Reading Room: Photo-based Books from the Collections of Center for Book Arts

For the fifth International Center of Photography Photobook Fest, artist Christian Patterson has curated a selection of photo-based books from the Center for Book Art’s Collection, available for viewing in a dedicated CBA Reading Room at the fair. Patterson’s selection includes a wide and inspiring array of books dating from the 1960s to the early 2000s, from self-published zines to trade edition books, with subjects including books themselves, climate change, crime, New York City, politics, race, and religion. Rare books from François Deschamps, Helen Douglas and Telfer Stokes, Nancy Holt, Bruce Nauman, Maureen O. Paley, Michalis Pichler, and Keith A. Smith are included among many others. 

CHRISTIAN PATTERSON is an interdisciplinary artist working primarily with photography, books, and installation. His work has also included archival ephemera, drawings, hand-painted signs, monoprints, readymade objects, sound, and video. Patterson’s work has been described as novelistic, subjective documentary of the historical past, and it often deals with themes of the archive, authorship, memory, place, and time. He is the author of four books: Sound Affects (2008), Redheaded Peckerwood (2011, Recontres d’Arles Author Book Award), Bottom of the Lake (2015), and Gong Co. (2024). He is a Guggenheim Fellow (2013), winner of the Grand Prix Images Vevey (2015), a New York Public Library Picture Collection Artist Fellow (2022), James Castle House resident (2023), and Pollock-Krasner Foundation grantee (2025). His work is in the collections of the J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA), Milwaukee Art Museum, National Gallery of Art, Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art and Ogden Museum of Southern Art, and his books are in many institutional artist book collections. He was born in Fond du Lac, Wisconsin and lives in New York City.

About ICP’s Photobook Fest

The International Center of Photography is thrilled to host the fifth Photobook Fest, May 8-10, 2026, spanning our museum and school! For one weekend in May, ICP welcomes over 80 publishers from around the world bringing the best in photobook making to the Lower East Side.

Friday, May 8, 12 PM – 7 PM
Saturday, May 9, 11 AM – 7 PM 
Sunday, May 10, 12 PM – 5 PM  

$8 – Single Day
$20 – Three Day Pass