Ciel variable has always been on the lookout for publications by artists and curators so that we can review them for the magazine’s Readings section. We’ve also kept a close eye on photobooks, which are a genre unto themselves and the support of choice for the deployment and apprehension of bodies of photographic work. In recent years, interest in the photobook as an object has picked up again in terms of creation, distribution, and sales, and a large number of commentators have looked at the issues involved in its resurgence.

Ciel variable wants to contribute to these discussions by bringing here to the public in this section voices that are sensitive to the creative richness and blossoming of this expanding sector. A first series of reviews of photobooks by Québec artists was published in December 2021, written by Louis Perreault (whose introduction can be read here). Other reviews have been added since then. We are now adding a contribution from Michel Hardy-Vallée – a review of Isaac Diggs and Edward Hillel’s highly musical book about Detroit as techno city, Electronic Landscapes.