The Contemporary Photobook Magazine
ParisChanging: Revisiting Eugene Atget's Paris by Christopher Rauschenberg for Princeton Architectural Press, 2007 A photobook that is almost 50% composed of photographs by Eugene Atgetis going to be difficult for me to objectively review. I have to admit that I have a relatively strong bias about Atget, because I like his straight forward photographic content... Continue Reading →
Copyright Debbie Fleming Caffery 2009, courtesy Radius Books The dark and shadowy lead-in photograph for Debbie Flemming Caffery’s photobook, The Spirit & The Flesh, provides adequate notice that this is not going to be a straight forward documentary. Caffery creates mysterious photographs about the life and economic survival in a small Mexican village. As a... Continue Reading →
Copyright Eugene Richards, 2008, courtesy PHAIDON Press After reading Eugene Richards recent photobook The Blue Room, I found myself thinking about the book’s title, perhaps more so than other books that I have recently reviewed. I think that I have two interpretations of his title, which are complementary and indicative of this body of work.... Continue Reading →
Photographs copyright of Jerry Burchfield 2009 courtesy of Laguna Wilderness Press Jerry Burchfield’s recent (2009) photobook Understory: Florida Lumen Prints, is his sequal to his 2004 photobook Primal Images, both of which utilize his camera-less photographic process to create his unique Lumen prints. The subject of this book has shifted from the plants and flora of... Continue Reading →
Copyright Dan Nelken, 2008, courtesy Kehrer Verlag Dan Nelken’s Till the Cows Come Home, is a culmination of nine years photographing county fairs in the rural NorthEast region of the United States. His project evolved into creating moving portraits of the farming participants, especially the youth and the animals that they raised. Not shown are... Continue Reading →
Copyright Jerry Burchfield, 2004 courtesy Laguna Wilderness Press I am very fascinated by the photographic prints created by Jerry Burchfield (1949 - 2009) for his two recent books, Primal Images: 100 Lumen Prints of the Amazonia Flora, published in 2004 by Laguna Wilderness Press and subsequently Understory, published this year (2009) also by Laguna Wilderness Press. Burchfield... Continue Reading →
Copyright Debra Bloomfield, 2008 courtesy Chronicle Books The subject of Debra Bloomfields latest book, Still, published in 2008 by Chronicle Books, is a series of oceanscapes; composed of part ocean and part sky with a horizon somewhere in between. Which is also to say that she treads softly on the edge of sentimentality and cliché.... Continue Reading →
Copyright 2005, Candida Höfer courtesy Schrimer/Mosel Verlag I like libraries. I like the smell of books; old leather covers or the fresh ink recently laid on new sheets. I like to wonder along the library isles among the towering columns of books, getting lost physically and in thought. And I am a photobook collector with a... Continue Reading →
Photographs copyright of David Maisel courtesy of Chronicle Books As a designer, principally developing sterile barrier systems for medical products, it was jarring for me to see David Maisel’s photographs from his recent book, Library of Dust. Seeing containers in these deplorable conditions is the stuff of nightmares for me. So I see his photographic content in a... Continue Reading →
Copyright Roger Ballen, 2008, courtesy Phaidon Press For most of the photobooks I review, they usually are stand alone books, but I feel that Roger Ballen's recent book Boarding House needs to be placed into a larger perspective. Specifically to the content of his two previous books, Shadow Chamber, published in 2005 and Outland, published in 2001, both by Phaidon Press. Otherwise, it feels... Continue Reading →
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