The London Art Book Fair 2013 took place over three days from September 13th to 15th at the Whitechapel Gallery in East London. The Art Book Fair is an international festival of art-related publications, including photography, painting, fashion, and design, held annually in major cities around the world, including Tokyo. This year marked the fifth time it was held in London. According to the event's organizing committee, in recent years, exhibitors have come from Ireland, the United States, the Netherlands, and Germany in addition to the UK. The official hashtag "#LABF" has been used to tweet around the world, demonstrating growing international interest. Located in the East End, a district home to many young artists, the Whitechapel Gallery, where the fair is held, has garnered attention as a gallery hosting pioneering contemporary art projects. During the fair, over 80 exhibitors, including publishers, bookstores, printers, and artists themselves, packed the venue with booths. The exhibits included large-format photobooks by famous artists, including David Bowie, whose special exhibition "David Bowie Is" garnered attention in London this year; the latest issue of the art review magazine "ArtReview"; and limited-edition zines produced by artists themselves.
Some of the publications featured free-spirited ideas, such as hexagonal books and paper-cutting books. "visualMANIAC," an online store selling e-books of art books, also gave an iPad demonstration.
In addition, each booth offered sales at 20 to 30 percent off the regular price, drawing lines of art book enthusiasts and collectors. Industry professionals from around the world exchanged business cards, hoping to stock books in bookstores or publish translated versions in their own countries.
In addition, various art book-related events were held. The event kicked off with a public discussion, "BOOK LIVE!", hosted by "The bookRoom," a London-based organization researching the future of books. A diverse range of players in the art book industry, including university professors, artists, publishing company employees, and book collectors, engaged in a discussion, interspersed with questions from the audience, on how art books should respond to digital culture. The first half of the event introduced general publishing industry topics, such as the spread of e-book devices like the iPad and Kindle and the changing reading experience. The second half explored the difficulty of keeping up with rapidly changing digital technology trends and the new possibilities for artistic expression that new technology enables, expressing both anxiety and excitement. There was even a moment when the ambiguity of the term "art book" was pointed out. Other events included an experimental workshop in which guests and participants each added 500 characters of improvised text to create a series, as well as a printing and publishing workshop that introduced participants to printing techniques such as risographs and stencil printing. The latest edition of "THE LONDON BOOKSHOP MAP," an annual artist-created map of London's independent bookstores, was published in conjunction with the fair and distributed free of charge at the venue. An iPhone app for this map is scheduled to be released in November of this year.
