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10×10 Photobooks is a New York City-based non-profit organization with the mission to foster engagement with the global photobook community through an appreciation, dissemination, and understanding of photobooks. Based on their 2024 anthology Flashpoint! Protest Photography in Print, 1950–Present, this reading room exhibition showcases a selection of more than 90 photobooks, zines, posters, pamphlets, independent journals, and alternative newspapers addressing protest and resistance, and highlighting photography’s critical role within it.

The past seventy-five years have been a time of extreme social and cultural transformation worldwide. Political and social upheaval—often contentious, disorienting, and polarizing—is now a daily reality. Whether looking at migration crises, territorial disputes, gender inequity, class divisions, racism, war, gun violence, or environmental concerns, we live in a world rife with conflict. Since its inception, photography has captured defining historical moments, serving as either a tool within, or a document of, protest—or, at times, both.

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In juxtaposing photobooks, posters, DIY zines, and independent journals, Flashpoint! explores the diverse roles and varied aesthetics that photography-in-print embodies in its implementations toward protest and resistance. Conceived of through an “aesthetics of urgency,” it can be employed as part of the unfolding events themselves—for example, in the form of anonymously designed posters plastered along the streets, or as ink-stained fliers handed out at public actions.

Alternately, it can take the form of an elegantly-designed photobook documenting an uprising, often published a year or more later, and at times in collaboration with well-known photographers, writers, and designers. Whether conveying outright rage or a more subtle, artist-driven commentary, protest photography in print is pressed into action across all of these formats, often transcending rigid media definitions as it blurs the lines between what constitutes a book, zine, journal, poster, or newspaper.

Reflecting the titular anthology, the printed matter on display is thematically organized into seven broad chapters: “Anti,” “Gender,” “Displacement,” “Race & Class,” “Environment,” “Political,” and “War & Violence,” with each chapter including multiple sub-themes that address resistance. Complementing the printed matter is a wall display of over 25 poster reproductions, representing all seven chapters. The reading room also includes a curated selection of community-submitted zines unique to this iteration at CONTACT.

Through its reflection of diverse regional and cultural perspectives, Flashpoint! offers an opportunity for visitors to experience moments within others’ lives, to grapple with complex societal issues, and to incite conversations that challenge norms and inspire positive and respectful discourse. After its initial launch at CONTACT, the Flashpoint! reading room will tour globally through 2027.

Shortlisted for the Aperture PhotoBook Awards 2024, the publication Flashpoint! Protest Photography in Print, 1950–Present was edited by Russet Lederman and Olga Yatskevich and published by 10×10 Photobooks. Founded in 2012, 10×10 offers an ongoing multi-platform series of public photobook events, including reading rooms, salons, publications, grants, online communities, and partnerships with arts organizations and institutions.

Co-presented by CONTACT and 10×10 Photobooks

Curated by Russet Lederman and Olga Yatskevich

Supported by Cindy & Shon Barnett and Dara & Marvin Singer

Crystal Gazers