5/24 2PM- PUBLIC PRESENTATION BY PARTICIPANTS OF THE WORKSHOP “PHOTOBOOK AS OBJECT 2026 KYOTO”

05/15/2026

PHOTOBOOK AS OBJECT 2026 KYOTO

On Sunday, May 24, 2026, we will hold a public presentation by the participants of the photobook-making workshop “Photobook as Object 2026 KYOTO.”

The gallery will open from 2:00 PM, and visitors are welcome to view the participants’ dummy books, materials, and works in progress. The presentations are scheduled to begin around 2:30 PM.

“Photobook as Object” is a photobook-making workshop led by Belgian photographer Jan Rosseel and RPS curator Yumi Goto. Since its first edition in 2014, the workshop has continued as a site of exploration for photographers from around the world, focusing on the possibilities of the photobook as a tactile and physical object.
In 2026, the program is being held in two cities, Tokyo and Kyoto. This May, the Kyoto edition is taking place at RPS KYOTO PAPEROLES. Over the course of six days, the participants are engaging intensively with editing, sequencing, structure, and bookmaking, while developing their ideas through repeated trials and experiments toward the creation of their own dummy books.

The projects brought to this year’s workshop begin from each artist’s personal history, memory, and lived experience, while opening onto broader questions of migration, war, state power, loss, belonging, and the absence of community. They include traces of decay and disappearance in villages of the former Yugoslavia; the unresolved repetition of history surrounding a Soviet-era forced-labor railway; family records that move between Japan and Brazil; and a dialogue across time with a great-grandfather who was held in Japan as a prisoner of war during the Russo-Japanese War. Other projects explore the figure of the father through play and magic, the relationship between the body and society through the experience of egg freezing, and the question of how fading memories and landscapes might be held within the form of a photobook.

Across these projects, the participants are working with photographs, archives, old video footage, documents, objects, and other materials, asking how the photobook can become not only a container for images, but an experience in itself.
What connects these projects is a sincere attempt to avoid closing personal experience into a purely private story. Instead, each artist is searching for ways to connect the personal to others and to society through the tangible structure of the photobook.

At this event, visitors will be able to encounter these evolving processes through presentations by the artists themselves, as well as the latest dummy books, materials, and works in progress developed during the workshop.

We warmly invite you to witness these projects at a stage where they are still in motion, and where further developments are yet to unfold.

We look forward to welcoming you.

Public Presentation by the Participants of “Photobook as Object 2026 KYOTO”

Brief interpretation will be provided for presentations given in English.

◎Date: Sunday, May 24, 2026
◎Gallery opens: 2:00 PM
◎Presentations begin: around 2:30 PM

◎Venue: RPS KYOTO PAPEROLES
603 Oimatsucho, Kamigyo-ku, Kyoto

◎Admission: Free

◎Reservation: Not required

◎Capacity: Approximately 30 people
Seating is limited, but standing attendance is also welcome.

◎Participants:

The public presentation will be given by volunteer participants. Please note that some participants may be unable to present due to changes in their residency or travel schedules.

“Photobook as Object 2026 KYOTO”
– Alena Zhandarova (Russia)
– Britta Baumann (Denmark)
– Denis Zezoukin (Russia)
– Dragan Sarić (Netherlands)
– Julia Borre (Denmark)
– Patricia Moribe (Brazil–France)
– Yasushi Mori (Japan)
– Kozue Maruyama (Japan)