Dream is Wonderful, Yet Unclear, Maria Kapajeva, 2020. Coming soon with Milda Books.

From January to February 2020, Fotogalleriet will look more closely at the photobook as an exhibition space in Le Book Club, a show unravelling in five chapters over five weeks. In light of this, we reignite our interview series looking closely at book production. Here are Maria Kapajeva’s thoughts.

The last decade has seen the publication of more photobooks than in the last 170 years put together according to the PhotoBook Museum. However, a seminar at c/o Berlin last year, Photobooks: RESET, started from the premise that the photobook is in crisis. What do you think – is the photobook in trouble?

The photobook is for me a form of art that can reach a bigger audience than exhibited work. Thus, if we talk about crisis, we need to talk about the art-market crisis, to which photobooks also belong. It’s a form that’s accessible to artists with various levels of income, since you can make a small edition of hand-made books, or a larger edition translated into several languages. Unfortunately, there’s still little support available for the production of art books, which seem not to be fully recognised as an art form. There are exceptions, of course. Both my books (You Can Call Him Another Man and my upcoming Dream Is Wonderful, Yet Unclear) were generously supported by the Estonian Cultural Endowment. But this is one of very few organisations that recognise the importance of non-periodical artistic publications.

You Can Call Him Another Man, Maria Kapajeva.

I’d also like to see more support for the distribution of photobooks to a wider audience. The books often end up being circulated in professional photographic circles, and it’s very hard to reach a different reader, who might not be involved professionally in the art scene. I think people would enjoy reading and exploring art in the form of a book. But due to our education – how kids and young people are introduced to art – there’s a need to expand the boundaries of the art forms, so they can appreciate books too. How wonderful it would be to have school sessions with discussions about both the exhibitions they visit and the art books they read together.

There are books we keep coming back to, as references and because a second or third reading can give new insights. Is there a book (or are there books) that you keep coming back to?

It’s difficult to pick just one or two. I must confess, I have a poor memory and if I read critical texts, I can never rely on my memory to recall all the key points, so I always make notes. Then, when I’m doing research for my new work, I go back to my notes and see if something interests me in terms of that specific idea or question. Those notes often lead me to read the books again. Also, many books have importance at a certain time in my life – I read texts and books that I find relevant to the themes and ideas I’m currently exploring. Recently, for instance, I’ve read for the third time Tyranny of Choice by Renata Selecl and for the second time In memory of memory by Maria Stepanova.

However, Despite the Haze You Can Still Get a Concrete Feeling for the Surroundings, Erik Betshammar. — *However, Despite the Haze You Can Still Get a Concrete Feeling for the Surroundings*, Erik Betshammar.

As for photobooks, I try to buy them when I can afford them, and I proudly own the ones I love. These are always within reach (on my bookshelves) and I enjoy looking through them again and again and again. I really enjoy the first meeting with a book. It reminds me of unwrapping a present, when you have no clue what’s inside. Some books are full of surprises and they’re exciting objects for your intimate and personal discoveries. Reading a book is a very intimate act, isn’t it? For instance, one of my most recent purchases is a book by Swedish artist Erik Betshammar titled However, Despite the Haze You Can Still Get a Concrete Feeling for the Surroundings. It’s an absolutely joyful journey to go through Erik’s book and find all the connected points in it.

In your field, what’s the purpose of the book for you?

It’s another form of developing my practice, and a way of reaching an audience. I don’t treat books as illustrations of the work I’ve developed. For me, each book is a project, an idea and narrative, in itself. For instance, my upcoming book Dream Is Wonderful, Yet Unclear (to be published this spring by Milda Books) is based on a previous body of work with the same title. The book aims to present a different experience of the works and materials I collected and produced at that time. As it’s based on interviews with and photographs of the former workers of a textile mill in Estonia that had closed, the book is an ideal form to share these stories with others who might have gone through similar experiences. In the book, I included more extracts from the interviews and more images that people had shared with me. They’re all presented together as a continuous piece of fabric, woven from collective, personal memories and my reflections on the community to which my family and I used to belong.