The Contemporary Photobook Magazine
Article and photographs by Hans Hickerson · The regional photobook and zine scene is alive and well in the Pacific Northwest. Some fifty vendors offered their works to an enthusiastic public at the Photographic Center Northwest’s annual Photo Zine and Book Fair this year in Seattle on August 17. The PCNW was established in the... Continue Reading →
Review by Gerhard Clausing • Robin Mudge offers a great definition on his website: “a photobook is an exhibition in your hands.” In this photobook he has compiled an exhibition of his images that reflect everyday observations, and he has paired those photographs with ChatGPT descriptions. The ‘machine’ system can thus be considered a collaborator... Continue Reading →
Review by Henry Kallerud · In 1988, Anders Goldfarb started selecting photographs from his oeuvre that spoke to him about his own life, life in general, the surreal, and the visceral. In 1999, Goldfarb finalized the edit and sequence of what would become Ash Avenue. The project was tucked away, indefinitely, unseen for over a decade. Until,... Continue Reading →
Review by Rudy Vega · Ensnaring the Moment brings together two art forms—poetry and photography—that don’t always share the same space but feel like natural partners once they do. Edited by art critic and writer Leah Ollman, this anthology gathers over a hundred poems that speak to, from, or through the photographic image. These aren’t just... Continue Reading →
Review by Rudy Vega · Lefteris Paraskevaidis’ Around the Line is an evocative photobook documenting the evolving landscapes along the Athens - Thessaloniki national highway and its surrounding areas. Spanning a decade of travel and observation, this body of work functions as both an aesthetic meditation and a sociopolitical inquiry into the transformation of Greece’s... Continue Reading →
Review by Hans Hickerson · When are photographs not really about what is depicted but about something else? It happens often in photobooks when editorial direction establishes intentionality and context that frame the viewing experience, and Hannah Modigh’s Searching for Sivagami is a great example. The book is simple and focused. The photos are of... Continue Reading →
Review by Hans Hickerson · Yasuyuki Takagi photographs urban neglect and decay but also renewal in Brooklyn Lot Recordings. The book is a catalog of what he saw in empty lots in Brooklyn, New York between 1995 and 2005, and his photographs present the detritus of modern life accumulating in vacant spaces behind and between... Continue Reading →
Review by Hans Hickerson · There are many ways to make a photobook. One is to use photographs to construct meaning through carefully curated repetition and association. You introduce photographs to establish a theme or mood, you develop, and you introduce other themes and variations and build a narrative or story. Photographer Elise Corten’s Warmer... Continue Reading →
Review by Steve Harp · Oyvind Hjelmen’s 2024 monograph Being Here begins with a poem by the Norwegian Nobel laureate Jon Fosse. The poem, A Human Being is Here, begins: A human being is hereand then disappearsin a windthat vanishesinward There is a sense of disappearing, of vanishing also in Hjelman’s elegant photographs contained within... Continue Reading →
Review by Paul Anderson • Photographers and painters have long grappled with the representation of time. Photographer Ulf Lundin, in his photo book Best of Sweden, cleverly incorporates time in his composited landscape images. He does so by capturing multiple events and changes in light across a single Swedish landscape over one day, working these... Continue Reading →
PhotoBook Journal 