Review by Gerhard Clausing • My wife’s opinion about this book is that it “brilliantly captures the spirit of California and should be on every coffee table.” Well, there you have it, I thought, why do a whole book review? But I know what our dedicated audience expects and what our editorial policy requires, so... Continue Reading →
David Gulden – Nor Dread Nor Hope Attend. Photographs from the Plains of Africa
Review by Gerhard Clausing • The title of this magnificently photographed and beautifully printed photobook is drawn from a poem by Yeats that claims that while humans are afraid of death and look forward to an afterlife, non-human creatures do neither, i.e., the supposition is that ‘animals’ do not dread death nor hope for something... Continue Reading →
Rick Schatzberg – THE BOYS
Review by Gerhard Clausing • Ah, the vagaries of time ... and yet, in all of that there is something of enduring value – friendship, the comfort of having kindred spirits. Rick Schatzberg and all the participants have created a unique photobook that has time and bonding as its central themes and that succeeds in... Continue Reading →
Nobuyoshi Araki and Juergen Teller – Leben und Tod (Life and Death)
Review by Gerhard Clausing • Mutual admiration between two photographers can be extraordinary, especially when it stimulates new work and when it happens across cultures. Even more important, this universal theme of life and death leaves no one untouched. Nobuyoshi Araki had seen Juergen Teller’s project Leben und Tod including pictures of his grieving mother... Continue Reading →
Agnieszka Sejud – Hoax
Review by Gerhard Clausing • When reality is presented as a hoax and made-up stories are flooding social media to substitute for reality, what do we have left to treasure as our actuality? When writers who question the government are attacked as enemies of the people, does the definition of ‘friends’ get altered to include... Continue Reading →
George Katzenberger – 605 East Chestnut
Review by Gerhard Clausing • An old ‘craftsman-style’ house and recollections of times spent there – these are the ingredients of this photobook. Photographer George Katzenberger weaves a very appealing narrative around a place he documented a long time ago, which still has meaning for him even now. The old house that once stood at... Continue Reading →
Niko J. Kallianiotis – America in a Trance
Review by Gerhard Clausing • It’s been more than half a century since Robert Frank stirred things up with his first major work, The Americans. Some of what he, the outsider, observed in regard to racial inequality and strife, economic hardships, and political swagger are still in need of improvement even as these lines are... Continue Reading →
Gian Butturini – LONDON
Review by Gerhard Clausing • Having recently reviewed the contemporary street photography of Allen Wheatcroft, Body Language, and also having heard about the controversy surrounding the work of Butturini, I was certainly curious to take a closer look at this photobook as well. The book is marked “Edited by Martin Parr” on the cover, and... Continue Reading →
Hannah Kozak – He Threw the Last Punch Too Hard
Review by Gerhard Clausing • One error in judgment, a lifetime of suffering … In this book, the courageous Hannah Kozak allows us to share her struggles with her mother who left her first husband and five children, including Hannah, for an abusive drinker who in a final blow caused her permanent injury, including brain... Continue Reading →
Charles Rozier – House Music
Review by Madhu Joseph John • Art book critics generally use criteria such as contents and caliber of images, layout, production niceties, such as quality of paper, design, and above all, the originality of the subject matter to analyze books they wish to review. In House Music, a photobook by Charles Rozier, many of these... Continue Reading →