The Big Picture

Hardcover - The Art Bookshop

With global book sales depressed, and bookshops closing the world over, it may be tempting to imagine that a book-less future is an all too sad possibility. But even though our lives have become increasingly internet and digitally dominated, there are distinct rays of hope.

The web’s voracious appetite for visual media not only demands, but also feeds the growing interest in what were once termed ‘coffee table’ books (now more stylishly known as art books), and Bangkok is no slouch to the party.

September saw the opening of Hardcover – The Art Book Shop at the Bangkok Art and Culture Centre, shelving an impressive array of titles both Thai and international, from the abstruse to the mainstream. Thus Ronachai Krisadaolarn’s Siamese Coins and Mes Aynak New Excavations in Afghanistan sit ham and egg with Horst A Friedrich’s Cycle Style, the handsome James Bond Archive and divine scarlet 50th Anniversary boxed limited-edition Valentino biography, both by Taschen.

Orientalists are more than catered for with tomes as diverse as Ai Weiwei’s Circle of Animals and Anderson & Low’s extraordinary photo documentation of Chinese gymnasts, Endure. For gifting, learning, entertaining or just good old fashioned browsing – it’s hard not to like Hardcover. You get the picture?