Review by Douglas Stockdale • Coal mining in American is predominately in a region known as Appalachia, a divisive term applied to parts of Eastern Kentucky, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Virginia, and West Virginia which can extend into parts of Ohio and Georgia. At one time, coal mining required deep tunneling to access the underground deposits, which since the... Continue Reading →
Brian O’Neill – Beach Boulevard
Review by Douglas Stockdale • Although Brian O’Neill’s southern California subject, Beach Boulevard, extends from the San Gabriel mountains to the Pacific Ocean, his emphasis appears to circle around one of the end-points: the urban landscape of Huntington Beach, a costal community. His perspective is a combination of street photographer, with hints of photographic-documentary, overlaid with... Continue Reading →
Fran Forman – The Rest Between Two Notes
Review by Gerhard Clausing • Fran Forman is a visual magician, a multi-talented storyteller with many mysterious tales, who shares with us a lifetime of experiences that she has deeply felt. She makes those experiences and feelings manifest and externalizes them through miraculous photographic compositions which engage our hearts and minds. This thoughtfully crated art... Continue Reading →
Kirk Crippens – So Long
Review by Gerhard Clausing • When the title of a book has a double meaning, I am delighted from the start. “So long” can mean saying goodbye, particularly to an unpleasant time period, and it can also mean that whatever is referred to has been going on for a long while. Both meanings certainly fit... Continue Reading →
Caroline Irby – Someone Else’s Mother
Review by Melanie Chapman • What is it that constitutes family? Is it a matter of love, or bloodline alone? Is family determined by time spent together, common interests, shared experience? Is family a matter of choosing whom among billions of people on the planet we trust and look out for and want to be with?... Continue Reading →
PhotoBook Journal – Issue #36
Welcome to our 36th Issue •This month we offer another broad survey of artist and photographic book reviews that cover a range of issues. We also welcome a new guest reviewer, Brian O'Neill. Please stay healthy and safe.Douglas StockdaleSenior Editor ____ Book reviews featured in March 2022: Toshio Shibata - Boundary Hunt Toshio Shibata likes to blur boundaries. Between... Continue Reading →
Sonia Lenzi – Take Me to Live with You
Review by Gerhard Clausing • What we find missing in our childhood can sometimes be filled in a bit later in our lives in various ways. So it was with Sonia Lenzi, whose father had not been as accessible in her earlier years as she had wished; in recent years she gained personal access to... Continue Reading →
Catherine Canac-Marquis – Every time I walked into my room, I took a picture through the window
Review by Wayne Swanson • Here’s a tip for photographers who are struggling to find something worth shooting: just look out the window. Catherine Canac-Marquis takes this idea to an extreme in the appropriately titled Every time I walked into my room, I took a picture through the window. Over the course of 17 days in November... Continue Reading →
Pamela Landau Connolly – Fly in Amber
Review by Douglas Stockdale • Lady Clementina Hawarden (1822 – 1865) was a 19th century British photographer who photographed her adolescent daughters, frequently incorporating the use of mirrors and other reflecting surfaces creating multi-faceted portraits and visual narratives exploring self-reflection and introspection. Interestingly little is known of her life, who remains a mystery and what is suspected... Continue Reading →
Sarah Kaufman – Devil’s Pool
Review by Brian O’Neill • The Devil’s Pool is a roughly 15-foot-deep by 25-foot-wide basin of water tucked within Wissahickon Valley Park located in Northwest Philadelphia, USA. But, if you Google “Devil’s Pool,” the aforementioned pool does not appear. Instead, you will find “Devil’s Pool, Victoria Falls.” You will read that it is “a tourist attraction in... Continue Reading →