Photo courtesy of Shutterstock
Happy New Year! Like a few other sneaksters out there, we decided, after reading so many clickable best-of lists, to create a cheat sheet to find some consistency among our favorite listmakers and heartbreakers. Since early November, when the festivities started bounding about, we enlisted our new researcher Diana Guerra to help compile as many as could find, from mainstay publishers like Time, The Telegraph, and The New York Times photobook lists, to ear-to-the-street photoworld wizards like Tim Clark, and Pete Brook, and a number of publications we've never even heard of. We may have missed a few, and some promise to surface in the first weeks of 2016, but this should give you a good glance into it all. Without further rambling ado, below are the eleven most popular photobooks of 2015 -- "11" because of a tie! Read more about them at each link below, and support the photographers by spending some of that unlikely leftover holiday cash. BTW, there's a full list of all the lists we included at the end of this post, and a link to download an Excel sheet in case you want to dig into the data we collected.
And... and....ALSO! If you find this particularly engrossing, check out another take on the subject at And The Winners Are..., a wonderful breakdown compiled by Laurence Vecten and Marc Fuestel.
1) Alec Soth. Songbook
Publisher: Mack
Appears on: 11+ lists
2) Thomas Sauvin: Until Death Do Us Part
Publisher: Jiazahi Press
Appears on: 10+ lists
3) Will Steacy: Deadline
Publisher: Self
Appears on: 10+ lists
4) Dana Lixenberg: Imperial Courts
Publisher: Roma
Appears on: 9+ Lists
5) Mariela Sancari: Moises
Publisher: La Fabrica 2015
Appears on: 9+ Lists
6) Laura El-Tantawy: In the Shadow of Pyramids
Publisher: Self Published
Appears on: 8+ Lists
7) Ivars Gravlejs: Early Works
Publisher: MACK
Appears on: 6+ Lists
8) Paul Kooiker: Nude Animal Cigar
Publisher: Art Paper Editions
Appears on: 6+ Lists
9) Ron Jude: Lago
Publisher: MACK
Appears on: 6+ Lists
10) Sohrab Hura: Life Is Elsewhere
Publisher: Ugly Dog
Appears on: 6+ Lists
11) Thom and Beth Atkinson: Missing Buildings
Publisher: Hwaet Books
Appears on: 6+ Lists
Want to see (almost) ALL the best of photobooks? Here's a downloadable spreadsheet to see the raw data, including 42 Best-Of lists, and more than 300 photobooks.
And Here are the Lists:
10x10 Photobooks
A-N
American Photo
Atsushisaito
Blake Andrews
Calvert Journal
Cape
Colin Pantall
CPH Mag
Crave Online
Daily Beast
David Fathi
Fotografia Magazine
Gabriel Acendoya
Humble Arts Foundation
IPHOR
Lens Culture
Maki
Mark Power
Maxwell Anderson
NY Times
PDN
PDN- Part 2
Photoeye
PhotoEye - Simon Baker
PhotoEye: Erik Kessels
PhotoEye: Robert Dunn
PhotoEye: Robin Tichener
PhotoEye: Yumi Goto
Pierre Bessard
RRB Photobooks
Slate
Smithsonian
Sonia Berger
Telegraph UK
The Guardian
The Innocent Curiosity
Tiane Doan Na Champassak
TIME
Vantage
Volkskrant
Walk Your Camera