YU-HSU CHOU
Visual Artist
COSMIC ALLEGORIES
Photobook · 2026
THE BOOK AS A PHYSICAL EXHIBITION SPACE
Cosmic Allegories was conceived not simply as a collection of photographs, but as a physical space for viewing.
In a gallery, an artwork is experienced through the relationship between image, wall, distance, scale, and the viewer's body. A photobook changes these conditions. The relationship becomes one between image, page, white space, sequence, eye, and hand.
Rather than simply reducing photographs to fit within a book, Cosmic Allegories attempts to translate some of the sensory experience of encountering physical artworks into the act of turning pages.
The image may remain the same, but the conditions of seeing it change.
SELECTED SPREADS
EDITING & SEQUENCING
Cosmic Allegories brings together nine bodies of work developed across different periods of Yu-Hsu Chou's practice.
Rather than treating each series as an isolated chapter, the book uses sequence, scale, visual weight, and white space to create relationships between images.
Some sequences suggest a narrative. Others operate through visual or perceptual relationships—density, direction, distance, and the rhythm created when one image follows another.
The book therefore becomes another form of the work: not a substitute for an exhibition, but another way of entering the same photographic universe.
MATERIALITY
A physical book introduces something a digital image does not have: a body.
A digital image has no fixed size. This book does.
A digital image has no weight. This book does.
A digital image does not ask the viewer to turn a page. This book does.
Paper changes the way light reaches the image. Scale changes distance. Binding changes how a spread opens. Ink changes tonal presence. Weight and touch change the way the book is held. Turning pages introduces time.
For Cosmic Allegories, these material decisions are not technical specifications for their own sake. Each one changes how the images are seen and experienced.
406-line high-resolution printing with concentric screening
Vegetable-based inks
170 gsm lightweight coated paper
PUR binding
A FINITE PHYSICAL OBJECT
Cosmic Allegories was self-published in an edition of 350 copies.
The limitation is not primarily about exclusivity or scarcity. It means that these images have been given 350 physical existences in the world.
Each copy has a fixed size, paper, ink, binding, weight, and sequence. It must be printed, bound, carried, opened, touched, and kept.
The images can exist infinitely. This book cannot.
PUBLICATION INFORMATION
Title: Cosmic Allegories
Artist / Author: Yu-Hsu Chou
Publication: 2026, First Edition
Format: Hardcover
Pages: 132
Dimensions: 24.5 × 29 cm
Languages: Chinese / English
Edition: 350 copies
Printed in Taiwan
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© 2026 Yu-Hsu Chou. All rights reserved.