The list of lists compiled by Marc Feustel now includes the selections from Photo Eye and a couple of other. Feustel pulled together 52 lists reporting 313 books. Redheaded Peckerwood by Christian Patterson is the big winner with 19 votes.

More lists, this time this year’s best “tech” quotes of 2011 from The New Yorker’s Culture Desk.

Yannick Bouillis (founder of Offprint) writes on his Offprint Photobook Fair page on Facebook: 

Agree mostly with all the best photobooks 2011 selection! May i add few more and personal titles?

- Elle/ Il, by Jaap Scheren and Harry Bloch

- A very serious job, Thomas Mailander

- Monsieur Bertillon, Stephanie Solinas

- Offprint, Jorg Koopmann

- Allerseelen, Alexander Binder

- Dora Fobert, Broomberg and Chanarin

- Astronomical, Mishka Henner

- Off Ground, Stephen Gill

- Eva und Wolfgang, Liam Tickner

For what it’s worth, here is a list of my 10 favourite photo books of 2011. They are listed in no particular order and the list contains books in all formats, from extensive monographs like A New Map of Italy to small booklets like The World Won’t Listen: 

• A New Map of Italy by Guido Guidi
• Bad Driving by Louis Porter 
• Farms by Bernhard Fuchs
• Permanent Error by Pieter Hugo
• Animals That Saw Me by Ed Panar  
• The World Won’t Listen by Laurent Champoussin 
• A Criminal Investigation by Watabe Yukichi
• Illuminance by Rinko Kawauchi
• On The Plane by Phillip Kalantzis-Cope
• 83 Days of Darkness by Niels Stomps

There is a big chance that The Auckland Project by John Gossage and Alec Soth would have ended on this list, but I haven’t seen it yet.

And indeed another list compiled by Marc Feustel on his blog eyecurious.

The favourite photo books of 2011 are starting to arrive. This is the list published by the blog Des livres et des photos of the French newspaper Le Monde. The list is compiled by Maria-Karina Bojikian and Rémi Coignet.

It contains a couple of titles that I expect to appear on other lists like Permanent Error by Pieter Hugo, The Significant Savages by Grégoire Pujade-Lauraine and A Criminal Investigation by Watabe Yukichi. I was intrigued by the title A Guide to Trees for Governors and Gardeners by Yto Barrada.

The book I missed to my regret is The King of Photography by Tiane Doan na Champassak. It contains pictures of King Bhumibol taking pictures and is printed using Risograph quadtone printing.

This year’s list of contributors offers up the aesthetic tastes of 27 contributors from Europe, the US, Japan and Mexico.

Let the photobook hunt begin. Broken Manual by Alec Soth has 6 selections closely followed by Quatorze Juillet by Johan van de Keuken (5 selections). There is a lot of praise for Dutch photobooks. Martin Parr for example about How Terry Likes His Coffee:

The Dutch continue to be the best bookmakers in Europe.

And about Haphazard:

Another Dutch masterwork, demonstrating that they are on top of the game when it comes to photobooks.

And Ramón Reverté about Quatorze Juillet:

As with many Dutch photobooks, the design and production is awesome.

I guess Quatorze Juillet will be gone very quickly. At Amazon they are already asking high prices. May be I should try to buy a few copies here in Amsterdam to trade with other photobooks or to sell for the list price to photobook lovers who read my blog. The advance copies of Broken Manual are gone, but you can still buy the special edition. I guess around February or March the regular edition will be issued.

For those who are interested, here is my personal top 10 of photobooks of 2010:

1. The Thirty-Two Inch Ruler / Map of Babylon by the master photographer John Gossage. Of course there is also the 2010 reprint of The Pond, but that was originally published in 1985.
2. Broken Manual by Alec Soth. A high-class photography book disguised as a manuscript. Soth’s previous books are great photobooks, but this is a work of art. It contains beautifully reproduced photographs ranging from small black and white pictures to full color fold-out pages alternating between matte and glossy finishes. The Walker Art Center monograph From Here to There is also highly recommended.
3. The Sound of Two Songs by Mark Power. This year I first bought a copy of 26 Different Endings (2007) because I liked the idea behind it. The Sound of Two Songs is a more conventional photobook, but it contains very good pictures made with a large-format camera.
4. La Carte d’après Nature by Thomas Demand, a.o. A beautiful catalog for an exhibition curated by Thomas Demand. Aperture’s monograph It’s Beautiful Here, Isn’t It… about Luigi Ghirri is a nice book, but the way the work of Ghirri is presented in this book among the work of others is something different. Even if you just want to buy a book with photography by Ghirri, I’d recommend this book above the Aperture monograph. It also contains a second book with a facsimile of a Luigi Ghirri manuscript for a small photobook.
5. Conditions by Andrés Marroquín Winkelmann. I am surprised it is not listed in other top 10’s that are published so far. This is a beautifully made book object with great photography. 
6. A Book of Birds by Stephen Gill. I love the work of Stephen Gill. Conceptually strong and great photography. I prefer A Book of Birds to the more experimental Outside In. I haven’t seen his other books of 2010 Coming up for Air and B Sides yet.
7. Sechsundzwanzig Wiener Tankstellen by Sebastian Hackenschmidt and Stefan Oláh. I am not a great fan of all these art books after Ed Ruscha’s classic, but for me this book is an exception. With a nice photo montage on the cover. The texts are in English and German.
8. How Terry Likes His Coffee by Florian van Roekel. Van Roekel received a lot of attention. I hope he is able to beat the second photobook syndrome. The book is sold-out, but I can imagine that there will be a reprint now that he is represented by Flatland Gallery.
9. Repose by Charlotte Dumas. The monograph Paradis was very disappointing. I think that is why she decided to self publish a new monograph shortly after the publication of Paradis. In this book she presents her work like a portfolio with beautifully printed large format pictures.
10. Studio by Harry Watts. A small publication with photographs documenting a photographer’s studio. Can’t help but like it. 

Click here for more posts about photobooks from this blog.