The Contemporary Photobook Magazine
Review by Melanie Chapman • “Say It Loud, I’m Bronx, I’m Proud!” Recently, I was in touch with a college friend who grew up in the Bronx in the 1970s and asked him for five words to describe the place. He chose “Dark, rotten, cheated, drugged out, death.” This is not, however, the Bronx that... Continue Reading →
Review by Gerhard Clausing • Getting over a relationship that didn’t work out is never easy, especially if all your hopes and dreams were invested in it. You had your emotions tied up in another person with the hope of a long-term bond, with love the strong glue that was to hold it together. Depicting... Continue Reading →
Review by Gerhard Clausing • Our current time is marked by an increasing blurring between reality and fantasy, and also by a greater prevalence of verbal, physical, and sexual violence, and so this photobook is right on target. Sohrab Hura helps us explore the questions so central to what is happening now: What is fake... Continue Reading →
Review by Gerhard Clausing • We find ourselves in a time of greater uncertainty. Thus our anxieties and fears are also greater, and we expect disasters – sudden catastrophes that can come about naturally, accidentally or by intent. Fires, earthquakes, storms and flooding are our main threats here in California; nuclear accidents and military aggression... Continue Reading →
Review by Wayne Swanson • Densely packed multi-story apartment buildings are a fact of life in today’s crowded cities. Brazilian photographer Letícia Lampert cleverly explores the paradoxes of vertical living by taking a horizontal view in Conhecidos de Vista (Known by Sight). Lampert adopted the leporello (accordion-fold) book design to construct her own urban neighborhood from... Continue Reading →
Review by Gerhard Clausing • The occupation of land by a hostile foreign power is a phenomenon that seems to repeat itself, over and over, and thus it is an ever-present danger. In our time, the 20th century was not the end of such outrageous acts, as the occupation of the Crimean Peninsula, part of... Continue Reading →
Review by Gerhard Clausing • The use of the leporello technique for presenting a continuity of visuals has a long tradition. In picture postcard presentations, for example, there are interesting varieties going back to the end of the 19th century that present little fold-outs emerging from flaps that show various views of an area. In... Continue Reading →
Review by Douglas Stockdale • Ham and eggs. A wonderful breakfast in which it is said that the pig is fully committed, while the chicken is only involved. In the mid-1970’s endotoxin testing was in transition from using white bunnies to using Limulus amoebocyte lysate (LAL), a test method derived from the blood of Horseshoe... Continue Reading →
Review by Douglas Stockdale • Working in a very technical area for my day-job I have become very familiar with on-the-job training, educational manuals, and health & safety bulletins that stress environmental awareness. I will admit that it was not until reading Louie Palu’s A Field Guide to Asbestos did the immense danger of asbestos really... 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 →
PhotoBook Journal 