The Contemporary Photobook Magazine
Review by Lee Halvorsen • The individual street images in Perfect Strangers are delightful and bursting with the emotion and environmental texture of the moment. Teri Vershel connected with people and places so candidly I felt as if I were looking through the camera’s viewfinder with her. In his foreword for the book, Sam Abell called her images... Continue Reading →
Review by Lee Halvorsen · On February 24, 2022, Russia began a full-scale invasion of Ukraine, its neighbor and former ally. Byron Smith was there and for the rest of that year he immersed himself and his camera into the lives and the deaths and the hopes of the Ukrainian community. His mostly black and white... Continue Reading →
Due to the immense number of new photobook publications, we felt the need to change how we accept book submissions. We are now asking you (Artist, Author, Photographer, Publisher, Publicist) to submit your photobook submission request directly to a book reviewer who is most aligned with your publication. Please submit to only one reviewer, otherwise... Continue Reading →
Review by Steve Harp · Frank Rodick’s monograph, The Moons of Saturn, has been sitting before me on my desk for quite some time (I will not embarrass myself by revealing just how long) – a testament to its unsettling yet spellbinding mystery. In looking through it, I am reminded of W.G. Sebald’s novel, The Emigrants, the sense of disintegration in these images... Continue Reading →
Review by Hans Hickerson · Lynn Alleva Lilley’s photobook The Nest rewards careful as well as casual looking. A finely observed and lovingly chronicled portrait of the woods near her home in Silver Spring, Maryland, in 98 photographs it builds up overlapping layers of detail, form, relationship, and metaphorical resonance. Like the photographs of other artists who... Continue Reading →
Review by Brian Rose · During the 2020 pandemic, Bethany Jacobson escaped the confines of her apartment and took to the winding paths of Green-Wood Cemetery in Brooklyn. For those of us in New York, the whoops and wails of sirens seemed never to cease, a constant reminder of the presence of disease and death in... Continue Reading →
Review by Steve Harp • …pictures have an uncanny ability of suggesting that there is another world…They represent a sense of otherness. The figures in photographs have been muted, and they stare out at you as if they are asking for a chance to say something. - W.G. Sebald The concept of the “uncanny,” which Sigmund Freud... Continue Reading →
Review by Paul Anderson • Memories came flooding back to me as I paged through Todd Hido’s 2023 photobook The End Sends Advance Warning. When I was growing up in the upper Midwest, there were moments of a winter’s evening when the combination of cold, clouds, a blurry sun and the stillness of open spaces produced a... Continue Reading →
By Douglas Stockdale, portraits by Donna Cosentino • I just received notice of the recent passing of Wayne Swanson (1951 – 2024) on Wednesday, June 5th, 2024 after a protracted illness. Wayne was a very talented photobook reviewer, a friend and a Contributing Editor of PhotoBook Journal (2019 - 2024), whose legacy with us includes 70 succinct... Continue Reading →
Review by Melanie Chapman • As the old saying goes, “Home is where your heart is.” Epic poems and countless songs have been written on the topic; missing home, coming home, longing for home... “I’ll Be Home for Christmas”, “Home on the Range”, “There’s No Place like Home”... but what if you have no home? What if... Continue Reading →
PhotoBook Journal 