Tropical Reading: Photobook and Self-Publishing

By Fotobook DUMMIES Day (Liu Chao-tze and Lin Junye) Tropical Reading is survey of publishing methodologies across Southeast Asia.  Founded by Taiwanese artists Liu Chao-tze and Lin Junye, Fotobook DUMMIES Day is an artist-led initiative focusing on photobooks and self-publishing. First established as a photobook fair, with the aim of gathering artists who work with images and self-publishing, Fotobook DUMMIES Day experiments with these two mediums as a curatorial basis for exhibitions, events and artist talks. In 2019, the pair began an extensive field research project in Southeast Aisa. The result of their research—this book—highlights photography practitioners and artist collectives, exploring why they chose to begin self-publishing. They explore how independent art bookstores came to be the social parlors of the self-publishing crowd, and document how the outsider artists, archives and arts initiatives of Southeast Asia came to shape the face of photography and self-publishing in t