The Contemporary Photobook Magazine
Slipcover, George Tice: Lifework Review by Douglas Stockdale • One of my first photobook acquisitions is another retrospective by George Tice – Photographs 1953-1973, which was then a twenty-year retrospective. Now that I am a bit older and perhaps wiser, I am understanding why this earlier book was published when noting that the introduction is by the... Continue Reading →
Review by Wayne Swanson • “Perverse” is a word that tends to pop up when the work of photographic artist scott b. davis is discussed. Which is strange because other than his willfully lower-case name, davis is not a perverse guy. Approachable, low-key, and easy-going, he’s well-regarded in the Southern California fine art photography world as... Continue Reading →
Review by Douglas Stockdale • Coal mining in American is predominately in a region known as Appalachia, a divisive term applied to parts of Eastern Kentucky, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Virginia, and West Virginia which can extend into parts of Ohio and Georgia. At one time, coal mining required deep tunneling to access the underground deposits, which since the... Continue Reading →
Review by Wayne Swanson • Toshio Shibata likes to blur boundaries. Between the natural and the human-made. Between the representational and the abstract. Between photography and drawing. Shibata, one of Japan's preeminent landscape photographers, has focused his attention since the early 1980s on the intersection of nature and infrastructure, finding art in scenes of bridges, dams,... Continue Reading →
Review by Wayne Swanson • Many people see melancholy in the dying of the light, but French photographer Philippe Ciaparra sees utopia. At twilight he finds himself “in a chiaroscuro theater, immersed in the daydreams of my inner journey.” Ciaparra is a Paris-based fashion and portrait photographer, but in his personal work he focuses on long-exposure... Continue Reading →
Review by Wayne Swanson • Bruce Haley is a photographer known for his international coverage of war and its aftermath. His work during Burma’s bloody civil war in 1990 earned him the coveted Robert Capa Gold Medal. Yet in his quiet personal work he keeps the home fires burning. The lands of his youth and his... Continue Reading →
Review by Douglas Stockdale • A cross country road trip, perhaps conceptually relating to Robert Frank’s ‘The Americans’, is an opportunity to view, witness and document an ensuing social and environmental landscape. What if that road trip is through a country that appears to be almost devoid of vegetation, animals and man-kind, a region that is... Continue Reading →
Review by Douglas Stockdale • War, conflict and then its aftermath can create terrible consequences for man-kind. But what if what occurs afterward is benign and seemingly without any drama? Could this justify the conflict or afford one the opportunity to ignore or look away? This appears to be the indirect question raised by Emanuel Cederqvist’s... Continue Reading →
Review by Melanie Chapman • Timing is everything, as is perspective. This is true in photography as well as in life. Recently, the imposingly large statue of Robert E. Lee, the Civil War general who represented the racist past of the American south, was finally dismantled in just over an hour, after having dominated a residential... Continue Reading →
Review by Steve Harp • Gary Green’s monograph The River is Moving/The Blackbird Must be Flying (L’Artiere, 2020) is a beautiful and delicate object. Measuring 6 ½” by 9 ½”, enclosed between plain white softcovers, the book features a perfect binding with visible spine. In this exposed Smythe style of binding, the spine remains uncovered, leaving open the folded... Continue Reading →
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