twenty-plus reasons why I can't give you a "top photobooks of 2012" list

Yes it’s “let’s congratulate ourselves on our acquisitions” season. But perhaps I shouldn’t make my own list. There are probably enough already, and every additional list might bring more grief to Marc Feustel. Plus I haven’t seen anywhere near enough of the books I already know that I want to see. (This year, I haven’t even once ventured into any bookshop outside Japan.) So here’s my pretty useless these look interesting but NB I haven’t actually examined any of them list for the year.

Feel free to click on any link. Rest assured that none goes to Amazon, the Book Depository (i.e. Amazon), Abebooks (i.e. Amazon), Shelfari (i.e. Amazon), or Junglee (i.e. Amazon). (Because no I’m not, and don’t want to be, an “affiliate” of Amazon or any other corporation.) Although some of the links do go to publishers that may have become divisions of Amazon while I wasn’t looking.

• Anita Back, Die Auserwählten – ein Sommer im Ferienlager von Orlionok = The select few: A summer in the holiday camp of Orlyonok (Braus)
• Hilton Ariel Ruiz and Beatriz Ruiz, eds, The forty-deuce: The Times Square photographs of Bill Butterworth, 1983–1984 (Powerhouse)
• Mark Haworth-Booth, Brandt nudes (Thames & Hudson)
• Asger Carlsen, Hester (Mörel)
• Michal Chelbin, Sailboats and swans (Twin Palms)
• Carl De Keyzer, Moments before the flood (Lannoo)
• Andrea Diefenbach, Land ohne Eltern (Kehrer)
• Harold Feinstein: A retrospective (Nazraeli)
• Tony Fouhse, Live through this (Straylight)
• Annett Gröschner and Arwed Messmer, Berlin, Fruchtstraße am 27. März 1952 = Berlin, Fruchtstrasse on March 27, 1952 (Hatje Cantz)
• Zisis Kardianos, A sense of place (Zisis Kardianos)
• Robert Knoth and Antoinette de Jong, Poppy: Trails of Afghan heroin (Hatje Cantz)
• Nicola Lo Calzo, Inside Niger (Kehrer)
• Michał Łuczak, Brutal (Michał Łuczak)
• Peter Martens, American testimony (Post)
• Davide Monteleone, Red thistle (Dewi Lewis)
• Gyler Mydyti and Elian Stefa, Concrete mushrooms: Reusing Albania’s 750,000 abandoned bunkers = Ripërdorimi i 750,000 bunkerëve Shqiptar (DPR-Barcelona)
• Enrico Natali, New York subway, 1960 (Nazraeli)
• Cedric Nunn, Call and response (Hatje Cantz)
• Ostkreuz, Über Grenzen = On borders (Hatje Cantz)
• Inta Ruka, People I know (Max Strom)
• Gregor Sailer, Closed cities (Kehrer)
• Sputnik, Miejsce odległe = Distant place (Copernicus Science Centre)
• Hans van der Meer, The Netherlands: Off the shelf (Paradox/Ydoc)
• Tomas van Houtryve, Behind the curtains (Intervalles)
• Dirk-Jan Visser and Arthur Huizinga, Offside: Football in exile (Paradox/Ydoc)
• Malte Wandel, Einheit, Arbeit, Wachsamkeit. Die DDR in Mosambik (Kehrer)

Copies of two of the above are already on their way to me (from Canada and Poland). And I hope to see more of the others in the new year. So far as I can judge from little JPEGs, they’re all quite a bit more rewarding than some of last year’s top of the critical pops and than over 90% — but not all! — of the photobooks and -zines coming out of Japan.

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