Tropical Reading: Photobook and Self-publishing (Second Edition)

Tropical Reading: Photobook and Self-publishing (Second Edition) emerges from Fotobook DUMMIES Day’s field research across Southeast Asia, offering an insider’s exploration into the realm of photography practitioners , artist collectives, independent publishers, art bookstores, spaces and organizations. This publication is the first monograph focusing on Southeast Asia through the lens of photobook and self-publishing.

At the end of 2019, Fotobook DUMMIES Day conducted interviews with photography practitioners and publishers across Bangkok, Chiang Mai, Manila, Laguna, Jakarta, Yogyakarta, Ho Chi Minh City, Hanoi, and Yangon. The paper spaces they created  through books reflect the abundant visual and cultural landscapes of Southeast Asia, while simultaneously revealing a resilience shaped by the unseen boundaries of censorship and the absence of governmental support.

The second edition restructures its narrative through the distinctive way of working in Southeast Asian communities, divided into two chapters: A “Dots, Islands” and B “Nets, Oceans.” It aims to represent individual-driven and collective publishing practices, underscoring their adaptive and collaborative characteristics. The book features conversations with practitioners and publishers, in-depth interviews, and comprehensive observations on the landscape of art publishing in Southeast Asia.

Originally published in Taiwan in 2022, Tropical Reading saw its reissue in the Netherlands in 2024. The second edition includes four additional online interviews from 2022, featuring artists and publishers from Bandung, Kuala Lumpur, Phnom Penh, and Singapore, along with an introductory forward by Photobooks& author Matt Johnston.

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Author: Fotobook DUMMIES Day (Liu Chao-tze, Lin Junye)
Coordinator: Jhen Chen ＆Fotobook DUMMIES Day
Designer: K.Chen (Kuan-Ting Chen)
Translator: Joanna Lee
Text: English
Published by Limestone Books
Published in February 2024
Edition of 400

ISBN 9789083361635

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【About Publisher】

Limestone Books is an art/design bookshop and publishing platform. We focus on non-western perspectives and underrepresented voices. Rather than seeing publishing as producing books, we strive to harness PUBLISHING as an active force—a means of disseminating information, a strategy for decolonizing the global capitalist model of knowledge production, and a pathway for learning from diverse cultures. While we are selling books, our approach to book selection will be entirely different from that of a commercial bookshop. This is because we perceive the act of designing—publishing—distributing books as integral aspects of our artistic practice.