In conjunction with their 2012 Small Works National Competition, Soho Photo Gallery will present a guest exhibition curated by Aperture Foundation on the art of making small books. The opening reception is this Thurday, February 9 to celebrate  The Art of Small Books, in which we explore the intimacy gained from a journal-sized format.

Like novels or short-story collections, these books are meant for the reader to interact with, not simply to be viewed or put on display. Several included in this show take their form as a result of the artist coming to the table with a concept that hinges on the ability of the finished work to “pass” as—or at least refer to—something other than your typical coffee-table book: Christian Marclay’s Shuffle, which takes on the guise of a deck of cards; Takashi Homma’s Tokyo, the form of which gives a nod to the Penguin Classic pocket-size novel; Stanley Greene’s Black Passport, with its rounded corners and reference to the classic travel document. Even Martin and Munoz’s Travelers is kept within the confines of typical snow-globe scale.

The traditional publishing logic about smaller-size books has tended to revolve around practicality and affordability. So while there is much to be gained from trading the larger reproduction size of an over-sized book for a smaller-scale presentation, photographers who are accustomed to working with large-sized prints can be especially loathe to give up on scale as a way of presenting their work. What this exhibitions aims to show is that small can be beautiful, too.