Photobook Week Aarhus 2023: Future Revisited

Join us in celebrating Photobook Week Aarhus’ 10th anniversary under the theme: Future Revisited.

Photobook Week Aarhus (PWA) is celebrating its tenth edition from 2-5 November 2023. The festival has existed since 2014 as a collaboration between the Aarhus School of Architecture and Galleri Image. It reflects a continuous study of the discourse of photobooks.

PWA’s main venues are Aarhus School of Architecture, ARoS Aarhus Art Museum, and Galleri Image. Other venues include HEART Herning Museum of Contemporary Art, Dokk1, and Godsbanen. The festival programme is dedicated to exhibitions and talks about publishing, researching, distributing, buying, trading, and collecting photobooks. Also, both new and vintage photobooks can be purchased at the festival. Participation in the festival is free of charge, and everyone is welcome.
The theme for PWA 2023 is ‘Future Revisited’.

The festival will pay homage to Albert Renger-Patzsch’s famous book “Die Welt ist schön” (The World is Beautiful), published 95 years ago, and look at Artificial Intelligence for image making and scripting. The curators of the festival have launched an international competition for artists who use artificial intelligence for storytelling in a photographic and post-photographic context. During the festival, there will be a seminar on the latter with presentations by Boris Eldagsen, Signe Klejs, Olle Essvik, and David Fathi.

A significant part of PWA revolves around the relationship between architecture, photography, and photobooks.

As Anne Elisabeth Toft, an associate professor at Aarhus School of Architecture and one of the curators of PWA, explains:

“As a celebration of the festival’s 10th anniversary, we have asked the renowned German architectural photographer and theorist Professor Rolf Sachsse to “revisit” the history of architecture through a curated collection of photo books from the 20th century onwards. Under the working title “The Library within the Library”, it will reflect on historiography and canon as construction”.

The above-mentioned theme is continued and put into perspective in a small exhibition of photobooks by the famous German photographer Candida Höfer. Throughout her career, Höfer has worked on photographic series showing public institutions such as libraries, museums, archives and zoos; institutions that have all been tasked with preserving and disseminating our collective cultural heritage.

A third exhibition – which will be contextualised by a lecture by the English writer and curator of photography Gerry Badger – will focus on the photobook: Amerika: Bilderbuch eines Architekten. Published in 1926 by the German architect Erich Mendelsohn (1887–1953), who played a key role in revolutionising architecture in Germany throughout the 1920s, the book is today widely considered a cornerstone of photobooks about built structures.

The overall festival programme will include a performance by Olle Essvik, a book market, exhibitions on photonovels, photobooks from Estonia, photobooks for children, photobooks made with the use of AI, and photobooks awarded the Kassel Dummy Award and the Hong Kong Photobook Dummy Award.

Presentations and discussions by international and Danish photobook experts will put the themes of the exhibitions into perspective.

Read more about Photobook Week Aarhus, and view the full programme.

Time

From 5 p.m. on 2 November (Thursday) to 4 p.m. on 5 November (Sunday.

Locations

The Library, Aarhus School of Architecture
Exners Plads 7, 8000 Aarhus C

Galleri Image
Vestergade 29, 8000 Aarhus C

ARoS Aarhus Art Museum, level 3
Aros Allé 2, 8000 Aarhus C

HEART Herning Museum of Contemporary Art
Bitten og Aage Damgaards Plads 2, 7400 Herning

Dokk1
Hack Kampmanns Plads 2, 8000 Aarhus C

Godsbanen
Skovgaardsgade 3, 8000 Aarhus C

Photobook Week Aarhus 2023 is supported by Dreyers Fond, Aarhus Municipality, Nordea Fonden, Politiken-Fonden, Instituto Cames, the Portuguese embassy to Denmark, and Institut Français, Denmark.