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Essays by Vince Aletti and Christopher McCall

168 pages | 93 reproductions | 11.25 x 8.5 in. | Hardcover | 978-1-59711-009-9

Edition of 2,000
Pier 24 Photography, 2024

Since the publication in 1999 of Horacio Fernández’s Fotografía Pública: Photography in Print 1919–1939 and 2001 of Andrew Roth’s The Book of 101 Books: Seminal Photographic Books of the Twentieth Century, books on photobooks have experienced an explosion of popularity. Photo Book Photo List is unique in that it features not only great photobooks, but lists of the photobooks that have been formative to contemporary practicing photographers. The project is the culmination of Christopher McCall’s ongoing conversations with many photographers over the last fifteen years. Each provided a list of between eight and fourteen prized, cherished photobooks, sometimes annotated with notes or observations, and the artist Libby Black created a sculpture of one or more books on each list to illustrate it. A deliberately open-ended prompt allowed for surprises and purely personal reactions involving books that are perhaps more obscure, or a stretch definitionally. The artists were encouraged to ransack their libraries (and their memories) in search of the raw materials that have shaped their own ongoing attempts at photographic alchemy. The results prove that certain books have clearly had a recurring impact on particular generations. And while it is great to see which of their predecessors’ books photographers admire, perhaps more delightful is the discovery of which books they cite by their peers and contemporaries. The volume features fifty-four lists, bookended by essays by Christopher McCall and the writer and curator Vince Aletti, formerly the art editor and photo critic at the Village Voice and current contributor to the New Yorker.

Vince Aletti is a New York–based writer, critic, and curator with a focus on contemporary photography. Formerly the art editor and photo critic at the Village Voice, he wrote brief exhibition reviews for the New Yorker from 2005 to 2016 and continues to contribute to that magazine. His book Issues: A History of Photography in Fashion Magazines was published in 2019. His 2023 book The Drawer was named PhotoBook of the Year at Paris Photo that year.

Libby Black is a painter, drawer and sculptural installation artist living in Berkeley, CA. Her artwork charts a path through personal history and a broader cultural context to explore the intersection of politics, feminism, LGBTQ+ identity, consumerism, addiction, notions of value and desire. Her sculptural works are to-scale re-creations of objects (some from her own life, some fictional) made of paper, hot glue and acrylic paint. She arranges these three-dimensional renderings of domestic objects, books, magazines, handbags and shoes in still-life arrangements, creating hybrids that mix the real and the imaginary. She received a BFA from Cleveland Institute of Art in 1999 and an MFA at the California College of the Arts in 2001. Libby is an Assistant Professor at San Francisco State University.

Christopher McCall is the director of Pier 24 Photography in San Francisco, one of the largest exhibition spaces devoted to the medium. In 2002 McCall received an MFA in photography from California College of the Arts, studying under Jim Goldberg and Larry Sultan. After teaching for seven years, he joined Pier 24 Photography in 2009 as the founding director, assisting in the conceptualization of the organization’s mission and operating principles. Since opening the doors of Pier 24 in 2010, McCall has overseen the presentation of thirteen exhibitions and spearheaded the creation of the Larry Sultan Visiting Artist Program, a collaboration with California College of the Arts.