The Contemporary Photobook Magazine
Review by Gerhard Clausing • Rich-Joseph Facun’s 1804 examines Athens, Ohio, an Appalachian town whose economic and cultural life is closely tied to Ohio University. Rather than constructing a conventional documentary narrative, Facun structures the book through a carefully paced sequence of portraits, architectural observations, and quiet still-life fragments. As the images accumulate, the photographs... Continue Reading →
Review by Gerhard Clausing • Thomas Hoepker’s DDR / East Germany – Colour Works 1972–1990 is a remarkable photobook, not because it reveals shocking new truths about the German Democratic Republic, but because it insists on looking carefully, patiently, and in color at a place that was more often described than seen. The photographs, so... Continue Reading →
Review by Gerhard Clausing • Getting in touch with your inner self is not an easy task. Meditation is one of the ways that makes this possible, and Axel Kirchhoff has successfully photographed people at various stages of confronting their inner being. This photobook presents whole-body images as well as close-up portraits of dozens of... Continue Reading →
Review by Gerhard Clausing • Ed Kashi’s new photobook, A Period in Time, feels like both a personal diary and a sweeping portrait of our shared world. It gathers images from his more than 45 years as a photojournalist into one powerful collection that is as emotional as it is informative. This compendium is more... Continue Reading →
Review by Gerhard Clausing • This photobook is the fourth volume of Nick Brandt’s epic series The Day May Break, and presents its most urgent and intimate chapter yet. Brandt turns his focus toward one of the most extreme settings of climate and humanitarian crisis: the arid deserts of Jordan, where displaced Syrian families navigate... Continue Reading →
Review by Gerhard Clausing • When you first hold this large loose-leaf book project in your hands, the sheer impact of its size and its images is overwhelming. We get that same feeling when we are overwhelmed by incessant appeals on all our “entertainment” media which are our constant companions – on phones, television, etc.... Continue Reading →
Review by Gerhard Clausing • As always, one has to take a very deep dive into people’s psyche, including one’s own, to understand the art of Roger Ballen. His latest publication, Spirits and Spaces, continues his exploration of the human psyche and the ambiguous terrain in which dreams, nightmares, and realities intersect. Ballen has always... Continue Reading →
Review by Gerhard Clausing • Kevin Bubriski has long been recognized for his special ability to document various groups and communities with sensitivity and respect, from Nepal to the American heartland. In The New Mexicans, his attentive look is focused on the people and landscapes of New Mexico, capturing the early 1980s in a photographic... Continue Reading →
Review by Gerhard Clausing • Robin Mudge offers a great definition on his website: “a photobook is an exhibition in your hands.” In this photobook he has compiled an exhibition of his images that reflect everyday observations, and he has paired those photographs with ChatGPT descriptions. The ‘machine’ system can thus be considered a collaborator... Continue Reading →
Review by Gerhard Clausing • Casey Reas has the relatively unique position of being both an artist and a scientist. He has contributed greatly to the development of generating images with the help of artificial intelligence systems. This photobook, which I only discovered this summer, presents both a technical description of a major process, as... Continue Reading →
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