By Fotobook DUMMIES Day (Liu Chao-tze and Lin Junye)

Tropical Reading is survey of publishing methodologies across Southeast Asia. 

Founded by Taiwanese artists Liu Chao-tze and Lin Junye, Fotobook DUMMIES Day is an artist-led initiative focusing on photobooks and self-publishing. First established as a photobook fair, with the aim of gathering artists who work with images and self-publishing, Fotobook DUMMIES Day experiments with these two mediums as a curatorial basis for exhibitions, events and artist talks.

In 2019, the pair began an extensive field research project in Southeast Aisa. The result of their research—this book—highlights photography practitioners and artist collectives, exploring why they chose to begin self-publishing. They explore how independent art bookstores came to be the social parlors of the self-publishing crowd, and document how the outsider artists, archives and arts initiatives of Southeast Asia came to shape the face of photography and self-publishing in their respective cities. 

The index is a thus a compilation of field research, condensing the profiles of all interviewees—from people to bookstores to organizations—to make a kind of alternative Yellow Pages for the Southeast Asian art scene.

Includes essays, interviews, and a geographically organized directory.

Designed by Kuan-Ting Chen

Published by Limestone Books, 2024
Second edition, printed in a limited edition of 400 copies

Softcover, 344 pages, 5.5 × 7.9 inches

ISBN: 978-9-08-336163-5