The Contemporary Photobook Magazine
Review by Hans Hickerson · When he made the photographs published in his book The Waning Season, Oliver Gerhartz probably did not imagine that they would become an elegy for a brief period of relative calm between the fall of a dictatorship and a brutal civil war. Gerhartz was in Khartoum, Sudan, working as an... Continue Reading →
Review by Lee Halvorsen • New York City, Manhattan, September 11, 2001. In just a few hours Manhattan went from the daily norm to horrendous, tragic chaos and terror with a rising spirit of unity and support. A writing journalist at the time, Holger Biermann was in the City, walking the streets with thousands of... Continue Reading →
Review by Steve Harp · How to begin thinking about Johannes Groht’s 2025 monograph Insight Grindel? Two words which immediately come to mind are beautiful and enticing. I hope to be more substantive in my following comments, but there is no question that this is a captivating volume. Its size (app 7” x 9 ¼”)... Continue Reading →
Editorial by Hans Hickerson · Have you ever noticed how many photobooks there are? Most you can’t find in bookstores, even some that specialize in photography. But go to any book fair and you can see hundreds of photobooks, many of which you haven’t heard of. One reason you might not have heard of them... Continue Reading →
Review by Brian Arnold · Canyon del Diablo – Devil’s Canyon. Not a unique name, I know, but to me it’s iconic. In the spring of 1995, not long after I submitted my undergraduate thesis on the anthropological writings of Zora Neale Hurston, I traveled to the desert lands along the Colorado/Utah border with my... Continue Reading →
Article and photographs by Hans Hickerson · The regional photobook and zine scene is alive and well in the Pacific Northwest. Some fifty vendors offered their works to an enthusiastic public at the Photographic Center Northwest’s annual Photo Zine and Book Fair this year in Seattle on August 17. The PCNW was established in the... Continue Reading →
Review by Gerhard Clausing • Robin Mudge offers a great definition on his website: “a photobook is an exhibition in your hands.” In this photobook he has compiled an exhibition of his images that reflect everyday observations, and he has paired those photographs with ChatGPT descriptions. The ‘machine’ system can thus be considered a collaborator... Continue Reading →
Review by Henry Kallerud · In 1988, Anders Goldfarb started selecting photographs from his oeuvre that spoke to him about his own life, life in general, the surreal, and the visceral. In 1999, Goldfarb finalized the edit and sequence of what would become Ash Avenue. The project was tucked away, indefinitely, unseen for over a decade. Until,... Continue Reading →
Review by Gerhard Clausing • Casey Reas has the relatively unique position of being both an artist and a scientist. He has contributed greatly to the development of generating images with the help of artificial intelligence systems. This photobook, which I only discovered this summer, presents both a technical description of a major process, as... Continue Reading →
Review by Rudy Vega · Ensnaring the Moment brings together two art forms—poetry and photography—that don’t always share the same space but feel like natural partners once they do. Edited by art critic and writer Leah Ollman, this anthology gathers over a hundred poems that speak to, from, or through the photographic image. These aren’t just... Continue Reading →
PhotoBook Journal 