This chapter examines the expansion of the photobook as a medium from its traditional publishing roots to its post-digital manifestations, tracing the parallel trajectories of photobook culture and networked technologies from the early 2000s onward. Drawing on Matt Johnston's timeline in Photobooks &: A Critical Companion to the Contemporary Medium (2022), the chapter argues that the simultaneous rise of digital platforms and photobook activities constitutes a "parallel emergence" that has fundamentally reshaped the production, distribution, and reception of photobooks in the twenty-first century.

The chapter begins by situating the photobook within the broader context of post-digital culture, a condition in which digital and analog media are understood not as distinct categories but as interconnected and overlapping practices. The proliferation of social media platforms—including Flickr, Tumblr, and Instagram—alongside the emergence of e-readers and print-on-demand technologies has lowered the technical barriers to photobook creation and distribution, enabling photographers to self-publish, engage communities online, and participate in transnational networks of fairs, exhibitions, and workshops. Following Alessandro Ludovico's framework for post-digital print, the chapter interrogates how contemporary photobook practices negotiate the imperatives of mobility, searchability, editability, and shareability.

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To ground this discussion in a specific regional context, the chapter turns to the evolution of photobook publishing in Taiwan. Beginning with the lifting of martial law in 1987 and the country's subsequent democratization and economic transformation, it traces how the liberalization of Taiwan's media landscape enabled photographers and publishers to engage with previously suppressed social and political themes. Key examples include Wang Hsin's Farewell, Orchid Island (1985), which documented the traditional life of the Tao indigenous people facing the encroachment of modernization, and Guan Xiao-rong's three-volume Dignity and Humiliation: Borderland of the Country—Lanyu (1991–1994), a long-term documentary project serialized in the influential magazine Jen-Chien before its compilation into book form. The chapter also discusses Yang Yung-chih's Congressional Ecology (1987), a photojournalistic record of Taiwan's legislative bodies on the eve of political transition, and the Aspects & Visions: Taiwan Photographers series edited by Chang Chao-tang, which established the first sustained photography monograph series in the country. Together, these cases illuminate how documentary photography in Taiwan was shaped by both political context and the constraints of traditional publishing gatekeepers.

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The chapter then pivots to contemporary international initiatives that exemplify the post-digital photobook's expanded possibilities. The first case, "Africa in the Photobook," is an open-access digital archive founded by Dutch historian Ben Krewinkel, which organizes photobooks on Africa chronologically and geographically, revealing the shifting representations of the continent from colonial-era propaganda to post-independence national identity-building. The platform's integration of social media fosters interdisciplinary dialogue and collective curation, transforming viewers from passive recipients into active participants who navigate and interpret visual histories beyond the constraints of the physical book. The second case is 10×10, a nonprofit project based in New York City, whose anthology What They Saw: Historical Photobooks by Women, 1843–1999 (2021) addresses the substantial underrepresentation of women in canonical photobook histories. By inviting ten historians, librarians, and researchers to each select ten photobooks, the project employs a deliberately inclusive editorial formula that broadens the conventional definition of the photobook to encompass albums, pamphlets, and collaborative works, thereby recovering marginalized voices obscured by gender, geography, and social class. The project's temporary reading room at the New York Public Library further exemplifies the post-digital convergence of digital access and tactile engagement.

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Collectively, these cases demonstrate how contemporary photobook practitioners are challenging traditional notions of authorship, curation, and spectatorship. Whether through digitizing archival collections, self-publishing, community-driven libraries such as Lightbox Photo Library in Taiwan, or interdisciplinary anthologies, photobook culture has evolved from a model centered on individual photographers and institutional publishers toward one characterized by decentralization, collaboration, and democratization. The chapter concludes by reflecting on Vilém Flusser's meditation on the book as an intermediary between material culture and artificial intelligence, suggesting that the enduring significance of the photobook lies not in nostalgia for its physical form but in its capacity to sustain historical consciousness and creative freedom in an increasingly automated world.

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