Join us for Photobooks & Coffee at Photobook Cafe. Meet the photobook cafe archive team and learn about the collection.

Our team will guide you through new photobooks, zines and our magazine archive which hosts over 600 publications.

This is a great way to find out more about the world of self publish photobooks and the story and ethos behind Photobook Cafe.

Tickets are £15 are include a coffee and a pastry.

Milly Cope and Celia Croft book launch (aka party) with Pretty Ugly Books.

Come celebrate the hues of Air Fresheners and gaze at selected Offerings with Milly Cope and Celia Croft. Launching their latest printed project in partnership with Pretty Ugly Books. Their work is an exercise in curation - of scents and affection in sorrows. 

Celia’s is gazing at life's Offerings, both purposeful and accidental. Noticing the desire to celebrate and remember in sometimes awkward and bizarre ways. The arranged totems and items of memory. An opportunity to remember that despite our griefs being individual the experience is universal. And that in it we have a little bit more in common than we might at times manage to remember.

Milly’s is, in comparison, lighter, colourful and fragrant. Presenting us with light touches and sensitivity for a subject matter that usually would not pretend to captivate. It’s an opportunity to enjoy photography for its simplicity, textural and aesthetic and playfully mess a bit with the expectations of the mighty « zine ». 

Dominoes is a unique and vibrant mosaic of the lives that float in and around Gillett Square in Hackney. The book is populated by intimate pictures of people who have experienced addiction and pain as well as the deep joys of the community of which they are a part. Just like the Dominoes that are now played in the square, those lives are often precarious. For ten years Roland Ramanan was privileged to be allowed into the lives and homes of many local residents, to photograph their struggles and their hardships; their families and their lovers. Some of these people are now his friends, others are no longer with us. Dominoes touches on universal themes of love, death, hope and the evolution of urban communities. The work is an honest look into lives that we often ignore; there is sadness but there is also always a sense of hope. There will be a short talk by Roland about the background to the project and copies will be on sale and available for signing.

Roland Ramanan is a London based documentary photographer, with a background in music and education. He began photographing around Gillett Square in 2012 and continues to maintain a contact with that community. The work has featured in Vice magazine amongst others and has won various awards including being shortlisted for the Royal Photographic Society documentary awards. Roland was also a finalist in the Portrait of Britain awards. Roland’s current project focuses on the London roller skate scene and its relationship to black culture.

Need a new website but don't have the budget to hire a professional to build it? Would you do it yourself if you only had the time and bandwidth to figure out how?

Fortunately, I have an easy and super-affordable solution. Join me on Sunday 12th May 2024 for an intensive one-day workshop in London (or online if you can't be there in-person) on which you will design and build yourself a brand new website with Squarespace in a matter of hours and leave at the end of the day with all the know-how to manage and update your content thereafter.

You will learn, among other things: 

• How to create an acoount (and get an exclusive 6 month trial period)

• How Squarespace 'templates' work

• How to add and style your content

• How to size your images for web use

• How to chose a gallery style and present your images

• How to register a domain name

• How to make your website Google-friendly with search engine optimisation

• How to publish the final version

The workshop will take place at the Photobook Cafe in Shoreditch, 10.00 - 16.00, with the option to join remotely over Zoom if you are not in London. Fee: £149.00 Places are limited and available on a first come first served basis.

For only £12 per person, join us for a delicious plant-based dinner of Grateful Pies with gravy, peas, chips, a seasonal side of your choice AND a pint! ⁠
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We’ll be serving from 6.30pm until 8.30pm, and we look forward to seeing you. ⁠

Curated by Zula Rabikowska, this event combines a group exhibition, film screenings and a panel discussion which will explore and rethink the meaning of "Eastern Europe" today. The event brings together 18 different artists from Poland, Romania, Russia, Hungary, Bulgaria, Germany, Denmark, UK, Moldova and Ukraine working with photography, moving image, sculpture and performance. 

Schedule 18:30 – 19:00 
Doors open 19:00 – 19:10 
Welcome 19:10 – 19:35 
Film Screenings 19:35 – 19:45 
Break 19:45 – 20:45 
Panel Discussion 20:45 – 21:00 
Questions 21:00 
Closing remarks + Mingle 

Exhibiting artists: Ania Ready Diana Serban Erika Nina Suárez Eve Gil Hanna-Katrina Jedrosz Ioana Marinca Kasia Ślesińska Katie McCraw Ksenia Kazintseva Laura Bivolaru Lina Ivanova Marcelina Amelia & Grupa Łono Nastassja Nefjodov Patricia Petersen Paulina Korobkiewicz Vera Hadzhiyska Viktoriia Hrytsa Zula Rabikowska

Zula Rabikowska is a London-based documentary photographer, whose work explores topics related to Eastern Europe, migration, identity, and LGBTQI+ communities.  Zula specialises in portraiture and often collaborates with artists, authors, creatives and musicians, and is dedicated to documenting queer communities globally.  Zula's work has been published by the Guardian, BBC, Dazed, Photomonitor,  BJP, Nonchalant Magazine, Gay Times and Diva Magazine. Amongst others, Zula is a recipient of the Centre for British Photography Grant, Getty Images Grant, Mead Fellowship and Robert Giard Grant. You can see more of Zula's work on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/zula.ra/ and on her website https://zulara.co.uk/

The hostel interior is a low buzz of distant, overlapping sounds, the walls appear stained by time: soaking up years of blood, sweat and dirt. Under the constant atmosphere of violence, homeless hostel residents live side by side but in isolation. Seldom leaving his room and haunted by the spectre of the family he lost, Derek lives his life from moment to moment: without the safety nets most of us take for granted. Significant life choices –involving financial difficulties, mental and physical health – are always close to the surface.

Disconnected and abandoned, he navigates the space between the sedate daily routine of the hostel and his fierce, barely suppressed emotions.

God’s Promises Mean Everything is an intimate, long-term character portrait that extends over several years, but limits space to a single room. As the project progressed and rooms became uninhabitable, the initial notion of a ‘single’ space became less defined by the physical and instead transformed into a semi-fictionalised interior; one comprising a number of rooms that combine to create a single, imagined site featuring disorientating perversions of space and spatial impossibilities. Within this carefully constructed and claustrophobic world, the bed became a persistent symbol of a destructive daily cycle; a place of comfort and rest, but also a place from which one cannot escape.

In a collaboration spanning over six years, God’s Promises Mean Everything reveals the unsettling fragility in the connections that make up our everyday experience.

The book is to be published by Dewi Lewis Publishing on 9th May 2024.

Mark Chapman is an award-winning filmmaker and artist from North East, England. His work has been exhibited internationally across filmmaking and photography contexts. He recently completed work on God’s Promises Mean Everything (2024), an intimate photographic study of a hostel resident. His moving-image work has been selected for numerous prestigious film festivals including Clermont-Ferrand International Short Film Festival, Edinburgh

International Film Festival, Uppsala International Film Festival, IKFF Hamburg, Sao Paulo. International Short Film Festival and Jihlava International Documentary Festival. He has a PhD in Film Practice and works as a Lecturer in Film Production at University of Greenwich.

Instagram: @markchapmanuk / Twitter: @markchapmanfilm

Suicide&Co | After Suicide Bereavement

Project Presentation and Q&A

The team’s passion for helping others deal with this specific type of grief comes from a variety of personal experience of losing a loved one to suicide. It all started with our co-founders, Amelia and Emma, who both lost a parent to suicide. With their entrepreneurial spirit and empathetic nature, this double act is determined to do things differently; providing the support needed whilst also opening up the conversation and addressing the stigma.

We strongly believe in the power of conversation and use a variety of initiatives to spark conversations and encourage open dialogues around bereavement from suicide and mental health more generally. In terms of the services we provide, we focus on one-on-one professional support through talking therapies offering our Counselling Service and Helpline that are staffed by bereavement counsellors.

There are also lots of resources on our website for you to explore that can support different aspects of your grief journey (e.g. books and podcast recommendations).

We’re glad you’ve found us and whatever your situation we hope we can support you today.

All welcome, no booking required.

The exhibition features the work of Sıla Yalazan, a photographer based in Turkey.

Flowers in Concrete, invites visitors to witness an archive of the resistance of children against government-backed gentrification in İstanbul and the subculture's "last" struggle against government policies in Turkey. The work of Sıla Yalazan, who finds inspiration in punk aesthetics, include portraits of immigrant children crammed inside İstanbul's Tarlabaşı district (where she has been documenting the ongoing gentrification since 2013), and photographs of the 2013 Gezi protests in Taksim, as well as LGBTQ marches held between 2013-2015. Additionally, two handmade books of these photographs by the Swedish artist Karl Larsson will be showcased. This exhibition is curated by Gül Demirdağ. 

IT’S A LONDON THING is a debut exhibition by George Carr

and Bea Dalley. The show will feature a collection of

photographs which represent the identity of both collaborators.

One being a music photographer and the other being a fashion

photographer. The collaborators shared love for London is what

brought them together and is what will be on show throughout

their imagery.

The photographer’s will be selling a limited number of zines and

t-shirts on the night in celebration of the exhibition.

Sounds provided by Happy Feet.

Social Media Handles: @bea.dalley @georgeccarr

Discover how to work with chance and observation to create unexpected and magical images using everyday household materials such as honey, butter or oil in combination with light sensitive photographic paper. The approach to image making can be as minimal or as intricate as you like.

About the Workshop: A day of experimental image making introducing a small group to a fascinating and more sustainable approach to photographic process.

Chemigram Process and Plant Developers: The Chemigram process occupies a space somewhere between painting and photography. In this workshop we will be using plant developers which are less toxic compared to the ordinary photographic developers.

Workshop Structure: The first part of the workshop will introduce you to the chemigram process with its history and examples of artists’ works, plus an introduction to the plant based developers. In the second part of the session you can spend time working with the process, ending the day with a whole group review. Group and individual support is given throughout the workshop.

All materials including photographic paper and chemistry will be provided. However, you are welcome to bring your own materials e.g exposed/expired photographic paper, plants, resists etc.

About Sayako Sugawara: I am a London based Japanese artist working with a variety of photographic processes, moving image and installation. The transformative quality of the different photographic processes fascinates me as it allows me to make associations and explore memory and imagination.

To find out more about my practice please visit my IG account.

Image Credits: As always ,a big thank you to the previous workshop participants for the use of their images. Andrea Morreau, David Batty and Jes and Jamie Rowan

Ellen Kydd (b.1996) is an English artist whose practice considers the body in varying spaces. Having trained in Photography at Falmouth University (2015-18), later earning an MA in Fine Art at UCA (2019-21), Elle’s artwork meanders across mediums. Invariably performative in output, Elle’s work spans Photography, Movement, Publication, Drawing, Film-making & Painting. Theories of proprioception & Japanese concepts of space (ma 間, wa 和) underpin all of Elle’s artwork, as well as daily interactions with various people and spaces. 

Artist Ellen Kydd (Elle) releases their debut photo-book publication, Anima. Created over a sustained period in Florence and finalised in England, the book questions a selfie-saturated world whilst remaining light-hearted with the medium of traditional photobooth pictures. 

Anima (n) : A current of air, wind breeze; the vital principle, life, soul. 

Engagement is a significant factor in the formation of the series, Anima. Firstly, there is Elle’s desire to engage with the people of Florence, a city initially full of strangers to the English born Artist. The city’s embroilment in art and portraiture enthused Elle, who worked as a model for various painters, sculptors and visual artists, deepening an interest in understanding exactly what a portrait is - and where the agency lies in portraiture: is it with the sitter or the maker? 

As a portrait photographer, Elle began casting from the Florentine streets, instigating conversations that varied between a nod & smile to twenty minute exchanges. Instead of shooting on a handheld camera, Elle chose to be removed from the immediate set-up of the portrait, making use of the readily accessible photobooth/fotoautomatica as an apt medium. The participants sat in the photobooth, without external gaze, faced with a need to engage with their 'self' in order to express their anima. 

An interesting point, Elle notes, is how it was impossible to document the number of people who simply didn’t want to be seen; there were people who were happy to stay for a conversation, but not everyone was content to document their image. There were also those who were willing to join in, providing they shared the photobooth with a friend. These group shots are presented in the Anima publication as a hand-finished triple page spread. The ways in which couples & groups respond in the booth is curious in comparison with how the individuals might respond on their own. Elle queries whether this self-expression of anima is amplified more as individual portraits, or when interacting with another person? 

Wanting to emphasise the significance of engagement, Elle has hand-finished each publication. With inserted photobooth strips, posters, crayon marks, doodles, old Italian papers and fold-out spreads; the experience of turning the pages of Anima is very tactile. These hand-finished touches mean no two books are the same; they are each entirely individual. This is not accidental. Elle emphasises how each of us is entirely individual, in any given moment: we each contain our own anima, which shifts indefinitely. 

The book Anima is designed and hand-finished by Ellen Kydd; and published by 0.08 Imprints, an independent publishing house based in Salford, England.