The number of photography books published every year has witnessed a steady growth. Books themselves (at least some of them) have become collectible items. Since most photography books are published in rather small editions - a couple thousand or so - many photography books are sold out and are only available second hand, often for staggering sums of money. While this is good news for people interested in assembling a valuable collection, it’s bad news for people whose sole focus in on the photography and not so much on the value of a book. For example, I have been looking to get this book, but I clearly can’t afford to spend that kind of money.

When I first heard of Errata Editions I thought “Who is interested in looking at a book that contains scans of a photo book?” - until, a second later, I realized that I would be very happy to get Shomei Tomatsu’s ‘Nagasaki 11:02’ in that format. In fact, there are quite a few books that I’d like to get that way.

The creative director behind Errata Editions is Jeffrey Ladd, whose blog 5B4 is a must-read not only for people interested in photo books. I had a chance to look at Walker Evans: American Photographs and Sophie Ristelhueber: Fait, and I have to admit I’m impressed. Both books not only reproduce the originals extremely well (I need to add that I have not seen the original books), but their quality is also very, very good, with a very nice paper stock and binding, and background information plus an essay.

This makes the Errata Editions books interesting not just for people who have been looking for the originals for a while, but also for people who might be curious about the various titles (or even for students interested in photographic history).

BTW, if you’re interested in buying all four books and if you want to support Errata Editions, to make sure there will be future editions, there appear to be some limited edition sets left.