Profile of David Solo

IMA, Vol. 33, Autumn 2020

For IMA magazine’s “Collector’s Eye” column, I wrote a profile of David Solo and his collection of photo-books with a focus on East Asia and on photo-text publications. Here is an extract:

The collection spans from simple photocopied zines to highly elaborate (and expensive) artist books. In fact, while the book as object led him into the territory of photobooks, Solo has always been interested in the artist book more broadly. His collecting is also geographically diverse: he travels extensively to exhibitions and art events, particularly in the US and Europe, and in our conversation we touched on books from Scotland, Ireland, the United States, Japan, China, Mexico, Denmark and Norway. 

As the field of “books on books” has expanded in recent years—Parr & Badger’s three-volume Photobook: A History is one of the most recognized examples of this—Solo has also built up a collection of several hundred of these publications on artist books and photobooks. However, he believes that there is still some way to go: “There has been too much focus on developing a taxonomy rather than an assessment and critique of the books. I think the photographer’s reputation has sometimes overshadowed other aspects of what makes an interesting book. There is still a lot of room for alternative histories.” 

This view also relates to what has become the main focus of Solo’s collecting over the last five years: books that involve the intersection of image and text. “Photo-text and photo-poetry are not recognized categories as yet,” he says. “When I ask booksellers about photo-text books, they often tell me that no one has asked about that before. That makes it all the more fun!” These collaborative works involving text and image follow many different configurations: a writer-photographer duo actively collaborating, an editor choosing pairings of image and text, or an artist (or writer) choosing existing text (or images) to combine with their work. “However, they were put together, I’m interested in books where the dialogue between text and image is particularly interesting,” says Solo.

As one of the pioneering collectors of photo-text books, Solo is now considering how to make his collection accessible, both online and through exhibition opportunities. Although the pandemic has put some of these plans on hold, it will be fascinating to see Solo’s collection help to open up a new field of discussion and research in photography.