The Contemporary Photobook Magazine
Copyright Ron Jude 2008 published by The Ice Plant Ron Jude’s ubiquitous title “Other Nature” for his photobook published by Ice Plant leaves plenty of space to create a wide range of contexts for his photographs. The book’s title and a quote from Frank Kafka’s On Parables provide the only text (and descriptive context), as Jude... Continue Reading →
Copyright Tod Papageorge 2010 courtesy Edizioni Punctum Tod Papageorge received the annual commission from the FotoGrafia Festival Internazionale di Roma in 2010 to interpret the city of Rome. Papageorge is a photographer-flanuer, better known for his early black and white urban photographs and now the director of Yale’s photography program. As in the previous Rome commissions, he explores the city... Continue Reading →
Copyright Mona Kuhn 2011 published by Steidl I think that Mona Kuhn’s new photobook, Bordeaux Series, and her fourth with the publisher Steidl, may be her best to date. Each book has the nude as one as one her principal subjects, but in this book she intertwines the nude portraits of individuals with another theme to raise unanswerable and... Continue Reading →
Copyright James Clancy 2011 Kehrer Verlag Heidelberg Berlin My first impression is that Clancy’s narrative is a darker version of John Gossage’s early photobook The Pond. Similar to Gossage, Clancy is taking us on an imaginary journey, although somewhat grounded in the (non) reality of the photographs, using found landscapes rendered in black and white... Continue Reading →
Copyright Mauro Fiorese & Keith Carter 2008 Edizioni Siz Collaborations are interesting situations that can be a bit unpredictable as to the results, but in this case for this commission by the Palace of Monaco, both Carter and Fiorese were previous collaborators in 2001 for their photobook Two Spirits. With these two creative spirits working... Continue Reading →
Mitch Epstein 2009 copyright courtesy Steidl I think one of the better photographed and designed photobooks to shed light on the complexities and the enormity of the environmental, economic, political and social issues of the production and consumption of energy is Mitch Epstein’s American Power, published in 2009 by Steidl. In reading Edward Burtynsky’s Oil,... Continue Reading →
Review by Douglas Stockdale • My first impression of Harvey Benge’s photobook All of the Places I’ve ever Known was that this book is meant to be autobiographical. It is also a statement of the obvious: that you cannot take a photograph of a place unless you have been to that place. Cheeky. Benge has self-published numerous photobooks and in... Continue Reading →
Copyright Eva Koleva Timothy 2010 courtesy of the photographer What I often find when a book combines a large amount of text in conjunction with photographs, it seems that either the text or the photographs seems to dominate. In some cases there is delicate balance between the two, which I now have come to understand... Continue Reading →
Copyright Bertil Nilsson 2011 published by Canalside Books When I attend a circus performance with my family, I find that I rapidly become very overwhelmed by the brilliant and dazzling colors of the performers clothes, sets and background, the high energy of the performances and the very intense lighting that commands my attention. The performances... Continue Reading →
Copyright Sophie Calle 2010 courtesy of Steidl and Hasselblad Awards 2010 Sophie Calle is an interesting and unusual photojournalist. In many situations she does not operate a camera to capture her photographic images and may not be the actual writer of the associated text. Yet Calle was awarded the Hasselblad Award in 2010 for just... Continue Reading →
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