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For decades, books have their own unique place in the art scene as an independent medium and artists use its special language to advance artistic goals, but book medium is less studied and exhibited in Iran. Therefore, in the following of the Choom Outside project and with a purpose of familiarizing the art community of Bandar Anzali with this medium, Choom Gallery hosted an exhibition entitled “Book and Artist” from April 27 to 31. More than 90 photobooks and artistbooks from “Dastras PhotoBook Platform” and “ArtBook Market” were exhibited in this event and it provided an opportunity for art lovers to get to know valuable examples of this medium closely.
In addition to the photobooks and artistbooks, lateral programs were arranged in this exhibition for maximum benefit:
“Intensive workshop on making an artbook” was held in three sessions by Hedieh Ahmadi and Amirhossein Kardoni; Amir Yousefi and Amirparsa BaniAmeriyan spoke about three outstanding contemporary books, and in a live discussion, MohammadReza Mirzaei and Gordon Stillman spoke to the audience about their publication, Blue Tiger Press. Also, the documentary film “How to make a book with Steidl” about the famous photobook publisher, Gerhard Steidl, was shown.
In a part of preface text of this show, it is stated:
“Why an exhibition of artistsbooks and photobooks?
For decades, the book has found its importance and position in the art scene as the final foundation for the presentation of artworks. In the middle of the 21st century, conceptual art artists, under the shadow of their pragmatist spirit, took advantage of the democratic features of this medium for independent, direct expression and challenging the tradition and turned it into the one of the established forms of artistic production. From the beginning of the 21st century, the development of printing technologies and the expansion of usable materials revitalized to this movement and led to more production and exhibition of these works. This strengthened the art and economic cycle of this medium, fortified the position of the book as a unique medium that needs classification and historiography, and created its special institutions. Nowadays, it seems that “every artist needs to think about books too”. It is said that the bookworks published in the last ten years are more than the total number of books published before the last decade. In spite of all these, until the 1990s, there was not held significant event in this regard in Iran apart from one or two exceptions, but fortunately there is a growing trend of the presentation of art in books and addressing it…”
More information about the Dastres Platform and the artbook market:
