The Contemporary Photobook Magazine
Guest Review by Lee Halvorsen • Its unique slipcase hints at the book’s story, a glimpse of the author’s relationship with his father and his father’s journey with mental illness. The compelling images are a skilled progression of family snapshot photography and the author’s abstract images brought to life with powerful text and exquisite sequencing.... Continue Reading →
Review by Rudy Vega • Ganbatte, a self-published photobook by Maurice Hicks, stands out as an innovative blend of a photo album, travelogue, and personal art project. Spanning from 2019 to 2022, Hicks's book captures his travels to Japan through a collection of over 100 images, utilizing a diverse array of formats such as Polaroid... Continue Reading →
Review by Gerhard Clausing • In this increasingly divided world of ours the pressure to conform can at times be overwhelming. We have all been subject to attempts by others to define our behavior, attempts to delineate strict definitions for us to follow that match the preferences of members of another group. Women in some... Continue Reading →
Review by Gerhard Clausing • In this day and age of easy digital switching between the black and white and color renderings of any particular image, it is hard to imagine how an early advocate of color photographs had to carry two distinct cameras for the purpose of creating both types of images. Yet that... Continue Reading →
Review by Paul Anderson • A first look through Magdalena Wysocka’s photobook Studies of Falls can be a very mysterious experience. There is nothing here to help point the way. The images are vague, there is no introductory text, there are no image captions, and no artist statement. There is, however, an important hint printed... Continue Reading →
Review by Unmai M. Arokiasamy and Matt Schneider • Outsiders have long struggled to make sense of a Lumbee Indigeneity that does not conform to colonial imaginations of Nativeness. It is against this backdrop that You Don’t Look Native to Me, by Maria Sturm, explores Lumbee culture and their long struggle for tribal recognition –... Continue Reading →
Review by Bill Edwards • Dominic Turner’s premier monograph False Friends opens the viewer to a world of subtle exploration into the dark and not quite so recognizable places. This engaging work explores the shadows and other ghostly details we form in the imagination. This collection of photographs contains both the familiar and the ethereal... Continue Reading →
Review by Gerhard Clausing • None of us can escape the process of getting older. Lucky are those who have a granddaughter like Aleksandra Żalińska who can document that process in a sensitive manner and at the same time narrate details about a special personal bond that transcends the generations. We can recall the well-known... Continue Reading →
Review by Gerhard Clausing • Seldom do we see a photobook in which the implementation is exquisitely and totally in unison with the concept. Deb Achak’s debut project presents a rare sequence in which this has been achieved. Deb Achak was given final advice by her mother to always trust her instinct, and this book... Continue Reading →
Guest Review by Micah McCoy • Birgit Kleber’s book, Photographers, takes a simple concept and rigidly sticks to the script, only occasionally deviating from the framework set in motion from the first photograph in the book. The book’s power, and it is a forceful book, comes from Kleber’s dogged adherence to a set goal; to... Continue Reading →
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