The Contemporary Photobook Magazine
Copyright Duane Michals 2009, courtesy Edizioni Siz and photo-eye Spending time with the recent Duane Michals book, 50, a fifty year retrospective by the Italian publisher Siz, was essentially re-experiencing much of my own photographic life, having come of photographic age with his somnambulist period. His fascination with dreams, dreamlike states and dream-walking precedes our current interest with making connections to memories. Michals is... Continue Reading →
I just recevied a brief overviewof the photographic literature that will be available at the Swann Auction Galleries December 8th, 2009 in NYC, which is in conjunction with their auction of photographic prints. Some of the photobook hightlights include: Among the earliest examples of photographic literature in the sale are Francis Frith’s Egypt Nubia and Ethiopia,... Continue Reading →
Copyright Linda Gordon & estate of Dorothea Lange, 2009, courtesy of W.W. Norton & Company I had been aware of Dorothea Lange’s immense photographic body of work during the FSA (Farm Security Agency) in the 1930’s, primarily her iconic images of Migrant Mother, White Angel Breadline, which I thought was a FSA photograph (it is... Continue Reading →
Copyright Deanna Templeton 2008, self-published, courtesy photo-eye There is something amiss with Deanna Templeton’s self published book, 17 Days, the photo documentary she created while accompanying a product promotional tour through Europe in 2008. I am bedeviled by all that bothers me, and I think that it is best described as an overall unevenness in... Continue Reading →
For those who enjoy photobooks and have acquired a few of them over the years, one benefit is that they may also increase in value. A potentially nice counterpoint to the argument that you are spending too much for these wonderful books. Ah, yes, a mighty fine investment, indeed! Thus of potential interest was the recent October Swann Galleries auction... Continue Reading →
Joerg Coberg, publisher of the blog Conscientious, is now providing English translations of the original German articles that have been published in the German photography magazine Photography Now. One of the first translations is an interview of Gerhard Steidl, who is the publisher of the well-known Steidl photobooks, and this delightful interview can be found here. I found this to be an interesting interview; if you... Continue Reading →
Copyright Doug Keyes 2008 Courtesy DECODE Books In Doug Keyes photobook, Collective Memory, he utilizes the multiple images of book pages to create complex visual metaphors for memory, and indirectly the duration of time, providing a conceptual product that can only be approximated with photography. An overview of his process is nicely stated in the... Continue Reading →
Copyright Bill Jacobson 2009 courtesy DECODE Books The title of Bill Jacobson’s recent book, A Series of Human Decisions, has an interesting double meaning. Jacobson is photographing those things that can represent the artifacts of decisions we as human’s make, and the process of photographing reflects the decisions that Jacobson is making, thus hinting at... Continue Reading →
Photographs copyright Gunnar Smoliansky 2008 courtesy Steidl The 55 year photographic oeuvre of Gunnar Smoliansky captured in One Picture at a Time, illustrates how this famous Swedish native continues to mine his local cultural landscape, constantly revealing the subtle nuances that have taken him a lifetime to discover. He has not veered far from his... Continue Reading →
Copyright Sandra Lousada 2009 courtesy Frances Lincoln Limited While reading Sandra Lousada’s retrospecitive monograph, Public Faces Private Places, I am impressed with the intimate and sensitive portraits that she has been capturing for the last fifty years. Her subjects are predominately the public figures of the United Kingdom, both in their roles as actors and... Continue Reading →
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