“Hereafter Called: ‘Subject’” is a photobook by Samuel Otte published by Fw:Books in 2023. Across 312 pages, Otte brings together 25 photographic experiments made among people and places in Europe, exploring different kinds of relationships and the value of written, spoken, and unspoken constructions within them — sometimes close by, sometimes far away.

The book is conceived as a personal, experimental journey rather than a documentary record. The design, by Jeremy Jansen with Kai Udema, shapes how the images and their intervals accumulate in a large format of 24 by 32.5 centimeters, issued as a softcover.

For a collector, the interest lies in the method and the publisher. This project treats the photograph as a way of testing relationships rather than merely recording them. Its attention to the constructions we place between ourselves and others connects it to photographic work that examines social bonds. The title itself sounds like a designation in a document, inviting a question about what changes when a person is named as a subject.

“Hereafter Called: ‘Subject’” is a book by an artist working through the complexities of human relations. Its scale gives the 25 experiments room to develop, and it belongs on a shelf where photography and the study of human relationships are kept together. Reading twenty-five experiments together allows comparison to become part of the experience. A relationship may be described in words, conveyed through a gesture, or left implicit between people. The photographic experiment offers a way to attend to those differences without requiring them to resolve into one definition.