Review by Unmai M. Arokiasamy and Matt Schneider • Outsiders have long struggled to make sense of a Lumbee Indigeneity that does not conform to colonial imaginations of Nativeness. It is against this backdrop that You Don’t Look Native to Me, by Maria Sturm, explores Lumbee culture and their long struggle for tribal recognition –... Continue Reading →
Rita Nannini – First Stop Last Stop
Review by Paul Anderson • With its 26 routes, the New York City subway system serves as connective tissue for the vast New York metropolitan area. The photographer Rita Nannini visited all 52 endpoints of this system over a period of 10 years, photographing the people, trains, stations, and neighborhoods at each and every terminal... Continue Reading →
Ian Howorth – A Country Kind of Silence
Review by Gerhard Clausing • In his very perceptive essay for this photobook, Harry Gallon provides a very important insight: “Place exists as the altar of our everyday existence.” He goes on to discuss the multiple layers of history that weigh heavily on all the locations that were photographed by Ian Howorth for this astonishing... Continue Reading →
Chris Maliwat – Subwaygram
Review by Paul Anderson • Between 2014 and 2022, photographer Chris Maliwat rode the rails of the New York City subway system with his camera, skillfully capturing its quirky and colorful passengers. He began photographing during pre-COVID days and continued through the height of the pandemic. A selection of these images is assembled in his 2022... Continue Reading →
Rohina Hoffman – Embrace
Review by Gerhard Clausing • All of us who have roots or interests in more than one culture (maybe that’s even most of us) can benefit greatly from the many insights Rohina Hoffman has incorporated in this new photobook. As a member of US society with roots in India, as one who has advanced to... Continue Reading →
Niko J. Kallianiotis – Athênai: In Search of Home
Review by Gerhard Clausing • Revisiting a place you have seen before is always full of many surprises. My wife and I have been to Athens a number of times and find the experience always exhilaratingly different; alas, as one would expect, even our relatives there are never quite the same as on the previous... Continue Reading →
Roger Ballen – boyhood
Review by Gerhard Clausing • At times some of us feel a certain nostalgia and want to go back to our youth. We long to be boys or girls again, thinking that things were simpler in our youth. We imagine that life was more innocent and more harmonious than what we now face as adults.... Continue Reading →
Yuki Kihara – Paradise Camp
Review by Gerhard Clausing • The categories of genders and gender-related behaviors and preferences are not as binary as some would have us believe. According to Western psychology, we all have both male and female sides; either side can predominate or be more pronounced at times in individuals. The same is true of a variety... Continue Reading →
Caroline Irby – Someone Else’s Mother
Review by Melanie Chapman • What is it that constitutes family? Is it a matter of love, or bloodline alone? Is family determined by time spent together, common interests, shared experience? Is family a matter of choosing whom among billions of people on the planet we trust and look out for and want to be with?... Continue Reading →
Stacy Mehrfar – The Moon Belongs to Everyone
Review by Douglas Stockdale • Stacy Mehrfar’s dark book, The Moon Belongs to Everyone, recently published by GOST Books is unsettlingly, and I believe deservedly so. Even the book’s title is a bit vexing, a generalization for all mankind but hints at moonlight and things that might go bump in the night. That night with its limited visibility... Continue Reading →