10x10 Photobooks is a non-profit organization founded to "foster engagement with the global photobook community through an appreciation, dissemination and understanding of photobooks." Founded in 2012, 10x10 is a presenter of public photobook events, including reading rooms, salons, and online communities, as well as a publisher of art catalogs representing the photobook medium.
History
10 x 10 Photobooks was co-founded by Matthew Carson, Russet Lederman and Olga Yatskevich in 2012, with Michael Lang joining in 2014 as Director of Salons. Lederman is a writer, editor and photobook collector in New York City and teaches art writing at the School of Visual Arts in New York. She writes on photobooks for print and online journals, including :nl:Foam Magazine|FOAM, The Eyes, IMA, Aperture and the International Center of Photography's library blog. She also co-edits The Gould Collection, lectures internationally on photobooks, and has received awards and grants from Prix Ars Electronica and the Smithsonian American Art museum. Yatskevich is a photobook collector based in New York and contributing writer for Collector Daily, a platform that offers photography criticism from a collector's perspective. Lang is a photography and photobook collector also based in New York City.
Reading rooms
One of 10x10's major activities is the sponsorship of public reading rooms in which attendees are invited to sit and browse through a curated selection of works.
How We See: Photobooks by Women (2018)
How We See: Photobooks by Women was a hands-on touring reading room, publication and series of public events featuring a global range of one hundred 21st-century photobooks by women photographers. "In this new photobook anthology and touring exhibition, women take center stage in a tradition that has historically ignored their importance." The touring reading room was developed after 10x10 collaborators investigated the history of women's contributions to photobooks and their own publishing practices. For example, historical records establish Anna Atkins's Photographs of British Algae: Cyanotype Impressions as the first photobook. However, when analyzing recent publishing and award patterns, "Lederman and her colleagues, co-founder Olga Yatskevich and director Michael Lang, found that between 2013 and 2017, 40% of the shortlisted photobooks for first book and dummy awards were by women. But when they looked at the shortlists for best book, author, or annual photobook of the year prizes, they found that it dropped to 23%. What’s more, during the same period of time, photobooks by women made up only 10.5% of the entries in the six major “book-on-books” anthologies, and in the online inventory of major photobook sellers, only 16% of the available titles were by women." The accompanying catalog was published in mid-November 2018 with a second printing in February 2019. The publication includes the one hundred photobooks in the reading room, and is supplemented with an additional 100 historical books by women photographers, an annotated history and essays by photographer Ishiuchi Miyako; Magnum FoundationExecutive Director, Kristen Lubben and Valentina Abenavoli of Akina Books. How We See : Photobooks by Women received the 2018 AIGA 50 books | 50 Covers Award. and was shortlisted for the Arles Rencontres del la Photographie 2019 Historical Books award.
AWAKE: Protest, Liberty and Resistance Reading Room (2018)
