The Panel: Khodr Cherri, Aline Smithson, Douglas Stockdale, Dotan Saguy, and Richard S. Chow - Photo © Gerhard Clausing In spite of inclement weather (Southern California is experiencing an above-average wet winter), there was a full house at this very useful photobook panel discussion moderated by Richard S. Chow during the Focus programming this... Continue Reading →
Dotan Saguy – VENICE BEACH
Review by Melanie Chapman • For anyone who has ever visited Venice Beach in Southern California, comparisons to New York City’s Coney Island might not seem much of a conceptual stretch. Both are famous urban beachscapes that have been luring tourists from around the world for decades, both are celebrated more for the colorful locals... Continue Reading →
Dawoud Bey – Seeing Deeply
Review by Gerhard Clausing • This photobook is a 40-year retrospective of the work of the distinguished photographer Dawoud Bey, who is also a well-received Professor of Art at Columbia College in Chicago. Others before him have contributed perspectives on some of the same US communities, especially James Van Der Zee, Walker Evans, Gordon Parks,... Continue Reading →
Seiichi Furuya – Warum Dresden
Review by Kristin Dittrich • The Japanese photographer Seiichi Furuya arrived in Dresden in 1984 with his wife and then three-year-old son. Today Furuya could be considered as one of the rare authors bringing up a coherent photographical work about the life during the 1980’s in the former German Democratic Republic (GDR). At the end of... Continue Reading →
Tema Stauffer – UPSTATE
Review by Melanie Chapman • Upon opening UPSTATE for the first time, this reviewer was immediately taken back to her own years spent living in the Hudson Valley while attending Bard College. Not only because the subject of Tema Stauffer’s new work is the nearby city of Hudson and the surrounding landscape, but because Stauffer’s... Continue Reading →
Ikuru Kuwajima – Tundra Kids
Review by Gerhard Clausing • Every once in a while we see a photobook that hits all the right spots. In Tundra Kids, Ikuru Kuwajima, a multicultural photographer – born in Japan, studied in the United States, and now lives in Russia – has successfully created a book that shows us a minority at the... Continue Reading →
John Divola – Vandalism
Review by Douglas Stockdale • This retrospective monograph that explores one of John Divola’s urban landscapeprojects created between 1974 and 1975 while finishing his MFA at UCLA (1974). His practice was a form of what today we would call “staged photography”; creating (spray painting) structures and staging events for the single purpose of being photographed,... Continue Reading →
Louis Jay – Passing Fancies
Review by Gerhard Clausing • It is a pleasure to start 2019 with the presentation of such an attractive large-format photobook. Louis Jay, who worked as a commercial photographer for many years, has returned to his early love of photographing on the street, without succumbing to the clichés of street photography, but supplying streetscapes that... Continue Reading →
Jonas Yip and Wai-lim Yip – Somewhere Between
Review by Gerhard Clausing • Many of us have more than one national and ethnic background, and some of our derivation may be recognizable from our physical appearance, habits, or knowing more than one language, and familiarity with more than one culture. Some of us have a sense of affinity to several different cultural worlds... Continue Reading →
Tobias Kruse – Material
Photographer: Tobias Kruse, born Mecklenburg and residing Berlin, Germany Publisher: Kerber Verlag Berlin/Nürnberg, Germany Text(s): German and English Softcover, Width: 17cm x Length: 24cm, bound, 42 places, 35 people, 216 pages Design: Neue Gestaltung Berlin Notes: Berlin is a hot spot where the good life is lived, toasted, and celebrated. But truth be told, the... Continue Reading →