photo-eye Santa Fe NM 2016 copyright Douglas Stockdale
One of the pleasures of our recent Thanksgiving road trip to Santa Fe was visiting the photo-eye book store. After the first visit, I had to return for a second visit as there were holiday deals to take advantage of.
The photo-eye bookstore is pretty unique in the United States as other than photographic galleries it is one of the few, if perhaps only, book stores dedicated entirely to contemporary photobooks. Note: this is NOT a book store where you will find any photographic books that attempt to explain photographic techniques, e.g. Lightroom, Photoshop or how to use a Canon 5DMarkIII.
I met up with Christopher Johnson, in the photo above, the Bookstore Manager who provided a quick orientation to the store’s layout as well as some photobook titles to check out. This is not a huge store by any means, but very, very well stocked!
It’s my guess that the majority of their book sales are derived from their website, and similar to other photobook websites, they have leveraged their photobook inventory into a nice retail operation.A little frustration for me that some of the photobooks that photo-eye had recently featured in their newsletter were not available in the store that day; Greogroy Halpern’s ZZYZX (MACK) is in second printing as first edition is sold out, Mark Steinmetz’s Fifteen Miles to K-Ville (Stanley/Baker, London) which were still with Steinmetz being signed, and Mark Ruwedel’s Message from the Exterior (MACK), which was not in stock yet.
Nevertheless, what I did purchase was Jason Fulford and Gregory Halpern’s The Photographer’s Playbook (Aperture) and then on my return to the store to take advantage of their holiday sale discount, Mark Steinmetz’s The Players (Nazraeli Press) which was signed. I wanted to have an actual copy of The Photographer’s Playbook for a couple of reasons, first as one of my reference books for my photobook workshop and when I am reviewing submissions for LensCulture I reference this book to those photographers who seem to be in the midst of searching for a photographic project to focus on. For Steinmetz, he’s a photographer whom we have not reviewed yet and I felt it was about time. Expect to see Steinmetz’s book review after the first of the year.
I will had to admit that I am a bit biased; photo-eye has in stock and selling my photobook Ciociaria (signed!) and the last copies of my limited edition artist-book Pine Lake.
Cheers
PhotoBook Journal 