The Contemporary Photobook Magazine
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 →
Review by Darin Boville • When I was a young man I labored through the book On Photography, by Susan Sontag. I was a subscriber to the New York Review of Books, though not during the early 1970s when the chapters in this book were initially published as separate essays. I was also a subscriber to MIT’s... Continue Reading →
Review by Douglas Stockdale • There are many stories related to the pervasive adaptions in response to the COIVID-19 pandemic, which has changed and impacted so many lives. Everyone has had to make numerous changes, whether travel plans, conferences, exhibitions, or art fairs due to this pandemic. It has impacted livelihoods and relationships, and sometimes... Continue Reading →
Review by Debe Arlook • The gently layered experience of Tanpa Izin begins with the cover: an untitled forest green and black abstract photograph speckled with the Ben Day dot technique, mirrored on the back cover. Bound by a four-sided kelly green rubber band; I make note of the color green. In her first photobook, Ohemaa Dixon offers... 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 →
Review by Gerhard Clausing • Stones, rocks, and mountains come in endless sizes and shapes and are composed of a variety of materials. They are the building blocks of the earth, its very foundation. Leave it to Claudia den Boer, an innovative photographer with a sense of place, to photograph these “stonescapes” and to work... Continue Reading →
Review by Douglas Stockdale • Regina Anzenberger’s Roots & Bonds is a self-published book that appears to be a mash-up of Paul Caponigro photographs and Abstract Expressionism artwork while reading like we are peeking into an artist’s private sketch book. Even more so when we find images with her hand-written notes in the margins of the... Continue Reading →
Review by Melanie Chapman • Have you ever enjoyed a novel, or fallen in love with a painting or film, only to later learn something uncomfortable about the creator or the situation in which the work was produced? Did you find yourself rethinking your reaction based on that new information, or were you able to... Continue Reading →
Review by Wayne Swanson • “Where are we going?” “I wanted to show you nothing.” Coming from most people, that explanation would hardly seem appealing. But William Eggleston is not most people. “Nothing” has earned him his place as a seminal figure in modern fine art photography. When he told Harmony Korine and Juergen Teller... Continue Reading →
PhotoBook Journal 