Today we had the pleasure of listening to Daniel Boetker- Smith about his photographic journey and photobook career which he is probably best known for.
“An expert on photobooks and self-publishing in the Asia-Pacific area, Daniel Boetker-Smith is a writer, curator, photographer and educator based in Melbourne, Australia. He has worked as a lecturer for the past 15 years, and in 2013 he took up the post as an academic director at Photography Studies College in Melbourne — the oldest independent photography institution in Australia.
Boetker-Smith regularly contributes to British Journal Photography, as well as Photo-eye and Paper Journal, among other international publications, and is the director of the Asia-Pacific Photobook Archive, a non-profit library of self-published and independent photobooks.”
The Asia Pacific Photobook Archive
"The Archive has a dedicated space in Melbourne Australia and is open to the public – importantly the Archive is also a travelling library, meaning the book you submit travels the world being shown at various event/fesitvals/exhibitions. We have exhibited thousands of books at festivals all over the world since 2013 in Cambodia, Malaysia, Singapore, Japan, India, Taiwan, Indonesia, Philippines, New Zealand, Australia, Germany, UK, Ireland, USA
The APPA is a response to the boom in photographic self-publishing globally and is established to provide a ‘real’ way to see photobooks that would otherwise only be viewable online.
The APPA is a response to the European and American focus of most international discourses around photography and photobooks. The APPA is committed to promoting the production and dissemination of photobooks in the region. The APPA is acutely aware of the wealth of photographic talent in the region and hopes to become a vehicle for the promotion and showcase of the material in the archive through dedicated exhibitions, publications, collaborations, symposia, and guest lectures throughout the Asia-Pacific region and internationally.
The APPA will preserve and make accessible to current and future generations the broad practices and approaches encapsulated in the production of photobooks in the Asia-Pacific region. The APPA will provide a physical site for the public, artists and scholars alike to reflect on the photobook as a distinct and relevant phenomenon, now and into the future. International exhibitions, features, articles, and events will utilise the material in the archive. All items in the archive will be eligible for inclusion in these projects as they arise in the future.
The establishment of the APPA is inspired by and indebted to the tireless work of Larissa Leclair, founder of the US based Indie Photobook Library – http://www.indiephotobooklibrary.org/
The Archive is coordinated by Daniel Boetker-Smith and Isabella Capezio
The Archive was established in 2013 by Daniel Boetker Smith.
Daniel is the Academic Director of Photography Studies College (Melbourne), he is also a regular contributor to a number of Australian and international photographic publications – Voices of Photography, Source, Vault, British Journal of Photography, Photoeye, Paper Journal, and more.
Isabella is a Melbourne based photographer and tutor at Photography Studies College and RMIT University. After completing her BA in Photography at RMIT she went on to co-found and direct Ruffian Gallery – a home to socially aware photographers in Melbourne’s West. Isabella is an Australian education liaison for street art collective Dysturb that advocates photojournalism and new forms of public awareness."
https://photobookarchive.com/
Daniel Boetker-Smith opened my eyes to the photobook world which is something that I do not think I have thought that deeply about. He made us think about the audience of our work and the locations across the globe that might be exposed to it. He told us not to contain our work in the Western world, either through where we put our work or the kind of work that we view ourselves in order to gather inspiration. This spoke to me as I feel like I could do with widening the global locations where I gather my research and not keep it restricted to the UK and American photographers that often see presidents in my research.