What makes a good photobook?

As someone who has spent a lot of time with photobooks — presenting them online, teaching how to make them, writing about them in a critical fashion, making them myself, over the years the most common question has been: what makes a good photobook? What is it that makes some books so much better than others? Inevitably, I have struggled with providing an answer to a seemingly simple question that at its core betrays all kinds of other agendas. Mostly, though, it’s an impossible question to ask without taking into account one’s own preferences, ideas, and circumstances. It’s a bit like asking what makes a perfect meal. Everyone could possibly name that one dish they really love; but it will still have to be made in just the right fashion and then enjoyed under just the right circumstances. For some time, I was using a rating system for photobooks. If the world of music can live with detailed ratings, I thought, the world of the photobook can as well. Not so. I still think that the…