The Contemporary Photobook Magazine
Review by Wayne Swanson • So often, suburbia is portrayed as a bland and vacuous place — tract homes, franchise convenience stores, and a lot of sullen youth. That’s not the way Australian photographer Bill Henson sees it. Through Henson’s lens, suburbia is a dreamscape filled with dark shadows, fluffy clouds, Egyptian ruins, teenage angst, pastoral... Continue Reading →
Welcome to our 12th issue • This is our 12th issue, marking the first year of our magazine format. No one anticipated that on our first anniversary the entire world would be struggling with a COVID-19 pandemic. I would like to think this event has provided many of you with more book-reading time and an... Continue Reading →
Review by Douglas Stockdale • Backstory: Kwaidan: Stories and Studies of Strange Things is a new edition book of classic short, Japanese, horror stories written by Lafcadio Hearn over a century ago. Hearn was an Irishman who was born in Greece, grew up in Ireland, and emigrated to the US where he became a writer. He... Continue Reading →
Review by Madhu Joseph John • They say that the American South is a land in transition what with the incursions of globalization and the migrations of diverse populations. Some of us might be familiar with images of the “new South” depicted by artists such as Eugene Richards, Mitch Epstein, Tommy Kha and Shane Lavalette. Perhaps... Continue Reading →
Review by Wayne Swanson • While it’s officially spring on the calendar, snow is making its last stand in many places around the world. But what if it were the last stand ever? In places like the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg, that tiny European country surrounded by Belgium, Germany, and France, climate change is quickly making... Continue Reading →
Review by Melanie Chapman • When offered the opportunity to review Magnum’s new collection of Street Photography, I was giddy with anticipation. As a fan of spontaneous and un-posed imagery, I looked forward to revisiting classic examples of street photography from founding/early Magnum members such as Henri Cartier-Bresson and Elliot Erwitt, and then tracing their... Continue Reading →
Review by Wayne Swanson • The allure of air travel seems a distant memory in our current era of long lines, invasive security checks, and packed flights. Yet airports, when considered through the eyes of a photographer rather than a harried traveler, can be captivating places. Longtime Magnum photographer Harry Gruyaert is drawn to them. “The... Continue Reading →
Review by Steve Harp • Each photograph in Christian Michael Filardo’s Gerontion is a puzzle, a mystery, an enigma. Gerontion takes its title from a poem of the same name by T. S. Eliot, first published in 1920. The poem is the monologue by an elderly (“gerontic”) man expressing his thoughts on Europe after the First World... Continue Reading →
Welcome to our 11th issue • Happy Valentine’s month, and here are some of the books we love. We have another diverse photobook edition for your enjoyment. We welcome Lodoe-Laura Haines-Wangda as a guest contributor who reviewed Zora Murff’s photobook, which was selected as the winner of the Independently Published category for the Lucie Foundation... Continue Reading →
Review by Lodoe-Laura Haines-Wangda • The first image in Zora Murff’s photobook At No Point In Between is actually just half an image; a tiny loose color print, six-centimeters tall, tucked in between the pages. In the fragment, Walter Scott is running, but he is separated from what he is running from. In Slow Violence and... Continue Reading →
PhotoBook Journal 