The Contemporary Photobook Magazine
Guest review by Dia Yunzhi Wang • As a female photographer, I would always have the desire to document the moments that I let ‘myself’ out. I’d be hopping up and down on empty streets with arms waving high, shaking my body like a disco-maniac when the playlist shuffles to a love dance song and... Continue Reading →
Welcome to our Fourth Issue • Ah, the summer months are really here and time for holidays and vacations. The temperature has finally become a little hotter here in Southern California, getting past our May-Gray and June-Gloom, the endless days of overcast grayness with the accompanying cooler temperatures, and this year even some rain showers... Continue Reading →
Review by Gerhard Clausing • In these tumultuous times there is much to ‘beware of’ – many anxieties that have followed us since childhood and from centuries past are now catching up with us again and are turning into new existential fears. The archetypal nightmares from long ago, archaic and simple as they may have... Continue Reading →
Review by Melanie Chapman • “A magnum opus project spanning 14 years, UPSTATE GIRLS documents’ the troubles and triumphs of a group of friends and their extended families in upstate New York.” For many years now, I have indulged in two great passions. One is photography, the other is what I jokingly refer to as... Continue Reading →
Elizabeth Avedon, a conversation with Douglas Stockdale • Elizabeth Avedon, independent curator / photo book and exhibition designer, including the retrospective exhibition and books: “Avedon: 1949–1979” for the Metropolitan Museum of Art; “Avedon: In the American West” for the Amon Carter Museum, the Corcoran Gallery, and the Art Institute of Chicago, among others. ___________________________ I... Continue Reading →
Review by Wayne Swanson • Are you fluent in photography? Not f-stops and apertures. Not representational or abstract, fine art or documentary. Not Ansel or Robert Adams. Rather, do you understand the visual language of photography? For the late Nathan Lyons (1930 – 2016), the world was “a vast repertoire of signs that await being... Continue Reading →
Review by Gerhard Clausing • This photobook by Cristiano Volk is all about the mysterious and historic Venice, Italy. It is a novel view of a place that has been incessantly photographed, resulting in zillions of predictable tourist snapshots that imitate tourism brochures. The city is built on islands, always poised to battle the surrounding... Continue Reading →
Review by Douglas Stockdale • In their introduction the Albarran Cabrera partnership expand on the premise of mankind’s thinking about our inability to accurately recall past memory as a potential way to consider future memories. As humans we are unique in our ability to plan ahead and that the forward-thinking process is probably as flawed... Continue Reading →
Review by Gerhard Clausing • In a 1953 episode of the very dated and otherwise questionable American TV series Amos and Andy, the character Kingfish is shown pretending to be a French teacher, incongruously using a poster of the old German-American entertainment/nostalgia “Schnitzelbank” song. He tries to convince his ‘student’ that it is the finest... Continue Reading →
For June, Issue #3, we feature a broad spectrum of photobooks: photo-documentary, conflict aftermath, introspective look at what is home, conceptual investigations and artistic interpretations. I suspect that there is something for just about everyone as we attempt to examine a cross-current of contemporary photographic books available today. Our NEWS article is highlighting a new left coast... Continue Reading →
PhotoBook Journal 