Review by Gerhard Clausing • Mardi Gras in New Orleans is an old tradition. Just as is the case in Europe and elsewhere, there are religious and tribal underpinnings to these liberating rituals that have been around for many centuries. Of special importance is the fact that participants can assume alternate identities; they can feel... Continue Reading →
Katherine Longly – Hernie & Plume
Review by Douglas Stockdale • This book is about an enduring love story between two individuals, Blieke and Nicole, with a few twists. As they tell it, they met at a mental institution, as we later learn, Nicole has severe anxiety attacks, while we surmise that Blieke met Nicole while he was visiting his lover... Continue Reading →
Roger Ballen – Roger the Rat
Review by Gerhard Clausing • Roger Ballen is taking us on another trip – this time viewed through the mind of an alter ego named Roger the Rat. This creature is a life-sized human-animal combo who wears the mask of a rodent and serves as the tool of Ballen’s mysterious puppetry. The fixed expression on... Continue Reading →
Alice Jankovic – Yet I Was a Tree in the Woods
Review by Douglas Stockdale • Alice Jankovic has created an introspective and poetic artist book inspired by a recently found family archive that includes a worn copy of Thoreau’s Walden. It may have been Thoreau’s book that was the inspiration for one of her early family members to make a pivotal decision to live in the... Continue Reading →
Clayton Anderson – Kicking Sawdust: Running Away with the Circus and Carnival
Review by Gerhard Clausing • Once upon a time in the not-so-distant past, live entertainment played a much larger role in stimulating our imagination. Among the exciting amusements that we fondly remember are circuses and carnivals. When those shows came to town, the otherwise predictable life of a place was touched by another world –... Continue Reading →
Misha Friedman – Two Women in Their Time: The Belarus Free Theatre and the Art of Resistance
Review by Gerhard Clausing • As we know from Shakespeare, “all the world’s a stage, and all the men and women merely players.” The ‘merely’ is to remind us that even the most powerful political actors, who can affect our lives greatly between their entrances and exits, are all subject to final curtains. We also... Continue Reading →
Imogen Cunningham – A Retrospective
Review by Douglas Stockdale • After moving to Southern California and adapting to the zone system for my natural black and white landscape photography, Imogen Cunningham as a result of her affiliation with the West Coast Group f/64 was already legendary. She was well known for her botanicals, nudes, and portraits, as well as a... Continue Reading →
Stephen Berkman – Predicting The Past – Zohar Studios: The Lost Years
Review by Douglas Stockdale • The cover photograph of a book can provide a visual hint of what is yet to come. A vexing book title can add mystery and intrigue. What appears to be an 1800s wet-plate collodion photograph of a woman holding a banner in front of a painted tableaux seems to falter... Continue Reading →
Tatsuo Suzuki – Friction/Tokyo Street
Review by Melanie Chapman • “Beautiful, interesting… and sometimes cruel.” If Robert Frank had played in a punk rock band, how would that have influenced his work? What kind of images would he have made? Luckily, we have Tatsuo Suzuki’s new photobook Friction/Tokyo Street to answer that question. Wow. What an exciting book! One cannot... Continue Reading →
Michael Rababy (Curator): California Love – A Visual Mixtape
Review by Gerhard Clausing • My wife’s opinion about this book is that it “brilliantly captures the spirit of California and should be on every coffee table.” Well, there you have it, I thought, why do a whole book review? But I know what our dedicated audience expects and what our editorial policy requires, so... Continue Reading →