The Contemporary Photobook Magazine
Photographs copyright of Jerry Burchfield 2009 courtesy of Laguna Wilderness Press Jerry Burchfield’s recent (2009) photobook Understory: Florida Lumen Prints, is his sequal to his 2004 photobook Primal Images, both of which utilize his camera-less photographic process to create his unique Lumen prints. The subject of this book has shifted from the plants and flora of... Continue Reading →
Copyright Dan Nelken, 2008, courtesy Kehrer Verlag Dan Nelken’s Till the Cows Come Home, is a culmination of nine years photographing county fairs in the rural NorthEast region of the United States. His project evolved into creating moving portraits of the farming participants, especially the youth and the animals that they raised. Not shown are... Continue Reading →
Copyright Debra Bloomfield, 2008 courtesy Chronicle Books The subject of Debra Bloomfields latest book, Still, published in 2008 by Chronicle Books, is a series of oceanscapes; composed of part ocean and part sky with a horizon somewhere in between. Which is also to say that she treads softly on the edge of sentimentality and cliché.... Continue Reading →
Photographs copyright of David Maisel courtesy of Chronicle Books As a designer, principally developing sterile barrier systems for medical products, it was jarring for me to see David Maisel’s photographs from his recent book, Library of Dust. Seeing containers in these deplorable conditions is the stuff of nightmares for me. So I see his photographic content in a... Continue Reading →
Copyright Roger Ballen, 2008, courtesy Phaidon Press For most of the photobooks I review, they usually are stand alone books, but I feel that Roger Ballen's recent book Boarding House needs to be placed into a larger perspective. Specifically to the content of his two previous books, Shadow Chamber, published in 2005 and Outland, published in 2001, both by Phaidon Press. Otherwise, it feels... Continue Reading →
Copyright Garciela Iturbide, 2008 courtesy ROSEGALLERY This an interesting little book, perhaps two books within one set of covers, a fictional story, complemented by a related photographic body of work. The fictional story is written by Mario Bellatin, titled Demerol, Without Expiration Date and is about the "recent" artistic work being completed by Frida Kahlo. Except of course that Kahlo... Continue Reading →
Copyright Linda Connor, 2008, courtesy of Chronicle Books and Joseph Bellows Gallery; Astrophotograph, copyright of the Regents of California, the Lick Observatory Plate Archive In Homer's Odyssey, an early Greek poem, Odysseus is on an epic journey and encounters endless trials and tribulations during the ten years it takes for him to reach his home. Odysseus was not only trying to reach his home during his struggle... Continue Reading →
I was turned onto PDN (Photo District News) magazine about a year and a half ago at the Palm Springs Photo Festival. Before that, I just saw it as a professional photographic magazine, for wedding and commercial advertising photographers. Wrong. In PDN for May 2009, they have issued their PhotoAnnual for 2009. I think that the September issue... Continue Reading →
Photographs copyright of Eliji Ina, 2008, courtesy of Nazaraeli Press Eiji Ina's recent book, Emperor of Japan, is part documentation, part examination, and part aesthetic observance. He has documented the burial sites, miasai, of the Japanese Emperors since the Kofun period, which reaches back approximately 1,600 years into history. While Ina was at each of these sites, which are spread... Continue Reading →
Copyright 2009 Bernd und (and) Hilla Becher courtesy Schrimer/Mosel Verlag After reviewing the catalog for the Becher's exhibition at Museo Morandi, I found that I wanted to further explore Bernd and Hilla's photographic body of work. Thus I acquired this book, Basic Forms of Industrial Buildings, published by Schrimer/Mosel Verlag in conjunction with the Becher's Hasselblad Award in... Continue Reading →
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