The Contemporary Photobook Magazine
Review by Gerhard Clausing • Where and what is home? And when you go back, how does the changed reality compare to your childhood memories and yearning? Arcadia is a concept that represents mythical and dreamy fiction, a land of freedom and plenty, a kind of paradise that exists in only the finest moments of... Continue Reading →
Review by Wayne Swanson • The daily surrealism of war is a subject that has inspired some fine literary and artistic works. Ben Brody’s photobook deserves a place among them. Attention Servicemember is a wry look at the war machine, the way images are used to shape and undermine perception, and the lasting personal impact war has... Continue Reading →
Review by Gerhard Clausing • Charles Fréger’s latest photobook presents an intriguing photographic and ethnographic study of “the masks, costumes, and characters created by the descendants of Africans and indigenous peoples in the Americas to honor their ancestors, commemorate their history and celebrate their heritage.” (Back cover) Our history certainly follows us around, and old... Continue Reading →
Review by Gerhard Clausing • How to portray a city through its residents? The city of Berlin is certainly one of the most diverse places in the world. Combining the former West and East sections, it is now an even more expanded center of culture and cultures. The citizens’ well-known directness and swagger, sometimes referred... Continue Reading →
Review by Gerhard Clausing • How do you effectively illustrate the follies of WAR? No matter how many times some of us advocate brain over brawn, war seems to be an ever-present specter, and this past week was certainly a glaring example. Perhaps such aggressive behavior is a remnant of the ancient male warrior who... Continue Reading →
Review by Gerhard Clausing • When I look at this photobook, the old Phil Ochs song as rendered by Joan Baez goes through my head: “There but for fortune go you or I …” (check it out on YouTube). At the end of another fairly difficult year, looking at one’s reflection, at what might have... Continue Reading →
Review by Melanie Chapman • “Say It Loud, I’m Bronx, I’m Proud!” Recently, I was in touch with a college friend who grew up in the Bronx in the 1970s and asked him for five words to describe the place. He chose “Dark, rotten, cheated, drugged out, death.” This is not, however, the Bronx that... Continue Reading →
Review by Gerhard Clausing • Getting over a relationship that didn’t work out is never easy, especially if all your hopes and dreams were invested in it. You had your emotions tied up in another person with the hope of a long-term bond, with love the strong glue that was to hold it together. Depicting... Continue Reading →
It’s time to look back at 2019, a very productive year for photobook publishing and for the PhotoBook Journal as well. By the end of the year, having enhanced our format to a full-scale magazine, we will have published some eighty photobook reviews, along with numerous articles, interviews, show reports, and announcements. As is our... Continue Reading →
