The Contemporary Photobook Magazine
Review by Douglas Stockdale • Jakob de Boer takes us on his mystical and mythological journey into the Pacific Northwest, a place of memories, and the resulting black and white landscape photographs become meditative poems. His narratives encompass abstract and ambiguous shapes and forms that explore the black and white scale. Other photographs are inclusive... Continue Reading →
Review by Gerhard Clausing • Let’s forget preconceived notions projected onto images of the female body. Yes, I know, we live in a callous time in which some politicians have been elected or appointed to high positions even after engaging in or advocating misogynous crudities from within the stereotypical outmoded repertoire of “old white men.”... Continue Reading →
Review by Steve Harp • Where are we? In looking through Sebastian Rogowski’s 2020 self-published monograph, Suicidal Birds, I was taken, strangely enough, back to my youth and to my fascination with the 1968 science-fiction film Planet of the Apes. Rogowski’s opening three images—particularly the second, which could almost be a still from the film—recalled for... Continue Reading →
Review by Gerhard Clausing • What’s life all about? When all is reversed – the real seems fake, the fake seems real – what can we still count on? What does a reality full of errata (printed errors) look like, and how are we to function? Are we like a book, with old pages, as... Continue Reading →
Review by Wayne Swanson • Around 2006, San Francisco photographer Alan Ostreicher got a simple idea: Why not document life in his apartment? It would be a personal project, not necessarily intended for anyone beyond him and his wife. Who else would want to capture such mundane subject matter anyway? Jump ahead to the pandemic of... Continue Reading →
June was an unusual month in the United States, regretfully for the usual reasons, which makes it a little difficult for me to discuss just photobooks. Due to continuing institutional racism and police brutality, George Floyd was murdered; inept American leadership has resulted in a runaway COVID-19 pandemic; and the person in the White House does not... Continue Reading →
By Gerhard Clausing • Even though we are somewhat isolated due to the coronavirus situation, we certainly can still share our work. It can be a more personal experience to virtually visit with our fellow photographers and authors and to hear and see them tell about their projects in an atmosphere of comfortable professionalism. To... Continue Reading →
Review by Gerhard Clausing • Why do some still consider war a useful method of dealing with conflicts? Armed encounters between groups of people, whether within a country or between countries, do not seem like a very sophisticated way of solving problems, or of improving the human condition. Where are the boundaries between “necessities” and... Continue Reading →
Review by Douglas Stockdale • It could be argued that every painting has an element of theater as to how the various elements of composition have been carefully chosen to represent something factual or conceptual. Even the most contemporary abstract expressionistic painting has an underlying theatrical process taken into consideration at the time of the... Continue Reading →
Review by Gerhard Clausing • In this photobook the documentary photographer Tomas Wüthrich provides us with a visual glimpse into our own past, into a world without supermarkets that supply us with our meat, fruits, and vegetables. It is a fascinating journey into the disappearing world of the Penan people of Borneo, who were discovered... Continue Reading →
PhotoBook Journal 