The Contemporary Photobook Magazine
Review by Douglas Stockdale • Regretfully 2020 is going to be known as the year of the pandemic and that this is a beast of a year for many reasons. The pandemic affected us all in a myriad of ways, some tragically with a loss in the family, for others a short bout of induced isolation,... Continue Reading →
Review by Anne Murray · “understanding” is not linear and has an emotional aspect — Captions— Musings, Philip Perkis a vocabulary of images emerged that was new to me, yet oddly familiar — Notes on Process, Cyrilla Mozenter These lines are excerpts from the final pages of Octave, which brings together the works of Cyrilla Mozenter... Continue Reading →
Welcome to our 26th Issue • We are midway through Spring while Summer is fast approaching. Here in Southern California that means we transition from 'May Gray' to 'June Gloom'; lots of overcast and cooler days, with the really sunny beach weather usually appearing in July. Now is a really good time to select some interesting photobooks to read by... Continue Reading →
Review by Wayne Swanson • Ahh, typologies. So often prosaic as individual images, yet so powerful when presented as a group. French architects Caroline and Cyril Desroche take the idea to an extreme in Los Angeles Standards, with 1300 photos broken down into 15 typologies to classify the elements that visually define the city. Although a sprawling... Continue Reading →
Review by Douglas Stockdale • This photobook is a retrospective of the collective published projects of Mona Kuhn, thus aptly titled Works. It is a compilation of her published creative endeavors that she has been laboring on for the past twenty-five years in conjunction with her principal publishing collaborator Steidl. In addition, there are also included some... Continue Reading →
Review by Paul Anderson • Imagine approaching the rim of the Grand Canyon on a bright sunny day, and watching the stunning natural scenery unfold in front of you. In Thomas Kellner’s new photo book, The Big Picture, you can expect a similar experience as you unfold his massive panorama of the Grand Canyon, made up... Continue Reading →
Welcome to our 25th Issue •We are now well into Spring and patiently waiting for Summer to enjoy the holidays as investigated by Ken Rosenthal's Days On the Mountains. Fingers crossed that this summer might be similar to our distant memories, unlike this past pandemic-haunted summer. We hope that one of the books we reviewed this past month will provide a tease... Continue Reading →
Review by Wayne Swanson • Some artists are of their time. Others, like Swiss photographer René Groebli, transcend time. From the 1940s through the new millennium, he assembled a diverse and innovative body of work, often at odds with the conventions and expectations of the moment. The Magic Eye is the first retrospective look at the... Continue Reading →
Review by Steve Harp • Among the many poetically posed, yet ambiguously explained, concepts found in the writings of the German essayist and cultural critic Walter Benjamin, one of the most provocative is that of the “optical unconscious.” Introduced in his 1931 essay “A Small History of Photography,” Benjamin compares photography “with its devices of... Continue Reading →
Review by Douglas Stockdale • Three street photographers and their three unique perspectives and shared interests; they came together in 2019 at the International Video Art Festival of Camagüey and this photographic book project resulted from that meeting and their time wandering the streets of Camagüey, a city on the island of Cuba. The book’s title, Camagüey, Camagüey, Camagüey subtlety... Continue Reading →
PhotoBook Journal 