Introduction
Dear Streethunters.net Readers,
This time I am going to start this book review with a story. It was early May 2026, and I was in Dublin attending the DSPF with Manolis and some of our students from the university. The second day of our visit was nearly over, and we had all found ourselves in The Barge, a magical four storey pub close to the DSPF venue. The Barge is a beautiful Irish pub, maybe even the most beautiful Irish pub I have ever visited.
I was on the very top floor, talking about photography with colleagues, when Manolis interrupted me. “Hey man, you need to take a look at this,” he said, handing me a copy of CROWDS. I took it and, while still conversing, began flipping through it. Then two things happened. I stopped talking, and I got lost in the photography of CROWDS, taking in each and every photo as slowly and as lustily as possible. To my shame, I ignored my colleagues. I was lost in the brilliance of Zurborn’s work.
Wolfgang Zurborn (left) in discussion with Manolis Soulos (right) in The Barge Irish pub in Dublin may 2026
I had never met Wolfgang Zurborn, so I didn’t know what he looked like. Then I heard Manolis’ voice again. “This is Wolfgang. It is his book. He is crowdfunding it on Kickstarter.” That snapped me out of it. I immediately introduced myself and asked if I could hold on to the book for a while. Wolfgang happily obliged, and I continued studying his photos. Soon, a small group of photographers had surrounded me, all taking peeks at the book and asking if I was done with it. I stood there for at least 30 minutes, looking at page after page in complete focus. Nothing else mattered.
Since that night, I have learned more about Wolfgang Zurborn. Firstly, he is an incredible dancer, with immense endurance. He is great with the ladies, a true gentleman and quite the character. A most fun person who really knows how to party. That is how I got to know him better, while dancing on the dance floor of The Barge.
When I returned to base in Athens, I began looking into his work. I decided he was a photographer who deserved more attention, so I started sharing his work on Instagram. I also wrote a small post about one of the photographs featured in CROWDS for the Featured Street Photo column. During our chats over the months, I asked Wolfgang if I could have a copy of his book to review on Street Hunters once it was available. He promised to send me a signed copy as soon as it was out, and here we are now! I have my signed copy of CROWDS, and I will share with you my honest opinion about the book itself, as unbiased as I can make it. So read on.
Who is Wolfgang Zurborn
Wolfgang Zurborn is a highly acclaimed, industrious and successful German photographer from Ludwigshafen am Rhein, Germany. As I mentioned in the introduction, I have already written an article about him. I recommend you visit [Featured Street Photo by Wolfgang Zurborn] to read more about him and his work. I also recommend visiting his website, www.wolfgangzurborn.de, where you can read about his achievements and his constant support of the photographic community. If Wolfgang is one thing, he is dedicated to photography, for sure.
Review of CROWDS
CROWDS is a crowdfunded book of Wolfgang Zurborn’s photographs of crowds, shot in various countries, but mostly Germany, during the 1980s, 1990s and very early 2000s. The book brings together photos that show his skill at creating complex layers, his complete understanding of colour, and a record of how life looked not so long ago, before mobile phones, before the common use of the internet and before AI.
As Wolfgang explains on his website, his interest is in people within crowds, shaped by their social lives and surroundings, but never swallowed up by the masses. He describes photographs of groups at political, sporting, religious and other public events in which “the human being does not get lost in an ornament of the masses”.
As a person coming from those times, I couldn’t agree more. Looking through his photos takes me back to when life used to feel free. There were no geolocation trackers or constant interruptions. When you left home, people couldn’t always find you on the phone. Your time was yours and nobody else’s. This in itself makes the book priceless for me, regardless of the high level of photography it contains. But more on that later.
Book Cover
The book has thick matt front and back covers. On the front, the word CROWDS appears in large, translucent white capital letters across the centre. Above it, in the same typeface but smaller, is Wolfgang Zurborn’s name. At the very bottom is the publisher’s name, KEHRER, in even smaller translucent white capitals.
The cover photograph shows a large crowd at an event in Wackersdorf in 1986. I understand why Wolfgang and his editors chose it. It screams CROWDS and gives us an instant preview of the book’s theme and the crowded places we will see in its pages. Turn the book over and all you see, apart from the back cover photograph, is the ISBN in the bottom right corner. The photograph was taken in Cologne in 1990 and shows what looks like a blue fish ride and a family at a table, perhaps during a festival.
Look at the book from the side and you will notice its exposed spine, revealing the stitching that holds its sections together. I particularly like this. The layers of colour look like very thin bricks holding the book together, creating a beautiful pattern of crowded abstracts.
I would have preferred the lettering to be a little less translucent, although I get why Wolfgang chose it, or at least I think I do. It makes the cover feel busy, just as crowds in real life do. The choice of typeface and the size of the letters are perfect. I have nothing to say about those.
That said, I would have preferred a hard cover to protect the book from wear and tear. Knowing myself, I will probably open and close it many, many times. It might find itself on a shelf, but mostly it will be on my coffee table. That makes its thick matt cover more prone to damage. I also think a hard cover would have made it look more prestigious, though it would probably have added significantly to the cost.
But let’s not judge a book only by its cover, correct? We have so many more things to look into: shelf life, ease of reading, organisation and content, and the overall quality of the book. So let’s move on.
Shelf life
For those of you who have never read one of our reviews, I should explain what we mean by “shelf life”. It is the amount of time a book spends on your shelf before you pick it up again. The longer it sits there without being picked up, the lower its shelf life.
I would say, hand on heart, that CROWDS ranks high for shelf life. It is one of those books that will probably sit on your coffee table rather than in your bookcase, ready for you to pick it up whenever you like. The content of CROWDS is so dense at some points that it invites you to spend several minutes studying each photograph, sometimes two, three or even more times.
Wolfgang’s visual language and his use of colour beckon you to dive into the scene, listen to it, smell it, see it move and come to life. Most of the photographs are laid out across two pages. They are big and give you plenty to study. So why would a book like that spend time on your shelf unopened? I know where I will keep my copy. Either on top of my scanner at my desk or on my coffee table in the sitting room.
Easy to read
As I mentioned in the “Shelf life” section, most of the photographs in the book take up a whole spread, from left to right. Each one is big and easy to take in, without other distractions. There is a little more white space on some pages than on others, but the layout always leaves room along one side for your hand. You can hold the book comfortably without covering the photograph.
Every time you turn a page, you find yourself in a new, isolated frame, cut off from the rest of the book and ready to be explored. I find this rather satisfying. I tend to wander off and get distracted sometimes, but the way this book is set up, it “traps” you in each frame, keeping you engaged until you feel you have seen all there is to see.
Another thing I find very satisfying is that the book opens properly. I can see the photos without those annoying curves you get when the pages are held together by a tight spine. You could say that contradicts what I said earlier about wanting a hard cover. But even though I am no bookmaker, I am pretty sure you can have both: a hard cover and a book that opens nicely. That is just what I want, though, and I have rambled enough about it.
The way these pages open is perfect. With so many photographs spread across two pages, the book needs to open well. Otherwise, Wolfgang’s work wouldn’t be shown to its full potential.
For these reasons, I consider CROWDS very easy to read.
Organisation and content
The book opens without a foreword, without an introduction of any kind, not even a white page. Nothing. It jumps straight into a photograph from Frankfurt am Main, shot in 1986, filling the page from edge to edge. Its predominant colours are yellow, magenta, black and cyan. As I have a background in design, I instantly thought of the CMYK colour model used in printing. There it was in front of me: the base colours of print in a scene of people who are part of a crowd. I will not get into a photo analysis here, but I recommend you check it out.
The next page gives us another photograph filling the page from edge to edge, this one shot in Bonn in 1990. Blues, pinks, magenta and brown dominate. It is one of the less busy photos, the kind that gives you a break between the heavily crowded shots in the book. I imagine Wolfgang uses these photographs to keep us from being overwhelmed by visual stimuli and to prepare us for the next crowded scene.
After that, the photographs are laid out as I described in the “Easy to read” section. Each one is large and spreads across both pages, giving you room to take it in without distractions.
Then, as we reach the end of the book, we find what we might have expected to see at the beginning. The book’s title appears against a completely white background, using the same lettering as the cover. Next comes an interview with Wolfgang Zurborn by Alasdair Foster, first in German and then in English, with four pages for each language. After that is the photo index, with a thumbnail, location and date for every photograph in the book.
The final text page contains Wolfgang’s thank you note to everyone who helped and believed in his project, along with information about the publication, design, proofreading and so on. And just when you think it is over, you turn one last page and face one final photograph filling the page from edge to edge. It, too, was taken in Frankfurt am Main in 1986. So the book opens and closes with two different photos from the same location and year. I like that, and I like that I noticed it too.
Quality
CROWDS is a book of good quality. The prints are great, the paper has just the right weight, and the book feels great in my hands. I would have liked a sturdier cover for the practical reasons I explained earlier, but it is what it is. The binding feels strong, and I don’t expect the pages to start falling out any time soon. The book is comfortable to look through, and its size works well for the photographs.
Closed, it is a little smaller than an A4 page. Open, it gives you plenty of space to enjoy the photos. The text at the end is large and clear enough to read easily, even with my tired, middle aged eyes. For younger readers, it should be a breeze.
Rating
CROWDS is a book that should definitely find its way onto your desk or coffee table for regular inspiration, especially if you remember the world before the internet, mobile phones and AI. If you enjoy complex, layered colour photography full of stories, you should grab a copy before it runs out.
Book cover: 7
Shelf life: 10
Easy to read: 9
Organisation and content: 9
Quality: 7
Average 8,4
