The Contemporary Photobook Magazine
Review by Wayne Swanson • Many people see melancholy in the dying of the light, but French photographer Philippe Ciaparra sees utopia. At twilight he finds himself “in a chiaroscuro theater, immersed in the daydreams of my inner journey.” Ciaparra is a Paris-based fashion and portrait photographer, but in his personal work he focuses on long-exposure... Continue Reading →
Review by Gerhard Clausing • This photobook presents quite a challenge, and I found it also deeply touching in many ways, having spent several weeks with it ... and I am not done yet, by far. So many discoveries ... Helga Härenstam came upon a nearly 300-year-old poem, James Thomson’s The Seasons. That work, popular... Continue Reading →
Review by Gerhard Clausing • A friendship that can be traced back to our youth and has lasted into the present is something to be treasured and celebrated, if we are lucky enough to have such close ties to another person. Solarski and Liboska can share recollections that go back 30 years, to their early... Continue Reading →
Welcome to our 34th Issue • This is our first Issue for 2022 that includes a review of Ken Light's Course of the Empire and Peter Puklus's The Hero Mother. How to Build a House, both of which are featured in our Interesting Artist and Photobooks for 2021. Please enjoy Douglas StockdaleSenior Editor ____ Books featured in January 2022: Ken Light - Course of the Empire Perhaps... Continue Reading →
Review by Gerhard Clausing • Throughout the 20th Century there were some artists that overcame the traditional rules of “straight” photography and dared to take liberties with their interpretation of reality by means of special effects. Those working in the style of pictorialism come to mind, as well as the forerunner of digital manipulation, William... Continue Reading →
Review by Douglas Stockdale • Living in Southern California, I have a familiarity with border walls, specifically the American-Mexican wall that lies less than 100 miles south of my home. After relocating to California, a trip to the Tijuana tourist shops in near-by Mexico was usually on the list of go-to places for visiting relatives, parking... Continue Reading →
Review by Gerhard Clausing • Winning a competition is surely the goal of the participants. If the outcome is not what one expected, disappointment is often the result. When one is very young and has raised a special animal for a competition at a county fair, this emotional roller coaster can be most intense. Pride... Continue Reading →
Review by Wayne Swanson • The everyday landscape is filled with the banal, the kitschy, and the mundane. But that doesn’t mean it can’t be artful and engaging. Philadelphia-based photographer Martin Buday spent two decades traveling around the United States, collecting images that capture the wonder in the ordinary. The result is Prophetic Kingdom, which shows that... Continue Reading →
Review by Kristin Dittrich • The greatest challenge for parents-to-be in starting their own family is to switch back and forth between a wide variety of roles and to combine them harmoniously. For the man, this means that on the one hand he is expected to be a reliable partner, the responsible “head of the... Continue Reading →
Review by Gerhard Clausing • Visual narration is an exciting endeavor in contemporary photobooks. Fact and fiction can reach some artful intermingling in this area. But while the creation of fiction in verbal narration/literature (short stories, novels, folk tales, to name just a few genres) has been widely accepted for centuries, and the creation of... Continue Reading →
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