The Contemporary Photobook Magazine
Review by Paul Anderson · Jan Staller’s recent book Manhattan Project is a beautifully crafted collection of photographs taken at New York City construction sites between 2010 and 2024. In Staller’s photographs, steel beams and joints, cables, rebar, pipes, manifolds, connectors, and the like are stripped of their backgrounds and taken out of context. This... Continue Reading →
Review by Hans Hickerson · Qeshm Island in the strategic Persian Gulf has been in the news lately. It is a large island of about 600 square miles, just off the coast of Iran in the Straight of Hormuz. In 2018 in more peaceful times Kuwaiti photographer Huda Abdulmughni visited Qeshm. She stayed in a... Continue Reading →
Review by Lee Halvorsen • This stunning book—a joy to hold and behold—captured and held my attention for hours. Carefully designed to reflect the art of bookmaking itself, this custom volume employs traditional presswork on the cover, bespoke papers throughout, stunning images, and thoughtfully chosen typography, all curated to honor the historical and visual essence... Continue Reading →
Review by Olga Bubich · Atlantic is a new photobook by the Ukraine-born photographer, curator, and publisher Dimitri Bogachuk, whose delicate work and attentive eye for seascapes have established him as a distinctive voice in contemporary art photography. Formally, the collection can be seen as the extension of the artist’s previous volume entitled Le Plat... Continue Reading →
Review by Hans Hickerson · A contemporary trend in photobooks is to be clever and mix in various and sundry subjects in an attempt to add meaning and depth. Sometimes this works, but often it doesn’t and just comes across as empty attention seeking. Artists who share meaningful issues stand out. Usually it is because... Continue Reading →
Review by Hans Hickerson · Akiko Kimura’s i is simple, so simple that you think there is not much there. But then you look again and realize that it shows how less can be more and how minimalism can expand rather than limit the scope of your viewing experience. How does that work? Viewed as... Continue Reading →
Review by Olga Bubich · Sometimes what draws a collector towards a photobook is a name – that of a photographer whose eye and voice one trusts, a designer whose choices one allows to curate personal collections, or a small independent publisher whose selectiveness, often conditioned by financial limitations, makes each of their projects immediately... Continue Reading →
Photo essay by Hans Hickerson · Hosting 74 publishers from 13 countries and 11 states, the International Center of Photography in New York staged its fifth annual Photobook Fest May 8 through 10. Along with lots of conversation and looking at photobooks, the 2026 event featured book signings, lectures, popups, and workshops. A past report... Continue Reading →
Review by Hans Hickerson · Less can definitely be more. Vladyslav Krasnoshchok’s Documentation of the War, for example, views like visual grunge rock – sound stripped down to its core. Like other successful photobooks it is a happy partnership of photography, texts, and design. How to describe Krasnoshchok’s photographs? Adjectives like bleak, dark, raw, primal,... Continue Reading →
Review by Hans Hickerson · Move over Barbie and Ken. Make way for Ken and Grant, the homonormative protagonists of Matthew Finley’s An Impossibly Normal Life, a script-flipping fantasy that views the world through a gay lens. The book is an imagined photo album that doesn’t talk about sexual orientation. Instead, it embodies queerness by... Continue Reading →
PhotoBook Journal 