Photo: Niels Mickers, El Ateneo Grand Splendid, Buenos Aires."
Photo: Niels Mickers, El Ateneo Grand Splendid, Buenos Aires."
Are real bookstores redundant in the Age of Amazon? Please take a look at some of the stores listed on this page before you answer.
There is, obviously, a lot to be said in favor of buying books online, from Amazon.com, Barnes & Noble, secondhand from Abe Books, or wherever. You get a huge choice, sensible recommendations, and prompt delivery to your door.
Yet I, for one, love the experience of examining and purchasing books in a real-world bookstore, especially if it has a unique atmosphere, places where you can sit and read, maybe even a coffee shop or bar.
Fortunately, there are dozens of such places, all over the world.
I've put together this list of stores with "pleasurable shopping experience" foremost in my mind. The other main criteria are: critical mass -- each store needs to have plenty of stock to make a visit worthwhile -- and a generous proportion of this stock should be related to photography.
Specialist Stores
I've been able to include some specialist stores that carry nothing other than photography, but they're the exception rather than the rule. A good example is The Photographers' Gallery in London, a place where you can find books on every sub-genre of the medium, together with magazines and prints.
Alas, this kind of store is quite rare. By far the majority of outlets listed are general bookstores with a photography section. Fortunately, many of them are spectacular, either for their architecture -- like the House of Books in St Petersburg, Russia -- or for their interior design, like the bookstore at Palazzo delle Esposizioni in Rome.
Breathtaking Stores
There are some real-world bookstores that are not just spectacular, but quite breathtakingly so, in the audacious way they've taken over older buildings and repurposed them into highly theatrical retail outlets. The Bookshop Dominicanen in the small Dutch city of Maastricht is such a store. It's an adaptation of a very large Dominican church.
Even more theatrical is El Ateneo Grand Splendid in Buenos Aires, Argentina (shown above). It was originally a theatre, designed in 1919 then converted some 80 years later to become a bookstore.
The Wow Factor
The two I've just mentioned may be unusual but they're not alone in their power to astonish. Some new bookstores have the "wow factor" built into them from the start. For example, how about the Kinokuniya outlet in Dubai? It fully lives up to its location in the world's tallest building. You certainly won't forget where you bought the book.
Come on, admit it! Shopping in places like these is much more pleasurable -- and memorable -- than 1-Click ordering from Amazon. Sure, you'll have to carry the books back home yourself and I realise photography books can be very heavy. But you'll be able to tell your friends: "Oh, I picked this up at El Ateneo Grand Splendid," and then you show them the photos you took of the store.
Alternatively you can just stick with online ordering, signing your name illegibly on the grubby machine the delivery guy sticks under your nose, and shuffle back indoors to go back to sleep.
No contest, is there?
- John Lewell, Editor
Photos: Sergé Technau (left), Falco Ermert (right), Dominicanerkerk, Maastricht City
Photo: "Wpcpey," Kinokuniya, Bangkok.
Photo courtesy of: The Lumiere Brothers Center for Photography, Moscow