The Contemporary Photobook Magazine
Review by Douglas Stockdale • A densely packed urban environment can overwhelm the senses. The noisy buzz of activity, the jostling sea of humanity amidst a vast variety of aromas permeating the air. Can a single image effectively distill this urban chaos for a viewer? As an ardent street photographer, Ellen Friedlander found that one documentary style... Continue Reading →
Welcome to our 24th Issue •Wow. It has been two years since we changed our book review format and had not anticipated all of the pending social, economic and health changes we would need to weather. Fortunately the COVID vaccines are here and are quickly being implemented in the United States as many become fully vaccinated (like me).... Continue Reading →
Review by Wayne Swanson • Who was Bill Brandt? The simple answer is that he was one of the foremost 20thCentury British photographers. Yet he preferred to stay somewhere in the dark shadows of his work, and he remains a bit of a mystery today, almost 40 years after his death. During a career spanning... Continue Reading →
Review by Wayne Swanson • Wouldn’t it be nice to live in a Saul Leiter photograph? The soothing atmosphere, the soft, light and, most of all, the gentle painterly color palette of a pioneer in color street photography. As Yumiko Izu discovered, Leiter not only shot such images, he did indeed live in them. The... Continue Reading →
Guest Review by Bill Edwards • Rebecca Senf’s Making a Photographer: The Early Work of Ansel Adams provides an engaging historical account of one of our most renowned photographic icons. Senf’s biographical anecdotes allow us to see how his early work allowed Adams to refine his technical skills, perspective of the natural world as well... Continue Reading →
Welcome to our 22nd Issue •Wow! And we thought 2020 had been a traumatic year. Then 2021 began in the U.S. with the attempted coup at our Capitol. Thus our book review schedule was a bit disrupted by this and related events, but we're getting back on track again with a new administration that is focused on keeping our American democracy intact.Looking ahead:... Continue Reading →
Welcome to our 21st Issue & the end of 2020 •Whew! We are now preparing for the Spring 2021 books and publications, which no doubt have been in the works for awhile. Always exciting to see what creative new endeavors will emerge. 2020 has been a traumatic year, not only in the U.S. but globally. It is very nice... Continue Reading →
Review by Douglas Stockdale • After moving to Southern California and adapting to the zone system for my natural black and white landscape photography, Imogen Cunningham as a result of her affiliation with the West Coast Group f/64 was already legendary. She was well known for her botanicals, nudes, and portraits, as well as a... Continue Reading →
Review by Douglas Stockdale • The cover photograph of a book can provide a visual hint of what is yet to come. A vexing book title can add mystery and intrigue. What appears to be an 1800s wet-plate collodion photograph of a woman holding a banner in front of a painted tableaux seems to falter... Continue Reading →
Review by Melanie Chapman • “Beautiful, interesting… and sometimes cruel.” If Robert Frank had played in a punk rock band, how would that have influenced his work? What kind of images would he have made? Luckily, we have Tatsuo Suzuki’s new photobook Friction/Tokyo Street to answer that question. Wow. What an exciting book! One cannot... Continue Reading →
PhotoBook Journal 