“Bookdealing must be amongst the most wonderfully eccentric
professions on Earth” – Mike Tsang
Photographer Mike Tsang had recently returned to London from a demanding project in the Sudan when he popped in to visit his friend who was then manager of the Biblion bookshop in London. By the time he left the seeds for “The London Book Trade” project were planted. Tsang would go around town photographing booksellers in their domain with the end result being an exhibition at Biblion. When all was said and done Tsang had photographed most of the booksellers of note in London and the result is astonishing.
On one hand, you get the feeling Tsang is documenting an endangered species; a visual record of a vanishing breed. Almost all are pictured alone. Yet, through the solitude, there is this subtle sense of power. The power of being surrounded by books and what they hold. This is the stuff everything is built on.
As we witness the monetary value of most books being sucked out by the online marketplace we can also can see an enhanced value being created by such technological pressure. The bookseller has become as much a guardian of our printed history as he is a proprietor.
Ed Maggs of Maggs BrothersI had a chance to ask Mike Tsang a few questions regarding the project and his own book life.
Book Patrol: How did the project come about and what was your relationship to books before it started?
Mike Tsang: My friend Ben Houston was at the time the manager of Biblion, a shop in a prime Mayfair location renting shelf space to independent book dealers who wanted a different outlet for their stock or who otherwise couldn’t afford such a location themselves. I had just came back from photographing a difficult project in Sudan and popped in to see him on a whim – we got talking and he showed me around the gallery space Biblion also housed, for which he was also the curator. As I recall it was exhibiting some fantastic sculptures but the subject matter was quite unrelated to the world Biblion inhabits, and Ben convinced me that photographic portraits of rare and antiquarian bookdealers would be a fantastic project, and also an exhibition of these at the gallery would be the perfect blend of subject matter and setting.
I must admit that despite being an avid reader of literature since childhood, I had very little inkling of what bookdealing was or even what makes a rare book rare. At the time however I was looking for a personal project that could get me re-involved with my hometown of London after some time away, and this seemed an intriguing prospect with a ready-made outlet for my work.I started by shooting a few eminent local bookdealers that Ben arranged contact with and we both loved the portraits and direction of the project. The London book trade is by definition quite close and I then made contact with a lot of the portrait subjects by purely word of mouth from a previous subject who supported the project. Things progressed rapidly from there and I have now luckily photographed almost anyone worth taking a portrait of in the industry, something I feel very privileged to have done since as far as I know such a photographic collection has never been assembled before.
BP: With so much attention being paid to the demise of the bookshop these days it is quite refreshing to see a glimpse of booksellers in their domain. As you visited the booksellers of London did you a get sense of the doom and gloom that seems to permeate the current media coverage of bookshops?
MT: It’s true that the book trade is suffering from challenging times. I made sure to ask each dealer I photographed how their business was going – a common answer was that the Internet age had eroded the dealer’s traditional advantage: knowledge of the rarity of a cook and thus an accurate estimate of the value of it. Now an average punter can look on Google very quickly to establish a rough price to ask from the dealer – so now knowledge has become more disseminated amongst the public instead being confined to learned professionals, reducing the dealer’s margins. Other factors such as the rise in high street rents, the fall in literary budgets, the competition from charity bookshops also come into play – these causes combined have led to the reduction in the number of independent book dealers in London by almost a third in the last decade alone. They have in various numbers taken proactive steps to take advantage of new technology – most have moved cataloguing online, concentrated on email marketing and gained access to a wider international customers through the Internet – one dealer was even in the process of setting up a YouTube channel!
And whilst some book dealers have closed their brick-and-mortar shops and moved to phone and email dealing only, all stressed the still-present need for personal contact with customers, whether that is in a five-story English townhouse in Mayfair or simply a coffee and a chat at the next book fair. As Sheila Markham, writer and lover of books in equal measure, told me: “Where is the thrill of the chase in much of today’s online book buying?” And I believe that is the reason the business will still survive. Like all industries, the book trade is subject to change, and although change with the times bookdealing must I hope that the tradition and romance involved in finding that perfect rarity and the perfect buyer to match will remain – although perhaps they will be matched over a YouTube channel and not a bookshop.
BP: What did you take away from the experience? Has your relationship to books changed?
MT: The biggest privilege I have had the pleasure of receiving is to have met some of the fascinating characters involved in the trade. Bookdealing must be amongst the most wonderfully eccentric professions on Earth, and a five-minute conversation with anyone involved can be worth 5 hours of entertainment with someone else. To have the opportunity to photograph them and document this trade as it embarks on an uncertain future, and in my very own hometown – it has been an immensely enjoyable project for me. As for my relationship with books – I have always loved them, but only ever to read and not to find or collect. I think now I appreciate that every book really tells two stories – the one written through the words inside, and the one written by the hands through which it has passed through.
“The London Book Trade” is on view at Biblion through Decmeber. Tsang is also looking for potential venues in U.S.
More information and photos at Tsang’s website and here.