Cologne museum for artistic photobooks with the showroom THE BOX in Ehrenfeld, rotating book presentations and a reading room.
September 25, 2026 – November 21, 2026
Retrospective with more than 80 photo books by Duane Michals from the collection of Tim Soter; THE BOX becomes a reading room. On view in the exhibition space THE BOX in Cologne-Ehrenfeld.
The PhotoBookMuseum was founded by Cologne photobook dealer and publisher Markus Schaden, who developed the idea of a dedicated museum for the photobook as an artistic medium. On 19 August 2014, the project launched with a large opening show: in a hall of the Carlswerk, a former cable factory in Cologne-Mülheim, around 30 exhibitions, book studies and collections were on view across several thousand square metres, some of them staged in shipping containers. The show also served as the festival centre of Internationale Photoszene Köln and was open for only a few weeks.
Instead of a permanent building, the museum then opted for a mobile concept. It presents its projects as a guest in other museums, clubs or in public space, for example with a Japanese photobook bar in a club in Ehrenfeld, the street exhibition STUDIO COLOGNE with historic studio portraits on Körnerstraße (2024), or the photobook retrospective on Martin Parr at the Neues Museum Nürnberg (2025/26).
In Cologne-Ehrenfeld, the non-profit company now runs the showroom THE BOX, where books from its own collection, new discoveries and small themed shows are presented at short intervals as a walk-in reading room. The programme also includes publications, research collaborations and the international Dummy Award for unpublished photobook drafts. In 2026, with the help of its supporters’ association, the museum acquired an extensive collection of Duane Michals’s photobooks.
The museum hasn’t published any information on this.
The museum hasn’t published any information on this.
The museum hasn’t published any information on this.
The museum hasn’t published any information on this.
The museum’s publications are available directly from the PhotoBookMuseum.
The museum hasn’t published any information on this.
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