The Contemporary Photobook Magazine
Review by Rudy Vega • Satoshi Hirano’s Reconstruction documents the large-scale redevelopment of Tokyo’s Shibuya station. Reconstruction is the culmination of a photography project Hirano pursued from 2014 to 2018. Portraying a nocturnal view, Hirano provides an insider’s look to the ongoing expansion of the station, offering the viewer access that would otherwise be difficult if not impossible... Continue Reading →
Review by Douglas Stockdale • How might we ‘see’ the unseen, whether it is too microscopic to discern, moving too rapidly to distinguish or in the case of the root structure of trees and vegetation, buried out of sight? Likewise, how might we imagine something as indiscernible as moisture and water moving within a root structure... Continue Reading →
Review by Douglas Stockdale • Jakob de Boer takes us on his mystical and mythological journey into the Pacific Northwest, a place of memories, and the resulting black and white landscape photographs become meditative poems. His narratives encompass abstract and ambiguous shapes and forms that explore the black and white scale. Other photographs are inclusive... Continue Reading →
Review by Douglas Stockdale • It can be extremely unsettling to read stories about a Holocene Extinction and then to realize that this period applies to the current time. Extinction is a word that is loaded with danger, concern, drama and dire consequences that does not bode well for any animal or mankind. And Here We... Continue Reading →
Review by Madhu John • The Ballad of Omatandangole: Aapo Huhta’s song begins with an astonishing image: a cascading mountain in the foreground, a hazy sky and not one, but two suns. Like a chorus, this image is repeated intermittently in this book. Granted, this could be the artist’s attempt to obtain a Man Rayesque... Continue Reading →
Review by Douglas Stockdale • Inspired by the early work of Eugene Atget, the sublime gardens of the French emperors became the subject of Christine Riedell’s first self-published monograph. These expansive “gardens”, which are almost the size of a National park here in the United States, are located in the general region around Paris. Her subjects... 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 →
Guest review by Madhu John • In essence, this book is an autobiography of an artist, a dedicated teacher and a studiously creative photographer tracing a rich eventful journey through a wide variety of striking images and illuminating prose. In this age of the ubiquitous camera wielded by every mother, son and daughter, why, you... Continue Reading →
Review by Melanie Chapman • As a college student in the early 1980s, I had my first opportunity to visit the beachfront area of Atlantic City, the coastal town in New Jersey that inspired the board game MONOPOLY. Being from California, I was familiar with West Coast beach scenes that included palm trees and attractive... Continue Reading →
Review by Gerhard Clausing • This photobook is based on a retrospective exhibition previously shown at the National Gallery of Art, the Peabody Essex Museum, and the Getty Museum, currently showing at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, Texas, and soon to be at the Jeu de Paume, Paris (June 17 to Sept. 22, 2019)... Continue Reading →
