About

Ten years ago we agreed to create a new day in the calendar, a day that didn’t exist and was very necessary—World PhotoBook Day. We chose the date that the author herself, Anna Atkins, wrote on the back of the first page of the first photobook ever published in the world 180 years ago: October 14. So this year, as we have been doing since 2013, we are calling everyone to celebrate your love for photobooks!

Small simple actions you can undertake to celebrate locally the tenth edition of this global event:

• Show your love for photobooks via via instagram or twitter with the hashtag #PhotoBookDay.
• Donate a book: consider donating photobooks you no longer spend time with, or your own that you are keen to reach further than our photobook ecology. Your local school, library or community centre may be interested—especially if you can provide some context or even activities that could be run around the books content
• Post a #PhotoBookDay Selfie or a Shelfie on social media: an image with you and your current favourite photobook.
• Ask your local public library to buy local self-published photobooks and photozines, we are sure you can give them some ideas.
• If you make or sell books, offer your customers discounts or some special goodies. If you run a bookshop a special 5% discount, or free shipping costs, will make your clients happy. Don’t forget to announce it with #PhotoBookDay on your usual social media channels.
• Buy a photobook. Many bookshops and (self-)publishers will make special discounts for the day. Follow your favourite bookshops on social media or search for #PhotoBookDay for offers and discounts.
• Propose us your own way to celebrate!

We have some visuals you can use to add to your posters and social network communications that you will find on this site. We hope we all have fun this day with photobooks.

Organise! Participate! Celebrate! World Photobook Day has been set up as a collaboration between the organisers of Photobook Club Madrid, Victoria Cooper, Doug Spowart and Matt Johnston.
Celebrating the photobook, born in 1843.

Best,
Bonifacio Barrio Hijosa
Matt Johnston
Victoria Cooper + Doug Spowart