Bookcase, copyright 2019 Douglas Stockdale
by Douglas Stockdale
We are very excited to announce the launch of the newest on-line international arts magazine Photobook Journal (PBJ) focused on the artist/photographic book object. New Name; New Look! (Okay, no worries, it is still us) This magazine has its roots and foundation when it was initially founded as a photo-book-blog (The PhotoBook) in late 2008 by Douglas Stockdale and in the past few years became known as The PhotoBook Journal. He will continue leading the PhotoBook Journal in an expanded role as Editor-in-Chief and Publisher. As in the past the PhotoBook Journal will continue to be a free-access magazine for the arts community.
The PhotoBook Journal is an international artist and photographic community supported magazine that features and investigates contemporary photography-based publications. Looking back, we have predominately provided reviews of artist and photography books that explore contemporary projects and subjects, which we will continue to do. We are also evaluating some additional editorial changes in our efforts to further investigate this evolving book medium. So more interesting articles yet to come.
The books we review range from small limited-edition self-published artist books to large edition trade books by the leading international book publishers. We have become known for reviewing relatively unknown artist/photographers while including the most internationally recognized artist/photographers, past and present. With few exceptions most books we consider are recently published first editions in our attempt take a pulse on current photobook trends.
PhotoBook Journal reviews investigate a diverse and broad range of photographic book subjects and genres: visual storytelling, fine art, conceptual, alternative process, urban landscape, nature, natural landscape, staged/constructed narratives, abstract/experimental, portraiture, photo-documentary/street photography, photojournalism, monographs, retrospectives, narratives, short stories and still life. The book design and formats include: hard-cover, stiff-cover, soft-cover, unbound, zines, leporello (concertina), stitched, glued (cold and hot), stab-binding, hand-made and a lot of crazy things in-between in a diverse range of papers, printing and binding processes. We do not usually provide book reviews for technical or how-to photographic topics. We provide photobook related news events, such as photobook auctions, competitions, fairs and book exhibitions.
Recently (The) PhotoBook Journal was ranked the #1 photo book review site in the world by blog.feedspot. PhotoBook Journal is one of the longest running venues that exclusively focuses on photographic based contemporary book publishing. Over the past ten years we have reviewed over 500 contemporary artist and photographic books which are searchable on our site (sidebar) and we have zoomed past a million eye-balls and counting.
Magazine Staff:
Chief & Publisher: Douglas Stockdale
Associate Editor: Gerhard Clausing
Contributing Editors; Melanie Chapman, Kristin Dittrich
Advisor: Dan Johns
We can be found on various social media platforms:
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/photobookjournal/
Instagram: @thephobookjournal
Twitter: @pbookjournal
There are still a few kinks we need to work out and some fine tuning. We hope you enjoy the continuing evolution of our endeavors!
Cheers!
The Editorial team; Doug, Gerry, Melanie, Kristin, & Dan
PhotoBook Journal 