The Contemporary Photobook Magazine
Review by Gerhard Clausing • I think we would all agree that war is an ugly matter, driven by megalomaniacs – men who have a vast taste for power and control. The cost exacted on individuals and groups on all sides of warfare is always horrendous. Unfortunately, such is currently the case in Ukraine, and... Continue Reading →
Review by Douglas Stockdale • As we mature it seems that old family photographs become more bittersweet. Or at least these seem to me. We observe that the many individuals depicted have aged, if not passed, and that our memories of them and related events become more indistinct, as though lost in a midst of time.... Continue Reading →
Review by Gerhard Clausing • What we find missing in our childhood can sometimes be filled in a bit later in our lives in various ways. So it was with Sonia Lenzi, whose father had not been as accessible in her earlier years as she had wished; in recent years she gained personal access to... Continue Reading →
Review by Gerhard Clausing • Sublimation of grief is a partial remedy that artists can use to make life more bearable. Julia Vandenoever, having lost her mother to cancer and her brother to addiction, was able to see connections between her own childhood and that of her own children growing up, with parallel events and... Continue Reading →
Review by Douglas Stockdale • During a pandemic, during the worst of the chaos and angst, many of us must have found themselves reflecting on the past framed by the current moment. Sal Taylor Kydd in her latest poetic narrative, Yesterday, appears to pose an intriguing question, when might today start to resemble yesterday? This body of... Continue Reading →
Review by Gerhard Clausing • The word vale can have a number of meanings. It can imply a farewell, a letting go of things that perhaps are unattainable or forever lost. Or, it can be a valley, a hidden place between hills or mountains that may not be so easy to get to or to... Continue Reading →
Review by Gerhard Clausing • Mutual admiration between two photographers can be extraordinary, especially when it stimulates new work and when it happens across cultures. Even more important, this universal theme of life and death leaves no one untouched. Nobuyoshi Araki had seen Juergen Teller’s project Leben und Tod including pictures of his grieving mother... Continue Reading →
Review by Gerhard Clausing • An old ‘craftsman-style’ house and recollections of times spent there – these are the ingredients of this photobook. Photographer George Katzenberger weaves a very appealing narrative around a place he documented a long time ago, which still has meaning for him even now. The old house that once stood at... Continue Reading →
Review by Madhu Joseph John • Art book critics generally use criteria such as contents and caliber of images, layout, production niceties, such as quality of paper, design, and above all, the originality of the subject matter to analyze books they wish to review. In House Music, a photobook by Charles Rozier, many of these... Continue Reading →
Review by Gerhard Clausing • What’s life all about? When all is reversed – the real seems fake, the fake seems real – what can we still count on? What does a reality full of errata (printed errors) look like, and how are we to function? Are we like a book, with old pages, as... Continue Reading →
PhotoBook Journal 