The Contemporary Photobook Magazine
Photo essay and synopsis by Brian O’Neill · Printed Matter Inc. was established in New York in the 1980s in response to the growing interest surrounding artist books, zines, and artist driven publications. Their art book fairs have now become must-do destinations for art publishers, collectors, and enthusiasts. The inaugural fair in New York was... Continue Reading →
Review by Brian Arnold · “[Dabac] didn’t need explanations for motives he shot; he was moved by their weight alone and he responded with deep compassion.” Ješa Denegri The horse is clearly emaciated, its dark silhouette ghostly as it is pulled across the streets of Zagreb; its skeletal figure is both poetic and menacing. The... Continue Reading →
Photo essay by Hans Hickerson · Hosting 74 publishers from 13 countries and 11 states, the International Center of Photography in New York staged its fifth annual Photobook Fest May 8 through 10. Along with lots of conversation and looking at photobooks, the 2026 event featured book signings, lectures, popups, and workshops. A past report... Continue Reading →
Review by Hans Hickerson · Less can definitely be more. Vladyslav Krasnoshchok’s Documentation of the War, for example, views like visual grunge rock – sound stripped down to its core. Like other successful photobooks it is a happy partnership of photography, texts, and design. How to describe Krasnoshchok’s photographs? Adjectives like bleak, dark, raw, primal,... Continue Reading →
Review by Hans Hickerson · Move over Barbie and Ken. Make way for Ken and Grant, the homonormative protagonists of Matthew Finley’s An Impossibly Normal Life, a script-flipping fantasy that views the world through a gay lens. The book is an imagined photo album that doesn’t talk about sexual orientation. Instead, it embodies queerness by... Continue Reading →
Review by Gerhard Clausing • Brooke DiDonato’s Take a Picture, It Will Last Longer subverts everyday life quietly from within. The photographs infiltrate our reality, introducing small impossibilities, spatial contradictions, and bodily misalignments that accumulate into a sustained, disorienting logic, characterizing a topsy-turvy world through a certain amount of disturbance, which in turn invites contemplation.... Continue Reading →
Review by Olga Bubich Spilt Milk is a debut photobook by American photographer, teacher, and photo editor Andrea Birnbaum. As its title suggests, the themes it addresses belong to the intimate sphere of regret: actions taken and responses withheld, things done, planned, postponed, overlooked, or deliberately ignored – in other words, the emotional baggage one... Continue Reading →
Review by Brian F. O’Neill · It is December 9, 2025 and it is my first time in Japan. As a photobook collector, I head to Jimbocho, the well-known neighborhood for books (I actually revisited on December 18 too). Most of what I find on the shelves as I peruse the stores are Japanese novels.... Continue Reading →
Review by Matt Schneider · “Inhabitants of the industrialized world have become hunter-gatherers of material goods—we seek, we find, we acquire. Our possessions reveal who we are and tell stories of our aspirations, our nostalgia, our past; each piece is a fragment of the identity we wish to project or preserve.” - David Ricci (p.... Continue Reading →
Review by Hans Hickerson · “Fifty years from now, they won’t believe this shit.” * There are lots of photobooks about interesting, even important subjects. But there are few, such as Doy Gorton’s White South, about vitally relevant subjects. Gorton’s photos are a viewing experience that you want your kids to have. The book documents... Continue Reading →
PhotoBook Journal 