The Contemporary Photobook Magazine
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 →
Review by Douglas Stockdale • The loss of a parent is always emotionally difficult regardless of one’s age, perhaps especially if this event occurs early in one’s life. The ways an individual can come to terms with the tragic impact varies. For Sarah Hadley an emotional convergence occurred well after her father’s passing at a... Continue Reading →
Review by Gerhard Clausing • When I look at this photobook, the old Phil Ochs song as rendered by Joan Baez goes through my head: “There but for fortune go you or I …” (check it out on YouTube). At the end of another fairly difficult year, looking at one’s reflection, at what might have... Continue Reading →
Review by Gerhard Clausing • Getting over a relationship that didn’t work out is never easy, especially if all your hopes and dreams were invested in it. You had your emotions tied up in another person with the hope of a long-term bond, with love the strong glue that was to hold it together. Depicting... Continue Reading →
Review by Gerhard Clausing • As we all know, communicating with one’s parents can be a challenge, not only in our early years, but later on as well. Often the verbal exchanges are limited to mostly necessary everyday topics and take the form of very limited small talk, and other kinds of interaction can also... Continue Reading →
Review by Gerhard Clausing • The occupation of land by a hostile foreign power is a phenomenon that seems to repeat itself, over and over, and thus it is an ever-present danger. In our time, the 20th century was not the end of such outrageous acts, as the occupation of the Crimean Peninsula, part of... Continue Reading →
Review by Gerhard Clausing • Abendlied (Evening Song) is a project that is very personal, yet has universal meaning. The concept seems simple: as we gradually take leave of our parents we have memories of events and feelings from long ago; things come back to remind us of what we experienced with them in the... Continue Reading →
Review by Gerhard Clausing • In these tumultuous times there is much to ‘beware of’ – many anxieties that have followed us since childhood and from centuries past are now catching up with us again and are turning into new existential fears. The archetypal nightmares from long ago, archaic and simple as they may have... Continue Reading →
PhotoBook Journal 