The Contemporary Photobook Magazine
In the Garden, Beth Dow, Blurb 2008 Beth Dow's In The Garden, was the 2008 grand prize winner of the recent Blurb Photography.Book.Now juried book competition. Dow had developed her large format book based on the Plantium Palladium prints from her photographs made in formal English and Italian gardens. This book probably does represent some of the best in self-publishing book design utilizing... Continue Reading →
Ben Roberts, One More Night, Self-published, Blurb 2008 This book review is one part photograph project published by Ben Roberts, One More Night, and another part an assessment of self-publishing and Blurb's new 100 lb paper. The bottom like I like both parts! But first the London club scene of Ben Roberts. This small, tight hardcover book with the... Continue Reading →
East of Las Vegas, New Mexico, 1971 copyright David Plowden Last year in 2007 a retrospective book was published about David Plowden's photographs Vanishing Point: Fifty Years of Photograph with an introduction by Steve Edwards and published by W. W. Norton. Initially I thought that this book by Plowden was going to be easy to review. It is beautifully... Continue Reading →
copyright 2005 Nick Brandt published by Chronicle Books First let me say, I am not a big fan of "animal" books. But this is not photographic book of animals in the usual sense. Oh, yes, Brandt does show us many of the wild animals of East Africa, but in a very different context than the normal safari document. There... Continue Reading →
Time Out, 2005 copyright of Julie Blackmon, courtesy Radius Books At first glance, Blackmon's photographs are super real observations of a large knit family on the edge of total chaos and about to go out of control. In others words real life with families and real children. Whether her photographs really are direct observations or a constructed reality they connect with the... Continue Reading →
Copyright 1987 Joel Sternfeld; 1994 stiff-cover edition published by Chronicle Books in conjunction with The Friends of Photography I will first have to admit that I like Joel Sternfeld's urban landscape photographs thus discussing his first book, "American Prospects" , will be a relatively easy task for me. Sternfeld photographs the urban landscape in a similar vein as... Continue Reading →
Windows and Mirrors by John Szarkowski, Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) When I initially wrote about Windows and Mirrors, American Photography since 1960 by the late John Szarkowski in August 2008, it was from my personal perspective of how I have used this book over the years to try to help me understand his two basic photographic tenets; a... Continue Reading →
review by Douglas Stockdale • I recently had the opportunity to purchase a used copy of the Aperture Monograph of Diane Arbus, which had been reissued in softcover in 1997 as a twenty-five year anniversary issue. With a retrospective look at a photographers body of work there is an opportunity to see how well it weathers the test of... Continue Reading →
"cour 7 rue de Valencia", 1922, Eugene Atget, courtesy of MOMA I had published an earlier article in Singular Images about my continuing interest in Eugene Atget's photographic urban landscapes. I subsequently purchased the hardcover book Atget by the late John Szarkowski published by MOMA as a first edition in 2000. All I can say is that this is a wonderful book for... Continue Reading →
Book review by Douglas Stockdale • After purchasing Robert Frank's PARIS, published by Steidl in 2008, I have been hesitating to publish my book review. Part of my procrastination was purchasing a copy of Frank's The Americans, published by Steidl as part of their "Robert Frank Project", as a baseline for comparison. I am happy that I did buy... Continue Reading →
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