The Contemporary Photobook Magazine
Review by Hans Hickerson · In much the same way that the Internet has democratized speech but also cheapened it, the ability to produce photobooks easily today is a blessing and a curse. It is a blessing because photographers can package and share their work with fewer barriers. It is a curse because everyone is... Continue Reading →
Review by Gerhard Clausing • Getting in touch with your inner self is not an easy task. Meditation is one of the ways that makes this possible, and Axel Kirchhoff has successfully photographed people at various stages of confronting their inner being. This photobook presents whole-body images as well as close-up portraits of dozens of... Continue Reading →
Review by Hans Hickerson · The Johnny Chronicles, An Anthology of Love and Absurdity, is a good reminder that one way to evaluate art is to look at how it communicates or offers consequential human experience. The Johnny Chronicles definitely does this. The book fits into the narrative / documentary photobook tradition and you can... Continue Reading →
Review by Steve Harp · Scott Offen’s 2025 monograph Grace is a lovely book. As an object, its beauty confronts the viewer from the first look – the “porthole” opening cut into the cover gives a view of a tipped-in, beautifully subtle gray-scale image beckoning mysteriously to the viewer. The image, of a large, leafy... Continue Reading →
Review by Lee Halvorsen • The images, the book as an object, the story, the people, and the artist weave, then blend together to create the soul of this incredible work of art. Shahria Sharmin spent a dozen years listening to and coming to know people in Bangladesh’s Hijra community. In the Afterword, Sharmin walks... Continue Reading →
Review by Lee Halvorsen • The Japanese have a word that perfectly describes how I imagine Willett approached making this book…”Komorebi” (木漏れ日) often translated as sunlight filtering through leaves, creating patterns of dancing light and shadow, and, importantly, a feeling of discovering light in the darkness. In an Afterword, which is a large sticky on... Continue Reading →
Review by Sebastian Boute and Matt Schneider · Thus, whether riding or walking, the process becomes about forms of reflection. Importantly, it is about the obstruction/mediation. Perhaps it is this kind of limitation that makes knowledge possible – that enacts a kind of deep inscription, if not a mapping, in the artist/writer/photographer/documentarian. And so, what... Continue Reading →
Review by Hans Hickerson · Some readers of this review might know what “asa nisi masa” means, but most of you presumably do not. I definitely did not, and so I Googled it, and here is what I found: "Asa nisi masa" is a phrase from Federico Fellini's film 8½ (1963) that is a code... Continue Reading →
Review by Lee Halvorsen • This is small book with a very large heart, capturing generations living strong, but challenged, in rural Kansas…far from the bustling crowds but also distanced from metropolitan healthcare. Steward’s Master of Arts, Journalism project found him spending a great deal of time with Larry Engstrom and his family after Larry... Continue Reading →
Review by Hans Hickerson · Where photographer Bruce Haley lives, BLM does not stand for “Black Lives Matter.” It stands for “Bureau of Land Management,” the federal agency that manages some 245 million acres of public land, or about ten percent of the United States, an area bigger than France and Italy combined. Most of... Continue Reading →
PhotoBook Journal 