The Contemporary Photobook Magazine
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 →
Review by Gerhard Clausing • Why do some still consider war a useful method of dealing with conflicts? Armed encounters between groups of people, whether within a country or between countries, do not seem like a very sophisticated way of solving problems, or of improving the human condition. Where are the boundaries between “necessities” and... Continue Reading →
Review by Douglas Stockdale • Matt Shallenberger’s photobook The Leaping Place is a mashup of family history, overlaid with a visual investigation of Hawaiian mythology. He utilizes the Hawaiian mythology of Kumulipo, a long chant of creation, as the foundation for his own creation quest, using translations of this long chant to help guide him in... Continue Reading →
Review by Gerhard Clausing • In these days of self-isolation we certainly have become more familiar with our rooms, and with the moods they might hold or generate. In photography, the concept of particular spaces and all that happens in them involves a visualization of past, present, and possibly future juxtapositions and permutations – memories... Continue Reading →
Review by Gerhard Clausing • Charles Fréger’s latest photobook presents an intriguing photographic and ethnographic study of “the masks, costumes, and characters created by the descendants of Africans and indigenous peoples in the Americas to honor their ancestors, commemorate their history and celebrate their heritage.” (Back cover) Our history certainly follows us around, and old... Continue Reading →
PhotoBook Journal 