On July 29th we welcome all to celebrate the re launch of our Archive, seeing months of categorising, resulting in a fully accessible onsite and online Archive, housing over 1000k items with over 40 categories.

The evening will see a curated reading room and gallery display, open for all to explore.

No RSVP required.

The Photobook Cafe Archive

Our Archives' intention is to build one of the most diverse and inclusive, free public access photobook collections in the world. Accessible to everyone to explore and be a part of. Our aim is to champion photographers and small publishers by giving a platform for promotion and shared collective learning.

We are after personal projects that reflect a photographer's artistic output, whether that be a personal or commercial project. This can encompass any genre of photography, method of binding/printing, and selected publishing house, we look for uniqueness and cherish alternative or low fi printing quality.

With a firm grasp on sustaining an economical and accessible ethos, the entire collection is catalogued using Omeka systems, which allows users to view the entire collection from anywhere in the world. Paired with a free open submission process, the Archive positively supports the future academic learning on photography and self publishing. 

The Archive collection is curated by The Photobook Cafe team, alongside founder Lee Williams. Donations are digitised and catalogued monthly, seeing submissions via the online portal on an ongoing basis. The Archive is celebrated within The Photobook Cafe’s public programme, seeing monthly launches, displays, reading rooms and talks. With an aim to create space for academic and personal research for artists, photographers, writers, curators, students, collectors and historians. 

Find out more about The Photobook Cafe Archive which includes all of our physical photobooks held in our onsite archive, plus digital reference photobooks.