The Contemporary Photobook Magazine
Review by Hans Hickerson · As a rule of thumb, photobooks are interesting in inverse proportion to the amount of white space surrounding the photographs. The more white space – the more the photos adhere to a fine print aesthetic – the more the book typically functions as a themed album and the less it... Continue Reading →
Review by Rudy Vega · Puking Rainbows, Past and Future is a captivating collaborative project by Sean Lotman and his son Tennbo, blending the boundaries between photobook and artist book. Encased in a cardboard slipcover adorned with Sharpie doodles and Instax prints—featuring individual portraits of the duo on the front and back—each copy is a... Continue Reading →
Review by Gerhard Clausing • This artistic photobook gives you the impression of looking through a universal family album that encompasses more than your immediate surroundings. It gives you a look into the past that seems like an ambiguous societal cross section, a composite view with many personal nuances. Not only that, but photographs printed... Continue Reading →
Review by Hans Hickerson · Good things come in small packages. Grenades come in small packages too, and you can compare Richard Zybert’s 1981 photobook Notebook on Time to a small explosive charge. Notebook on Time is the story of Zybert coming to terms with his dysfunctional family and in particular with the legacy of... Continue Reading →
Review by Hans Hickerson • Part of the fun of reviewing photobooks is getting under the hood and taking a book apart to see what makes it work. Sergey Bykov’s photobook After Us is a good candidate for a closer look, as it resists easy analysis. Or rather there is an obvious reading but then... Continue Reading →
Review by Gerhard Clausing • This small artist book presents a large challenge. Swedish photographer Helga Härenstam has created a hand-assembled photobook of 34 images just about 4 1/2 inches square in overall size; there is no text inside, so you are dependent on your reactions to the images and on your intuitions. The title... Continue Reading →
Review by Lee Halvorsen • Lisa McCord’s “Rotan Switch” is a superb synthesis of content, design, and emotion…more than a story, more than photos, more than a book, it’s an experience. The design is unique and subtly compelling. At first look, the white space, the seemingly random text blocks, and the image arrangement didn’t click... Continue Reading →
Review by Gerhard Clausing • There can be no doubt that climate change is affecting our daily lives. Nick Brandt is a leading advocate for people and animals threatened by and suffering under these changing conditions. He is also a fantastic impresario of environmental portraits, thinking of unusual perspectives and locations for making a point... Continue Reading →
Guest Review by Lee Halvorsen • Its unique slipcase hints at the book’s story, a glimpse of the author’s relationship with his father and his father’s journey with mental illness. The compelling images are a skilled progression of family snapshot photography and the author’s abstract images brought to life with powerful text and exquisite sequencing.... Continue Reading →
Review by Steve Harp · Gail Rebhan’s About Time, subtitled Four Decades of Photographic Series, is a catalog of a retrospective exhibition at the American University Museum in Washington D.C., on view in early Spring, 2023. Photography is often defined (given the etymology of the word itself) as writing with light. But Rebhan’s work poses the question of whether... Continue Reading →
PhotoBook Journal 