The Contemporary Photobook Magazine
Text and photos by Hans Hickerson · Photobooks were visible everywhere this year in Arles at the 2025 photo festival. The official program included a book market as well as prizes for photobooks in several categories. The book market took place in two separate venues, but there were also a number of unofficial events, including... Continue Reading →
Review by Janesa Brosnan · Thames & Hudson’s photobook Erwin Blumenfeld captures the historical and moving perspective in Erwin Blumenfeld’s work. His love of expression, artistic vision, and experimentation is seen throughout all the photos selected. The book goes through the decades and locations of Blumenfeld's work ranging from Amsterdam in the 20s to New... Continue Reading →
Review by Hans Hickerson · If you haven’t visited Fairfield, Illinois, you might be excused for thinking it looks like Nathan Pearce’s photographs. I hadn’t, so I googled Fairfield and traveled down Main Street via Street View. I did not spot any vegan restaurants, food carts, indie record stores, e-bike shops, or comedy clubs. But... Continue Reading →
Review by Lee Halvorsen • You’re in the eye of the storm…you’ve seen the chaos and change that just occurred and in the not-too-far distance, you see more coming. Through Gray’s images, this is the storm’s eye view of mankind’s interaction with the planet and the mostly uncertain nature of that contact. You're standing on the... Continue Reading →
Review by Rudy Vega · Lycien-David Cséry’s Cracks and Dents is a meditation on imperfection, but it’s also a study in abstraction—one that draws as much from the language of painting as it does from photography. Taken between 2016 and 2018, the images document the dents, rust, and impromptu repairs found on the surfaces of... Continue Reading →
Review by Hans Hickerson · Context is everything, and without it you are lost. If you look at the 48 photographs in John Volynchook’s Faultlines by themselves, you would not know what country you were in, or even what century. They depict timeless views of nature, all except two photographs where you see tractor tire... Continue Reading →
Review by Hans Hickerson · Woven into the pages of Allison Grant’s almost family album Within the Bittersweet are questions that pack a punch. What future are we giving our children? What will the land that they inherit look like? Will they grow up physically scarred by the way we have treated our environment? How... Continue Reading →
Review by Lee Halvorsen • This book is more experience than observation, more emotion than entertainment, more subtle and captivating than literal and descriptive. The volume is finely made, medium weight…two hundred twenty-seven fascinating pages filled with meditative styled images not typically brought together in such an immersive volume. And, immersive it is…slowly wrapping itself around... Continue Reading →
Review by Gerhard Clausing • Folklore and rituals are vital components of our ancestral heritage. The stories that were told for many generations survive in one form or another and are enhanced as they are told and retold. I am currently investigating creation mythologies of various groups, and it is amazing how much wisdom and... Continue Reading →
Review by Hans Hickerson · The Future Without You is a great example of the reality of today’s interconnected world: transparencies of stock photos made in the US in the 1990s, rescued decades later from a recycling center in China by French collector and editor Thomas Sauvin, printed as a book in Belgium in 2023... Continue Reading →
PhotoBook Journal 