The Contemporary Photobook Magazine
Review by Steve Harp • I have long found the images of Vera Lutter among the most challenging and thought-provoking in contemporary photography. Lutter’s work is that rare combination of visually beautiful (sublime would be a better word), conceptually challenging (“good to think with,” to use Claude Levi-Strauss’ phrase) and continually surprising (perhaps odd, given the... Continue Reading →
Review by Wayne Swanson • Planning a photobook and assembling all the images needed to tell your story is a process that can take years. Unless you’re Lukas Birk, who did it all in one day. Birk is an Austrian photographer, archivist, and publisher. He has travelled the world producing complex books and curatorial projects in... Continue Reading →
Welcome to our 16th Issue •Maybe one of the few bright spots during a pandemic is that there is a lot more time at home getting comfy and reading books. Nevertheless, the socio-economic issues continue to grow, especially in the United States, with the pandemic death rate continuing at an awful pace. All without any federal government leadership... Continue Reading →
Review by Douglas Stockdale • What might imminent danger look like? Will something look so out of place or potentially evil that this might provide the necessary visual clues to warn us to become diligent, alert and stay cautious? Would there be something such as a dark stain on the land with something suspicious emanating... Continue Reading →
Review by Wayne Swanson • Ah, summer at the sea shore. Endless beaches and bronzing bodies in the sand. Resort hotels and cocktails with little umbrellas in them. Tourists everywhere, reveling in their escape from the day-to-day. Now consider off-season. Beaches and resort hotels empty, streets deserted, tourists banished to their day-to-day. Photographer Fabien Fourcaud explores... Continue Reading →
Review by Douglas Stockdale • Jakob de Boer takes us on his mystical and mythological journey into the Pacific Northwest, a place of memories, and the resulting black and white landscape photographs become meditative poems. His narratives encompass abstract and ambiguous shapes and forms that explore the black and white scale. Other photographs are inclusive... Continue Reading →
Review by Steve Harp • Where are we? In looking through Sebastian Rogowski’s 2020 self-published monograph, Suicidal Birds, I was taken, strangely enough, back to my youth and to my fascination with the 1968 science-fiction film Planet of the Apes. Rogowski’s opening three images—particularly the second, which could almost be a still from the film—recalled for... Continue Reading →
Review by Wayne Swanson • Around 2006, San Francisco photographer Alan Ostreicher got a simple idea: Why not document life in his apartment? It would be a personal project, not necessarily intended for anyone beyond him and his wife. Who else would want to capture such mundane subject matter anyway? Jump ahead to the pandemic of... Continue Reading →
June was an unusual month in the United States, regretfully for the usual reasons, which makes it a little difficult for me to discuss just photobooks. Due to continuing institutional racism and police brutality, George Floyd was murdered; inept American leadership has resulted in a runaway COVID-19 pandemic; and the person in the White House does not... Continue Reading →
Review by Douglas Stockdale • It could be argued that every painting has an element of theater as to how the various elements of composition have been carefully chosen to represent something factual or conceptual. Even the most contemporary abstract expressionistic painting has an underlying theatrical process taken into consideration at the time of the... Continue Reading →
PhotoBook Journal 