Gonzalez present a quiet yet forceful declaration of Palestinian resilience in Anchor in the Landscape. This striking series of 8×10 black-and-white photographs of olive trees, accompanied by a text from legal scholar and ethnographer Dr. Irus Braverman, made a bold statement at the 60th La Biennale di Venezia earlier this year. Each page of the book pairs a photograph with its precise geographical coordinates, where the olive tree – facing destruction and theft by settlers – anchors livelihoods, culture, and presence in a relentlessly seized and ravaged landscape. The result is a haunting yet beautiful rekindling of connection to Palestinian land in the occupied territories.

2. Karolina Spolniewski, Hotel of Eternal Light
BLOW UP Press

Winner of the 2022 BUP Book Award, Spolniewski’s seven-year multimedia project-turned-book – replete with holographic foil cover – details the psychological and physical scars of detention, drawing on Hannah Arendt’s writings on totalitarianism and isolation. At its heart is Hohenschönhausen, the notorious Stasi prison in East Berlin, dubbed the “Hotel of Eternal Light,” where unrelenting artificial lighting twisted inmates’ sense of time. Documentary photography, scans of physical traces, inmates’ belongings, portraits, X-rays, archival imagery, and fragments of memories from conversations with former prisoners are combined through the book’s design approach to enhance meaning, one that also speaks through the inmates: one page repeats ‘everlasting interrogations,’ while another chillingly declares, ‘Every three minutes you get… blinded by the lights.’

3. Agnieszka Sosnowska, För
Trespasser

Agnieszka Sosnowska’s debut monograph, För (meaning journey in Icelandic), takes readers on a raw, poetic journey through the artist’s life on a beautiful stretch of unmistable wilderness. Originally from Poland, she immigrated to the United States as a child, then as a young adult spontaneously visited Iceland, met her partner and built a life there. Where nature is both a solace and an ever-present force, Sosnowska’s photography – especially self-portraiture – charts the ongoing journey of self-discovery and belonging. Against the pulse of land and community, her images invite a deeper reading, culminating in a confident yet vulnerable self-portrait of the artist. But to what end? Sosnowska doesn’t just capture her subjects and surroundings; as SFMOMA’s Assistant Curator of Photography Shana Lopes recently writes in her review, Sosnowska invites us to reconsider how labour, heartbreak, death, landscape, and the quotidian shape our idea of home.

4. Carmen Winant, The Last Safe Abortion
Self Publish, Be Happy

Since the re-election of the man who played a key role in overturning Roe v. Wade, Carmen Winant’s sobering photo album-style work – winner of the Author Book Award at the 2024 Les Rencontres d’Arles Book Awards – feels more urgent than ever. Published by SPBH Editions and MACK and designed with a bold spiral binding, Winant’s contemplative exploration of care resists the relentless efforts of anti-abortion movements and the far right to control women’s bodies. Featuring images of health clinics, Planned Parenthood locations, and abortion clinic staff whose tireless commitment sustains this fight, the book spans 50 years – from 1973, when abortion rights were federally protected, to 2022, following their dissolution. Winant reframes the struggle for care and autonomy as a testament to courage, resistance, and hope – urgently needed qualities. Read Gem Fletcher’s review here.

5. Carla Williams, Tender
TBW Books

It’s often a posthumous exercise to uncover a hidden trove of photographs, but for Carla Williams, her artistic debut has thankfully arrived during her lifetime—adding a new chapter to her distinguished career as a photo historian. At 18, while studying photography at Princeton, Williams began creating black-and-white and colour portraits using Polaroid 35mm and 4×5 Type 55 film formats. Now published by TBW Books, Tender spans photographs taken between 1984 and 1999. The collection collapses time through a body of unapologetically vivid work – playful, provocative, and present. The intimate self-portraits reveal the evolution of her gaze, reclaiming, redefining, and becoming, charting her coming-of-age as an artist and a queer Black woman. Winner of the Paris Photo–Aperture Foundation First Photobook Prize and celebrated with a solo exhibition at Higher Pictures, Carla Williams: Circa 1985 marks the first time much of this work has been published or exhibited.

6. Magdalena Wywrot, Pestka
Deadbeat Club

When I look back on photos of myself as a child, they’re worlds apart from the grainy, high-contrast black-and-white images Magdalena Wywrot created in her project about her daughter, Barbara. These are far less sanitised and reflect the otherness of the universe Wywrot creates in Pestka – a name that means seed, shell, or kernel and is Barbara’s nickname. Accompanied by essays from David Campany and Barbara Rosemary, the series brims with a delicate intimacy yet hums with a raw, almost mystical energy. What began as a spontaneous act of documentation has become a richly layered work of magical realism and gothic narrative. Fragmentary and cinematic, the images possess a haunting poeticism that we might find in the avant-garde sensibilities of Vera Chytilová or Dušan Makavejev – full of the playful, subversive potential that Campany mentions in his text.

7. Johny Pitts, Afropean: A Journal
Mörel Books

Johny Pitts, founder of afropean.com and author of Afropean: Notes from Black Europe (Penguin, 2020), unites his expansive work in this thoughtfully curated photobook tracing a five-month journey encompassing Paris, Berlin, Lisbon, Brussels, Amsterdam, and Stockholm. Pitts, in his search for a different side of the continent, collates an epic travelogue that blends striking photography with personal ephemera – tickets, diary notes, maps, postcards – offers a tactile, immersive book that flies in the face of rising populism and far-right politics across the continent. New essays by Pitts deepen the conversation on the Black European experience alongside a six-part podcast, a soundtrack, and three short films shot on location – a bold, multi-layered exploration of Afropean life.

8. Ute Mahler, Werner Mahler, Ludwig Schirmer, Ein Dorf 1950–2022
Hartmann Books

Michael Grieve writes, ‘time, of course, is the great force here,’ in Ein Dorf 1950–2022; that force brings ‘an arbitrary photographic topography brought to reason.’ The village of Berka, Germany, has been captured over seven decades by three remarkable photographers united by a family story – coincidental or not – that ties together personal history with the sweeping political shifts from state socialism to the reunification of a divided country. Alongside essays by Jenny Erpenbeck, Steffen Mau, and Gary Van Zante, the 220 black-and-white images glimpse the subtle yet seismic moments that have redefined the village, its people, and its evolving identity. Here is a rivetting perspective, as sociological as it is a documentary, on a place that has witnessed history, and its political reality unfolding in real-time. Since we published our review, Ute Mahler and Werner Mahler have deservedly been awarded the Order of Merit of the Federal Public of Germany (2024) for services to photography.

9. Olivia Arthur, Murmurings of the Skin
VOID

After gracing festivals, museums, and galleries worldwide, Murmurings of the Skin now emerges as a striking publication from the mighty VOID. Nealy eight years ago, Olivia Arthur began her work on physicality, capturing the energy flowing through bodies and the sensation of skin on skin. Sparked by her experience of pregnancy, the work blossomed into a vivid exploration of youth, sexuality, and touch – charged moments of intimacy. In the stillness of pandemic isolation, these themes gained new urgency. The result is a tactile, sensitive work that remedies the struggle of feeling at home in our skin.

10. Máté Bartha, Anima Mundi
The Eriskay Connection

“Our world right now operates in code. So, if we’re talking about code, isn’t everything about how the universe functions?” There’s no denying that Máté Bartha’s latest work, Anima Mundi, leans into the obscure. If we begin with the title’s translation, Anima Mundi means “world spirit,” a concept rooted in Platonic thought, reflecting an ancient idea of a universal organising principle that connects all beings. Divided into chapters exploring urban phenomena ranging from the microcosmic to the cosmic, Anima Mundi composes intricate patterns, layered grid structures, and cryptic visual codes. Its poetic and philosophical approach to the desperate act of seeking structure and meaning invites us to return to the question: how do we make sense of the universe and its code? How do we find sense in arbitrariness?

+1 Flashpoint! Protest Photography in Print, 1950-Present
10×10 Photobooks

What is the relationship between visual culture and protest? Flashpoint!, both a powerful survey of activism and visual tour de force, is a meticulously curated, global collection of protest photography, zines, posters, pamphlets, and independent publications from the 1950s to the present. The latest offering from 10×10 Photobooks is born from the 2017 project AWAKE: Protest, Liberty, and Resistance collection, which organised protest photobooks by themes through an open call. Flashpoint! builds on this with seven expansive chapters, each containing multiple sub-themes. Across 500 pages, 750+ images, and a series of thought-provoking essays, the endlessly evocative collection reflects Arthur Fournier’s ‘aesthetic of urgency,’ contrasting the polished, institutional protest imagery with the raw, time-sensitive visuals of grassroots movements.♦

 

 

 

 


Thomas King is Editorial Assistant at 1000 Words and a student on BA (Hons) Culture, Criticism, Curation at Central Saint Martins, University of the Arts London.

Tim Clark is Editor in Chief at 1000 Words and Artistic Director for Fotografia Europea in Reggio Emilia, Italy, together with Walter Guadagnini and Luce Lebart. He also teaches at The Institute of Photography, Falmouth University.

Images:

1-Cover of Adam Broomberg & Rafael Gonzalez, Anchor in the Landscape (MACK, 2024). Courtesy MACK

2-Adam Broomberg & Rafael Gonzalez, Anchor in the Landscape (MACK, 2024). Courtesy MACK

3-Karolina Spolniewski, Hotel of Eternal Light (BLOW UP Press, 2024). Courtesy BLOW UP Press

4-Agnieszka Sosnowska, För (Trespasser, 2024). Courtesy Trespasser

5-Carmen Winant, The Last Safe Abortion (Self Publish, Be Happy, 2024). Courtesy Self Publish, Be Happy

6-Carla Williams, Tender (TBW Books, 2024). Courtesy TBW Books

7-Magdalena Wywrot, Pestka (Deadbeat Club, 2024). Courtesy Deadbeat Club

8-Johny Pitts, Afropean: A Journal (Mörel Books, 2024). Courtesy Mörel Books

9-Werner Mahler, Ein Dorf, 1977-78 in Ute Mahler, Werner Mahler, Ludwig Schirmer, Ein Dorf 1950–2022 (Hartmann Books, 2024). Courtesy Hartmann Books

10-Olivia Arthur, Murmurings of the Skin (VOID, 2024). Courtesy VOID

11-Máté Bartha, Anima Mundi (The Eriskay Collection, 2024). Courtesy The Eriskay Collection

12-Flashpoint! Protest Photography in Print, 1950-Present, edited by Russet Lederman and Olga Yatskevich (10×10 Photobooks, 2024). Courtesy 10×10 Photobooks


1000 Words favourites

• Renée Mussai on exhibitions as sites of dialogue, critique and activism

• Roxana Marcoci navigates curatorial practice in the digital age

• Tanvi Mishra reviews Felipe Romero Beltrán’s Dialect

• Discover London’s top five photography galleries

• Tim Clark in conversation with Hayward Gallery’s Ralph Rugoff on Hiroshi Sugimoto

• Academic rigour and essayistic freedom as told by Taous Dahmani

• Shana Lopes reviews Agnieszka Sosnowska’s För

• Valentina Abenavoli discusses photobooks and community

• Michael Grieve considers Ute Mahler and Werner Mahler’s posthumous collaboration with their late family member 

• Elisa Medde on Taysir Batniji’s images of glitched video calls from Gaza

Posthumous collaboration in Ein Dorf 1950–2022

Published with Hartmann Books, Ein Dorf (A Village) 1950–2022, is a photobook by Ute Mahler and Werner Mahler in posthumous collaboration with their late family member Ludwig Schirmer. It allows the viewer to travel through time yet stay in the same place – Berka, a small village in Thuringia, Germany – where in recent days the far-right party Alternative für Deutschland (AFD) has come top in a state election. In his review, Michael Grieve writes how photography projects that collaborate with the deceased have the potential to breathe new life and recontextualise how we understand the past, the present, and project with unease into an uncertain future.


Michael Grieve | Book review | 05 Sept 2024

Serendipity can be a major creative force and harnessing its potential has the possibility to culminate into something solid and everlasting. And so it is with the modestly titled Ein Dorf (A Village) 1950–2022 published by Hartmann Books, the latest photobook project by the acclaimed German documentary photographers, Ute Mahler and Werner Mahler in posthumous collaboration with the late Ludwig Schirmer. All of them have photographed the same village at different times over a seventy year period at approximately 20 year intervals. The book is a comparative study of a specific place documented from three different perspectives over four historical periods. The story of this book is truly extraordinary, fused with many layers and chance connections that it positively feels that it was meant to come together and see the light of day. As Ute Mahler explains, the seeds of the book were sown in 2001: ‘When I discovered the pictures in my father’s estate, I was already thinking about a book. The book, At Home, with only his photographs was published in 2003. In 2019 Werner and I had the idea of taking photographs in Berka and putting all four works together.’

Ein Dorf is split into four chronological chapters; Ludwig Schirmer 1950-60, Werner Mahler 1977-78, Werner Mahler 1998 and Ute Mahler 2021-22. The ‘dorf’ in question is the small rural village of Berka, situated almost in the centre of Germany in the Thuringia district, where in recent days the far right party Alternative für Deutschland (AFD) – led by ethno-nationalist Bjorn Hocke – has come top in a state election. Thuringia is of course the place where the Nazis first won power in a German state government in 1930 before taking up the helm in Berlin three years later.

The first in this trilogy of photographers is Ludwig Schirmer who took over the family business running a mill in the village at the end of WWII. During his spare time Schirmer photographed the village over a 10 year period before moving his family to Berlin where he became a successful professional photographer. With great enthusiasm as the photographs tell, he took pictures for the most part with a medium format Primarflex 6×6 camera with great observational skill in an informal manner. His photographs are a hive of activity and always feature people, and fully embrace village life ranging from social functions and rituals to farm work, punctuated occasionally by a portrait. The slaughtering of pigs is a constant through all four projects as is the Straw Bear, a traditional character from medieval times found at carnival processions.

Photographers often used to differentiate between those with a natural or forced eye and Schirmer certainly possesses the former with an innate intuition of composing complex situations, having a measured sense of distance that is close and intimate and can only be captured with subjects who trust his presence and not question intentions. Schirmer has an unflinching visual capacity to hold still the movement and energy of the people of Berka with images that are at times reminiscent of the rural painting of Dutch Renaissance artist Pieter Bruegel the Elder, who gives credence to the peasant population surrounded in a village context, and representing groups of people and individuals as small figures engaged in their own distinct activity. Unlike the fluffy, picturesque landscape paintings of, for example, John Constable in the 18th century, Bruegel was untainted with notions of romanticism and the sublime. In hindsight Schirmer’s pictures have a certain nostalgia, but these monochrome realist expressions convey a certain frisson of engagement and are without any agenda other than celebrating the hive of activity of village life and capturing a glimpse of an even greater sense of joy now that amongst the Berka population the horror of the WWII is behind them.

After the trauma of the war, Berka found itself as part of the German Democratic Republic, under the control of a socialist system. Thus the early stages of the GDR and Schirmer’s pictures obviously reveal little evidence of the socialist system except perhaps in one intriguing image of suited men with inappropriate fine shoes for a muddy field, observing a trench made by a tractor; conjuring perhaps a narrative of state officials making decisions about productive efficiency in the new age of forced collectivism. In some of the photographs, in an almost incidental way, can be seen a little blonde haired girl who is Ute Mahler, the daughter of Ludwig Schirmer. Here the connectedness of the stories of the Ein Dorf story of one place develops an autobiographical layer of meaning. In 2003 Ute described the process of making sense of her father’s archive: ‘I found one small black and white print – an image of a young child climbing a tree. A photograph of me. Suddenly everything came rushing back – the sweet smell of spring and summer, the gentle hilly landscape, my childhood. It felt like stumbling upon a hidden treasure. The photographs were not organised in any way; there were few prints, hardly any contact sheets, and contact sheets without any negatives. Eventually the whole family pitched in to help with the daunting task of sorting through the archive. We discovered unbelievably powerful images, dreamlike in their charisma and aesthetics. For the family the images from my father were very important. But for me they touched me not only as a daughter but, above all else, as a photographer.’

The central position of Werner Mahler’s combined projects can be understood as representing a link from one place in time to another; a personal bridge and documentary divide between Ludwig Schirmer the father, to Ute Mahler the daughter, and a historical and political bridge from communism to the reunification of a divided Germany. As a young man in the 1970’s Werner Mahler was the apprentice to the then now successful commercial photographer, Ludwig Schirmer, and at this moment Werner met and fell in love with Ute and so they married. As a student of photography at the Academy of Fine Arts in Leipzig, Werner documented Berka between 1977 and 1978 for his graduate exhibition. And, despite the spectre of forced socialism, village life is still very much alive with remnants of the past but now with the added, noticeable changes of fashion as well as farm machinery albeit with continued traditions and in opposition to official government policy.

In the accompanying text to Ein Dorf, Steffen Mau, Professor of Sociology describes how at this time, ‘it was not always easy to bring an entire village into line with official policy. In Berka pigs continued to be slaughtered at home, carnival was celebrated following exotic traditions, there was music in the streets and bizarre folklore traditions were maintained. Nevertheless, anyone who opposed the party line too adamantly could expect to feel the consequences, even in a village.’ 20 years later Werner was commissioned by Stern magazine to document Berka in the context of German unification which was in the process of a turbulent transformation. Werner’s photography has sharpened with experience with a more precise eye for detail and composition. This was a period referred to as the Wende, the ‘turning’ from state socialism and a controlled economy to a democratic system with a free market economy. The difference from 20 years previously is distinct in the material effects of a consumer society. Rural character and authenticity is radically being replaced with facades from home improvement stores and cars are more visible.

The most powerful first impression of Ute Mahler’s photography is the profound sense of emptiness found in the well manicured streets of Berka. The contrast of the village from the time of her father up until today is truly startling; a microcosm of the increasing genericism of our societies and disintegration of community life. Unlike Schirmer’s joy and optimism, Ute Mahler’s project exists moving towards a vacuous impasse and asks questions, detectable in the eyes and manner of those young women she portrayed, the same age as Ute when she left Berka, as to a sense of doubt of any fruitful future. Four young girls dressed in tight jeans, tops and white trainers most probably produced in China or sweatshops in Bangladesh, India or Cambodia by girls the same age if not younger. This sounds extremely despondent and a million miles away from simple village life, though not so simple, yet we know that in almost every village today, in Europe and the UK, that the supermarket has gone some way to replace the local grocer, butcher and baker, and that the plasma screen in every living room has replaced social activity, not to mention the mobile phone. As always Ute’s portraits are photographs charged with a distinct empathy and honest distance and her subjects are never victims though undoubtedly the sense of an atomised community is clearly imbued in the tone and description of her visual representations. People seem to be there but not wholeheartedly present.

Ein Dorf opens up a portal into a hitherto and seemingly insignificant place, within which this complexity and multi-layered story reveals a wonderfully unique testament to the straight documentary genre; unpretentious, deceptively simple and grounded in a sophisticated process of showing what is ‘there’, and with this exemplary example we witness the inevitable changes of a particular society over a period of time. Time, of course, is the great force here and brings the narrative of this book together; an arbitrary photographic topography brought to reason. These pictures contain many small details for us to decipher and unravel a history of seismic proportions. Ute and Werner Mahler are without sentimentality and make no judgments, possessing a skilful ability to balance a cool and measured detachment with a warm engagement to the subject due, in part, to their personal empathetic recognition to those they photograph. Photography projects that collaborate with the deceased have the potential to breathe new life and recontextualise how we understand the past, the present and project with unease into the uncertain future. Not only is society in perpetual motion but the meaning of photographs are always constantly in a state of flux.

Sociologically Ein Dorf is a significant photobook and should be on the reading lists at all sociology and history departments at universities. The book also operates on another level which is the metaphysical, evoking memory and a melancholia of the passing of time while also revealing the urge of photography to fix that time. In his book Austerlitz, the German author W.G. Sebald, writes of the central character describing how in his photographic work he was always entranced, ‘… by the moment when the shadows of reality, so to speak, emerge out of nothing on to the exposed paper, as memories do in the middle of the night, darkening again if you try to cling to them, just like a photographic print left in the developing bath too long.’

The shadows of Ein Dorf have managed to be fixed by virtue of having been shared and the preservation of certain memories for the photographers themselves remains the enduring task of serious photography. Both collective and personal memory builds our identities and without it, as W.G. Sebald postulates ‘we would not be capable of ordering even the simplest thoughts, the most sensitive heart would lose the ability to show affection, our existence would be a mere never-ending chain of meaningless moments, and there would not be the faintest trace of a past.’ ♦

All images courtesy of the artists and Hartmann Books. © Ute Mahler, Werner Mahler, Ludwig Schirmer

Ein Dorf 1950–2022 is published by Hartmann Books.


Michael Grieve is a photographer, Director of ArtFotoMode, Hamburg Werkstatt Fotografie (HWF) and lecturer at Ostkreuzschule in Berlin. In 1997 he graduated from the MA Photographic Studies from the University of Westminster and then proceeded to work as a photojournalist and portrait photographer for publications internationally. He was Deputy Editor of 1000 Words and a writer for the British Journal of Photography. Since 2011 he has been Senior Lecturer at Nottingham Trent University, Nottingham, Akademia Fotografie Warsaw and the University of Art and Design, Berlin, and currently teaches at Ostkreuzschule für Fotografie, Berlin. He is currently working on Procession, a project documenting the peripheral space between Athens and Elifsina, Greece.

Images:

1>3-Ludwig Schirmer, Ein Dorf, 1950-1960

4>6-Werner Mahler, Ein Dorf, 1977-78

7>9-Werner Mahler, Ein Dorf, 1998

10>12-Ute Mahler, Ein Dorf, 2021-22


1000 Words favourites

• Renée Mussai on exhibitions as sites of dialogue, critique and activism

• Roxana Marcoci navigates curatorial practice in the digital age

• Tanvi Mishra reviews Felipe Romero Beltrán’s Dialect

• Discover London’s top five photography galleries

• Tim Clark in conversation with Hayward Gallery’s Ralph Rugoff on Hiroshi Sugimoto

• Academic rigour and essayistic freedom as told by Taous Dahmani

• Shana Lopes reviews Agnieszka Sosnowska’s För

• Valentina Abenavoli discusses photobooks and community

• Michael Grieve considers Ute Mahler and Werner Mahler’s posthumous collaboration with their late family member 

• Elisa Medde on Taysir Batniji’s images of glitched video calls from Gaza