The Contemporary Photobook Magazine
Review by Hans Hickerson · You can think of Robert Dunn’s Tokyo Cool as a challenge to solve, with different kinds of puzzle pieces that fit together. It is about Tokyo, but it isn’t just about Tokyo. It is also about using a camera to create blurred rectangles of liquid color, pattern, and movement, mostly... Continue Reading →
Review by Brian F. O’Neill · Simultaneously with the expansion of the universe of image-text photobooks, so too have we seen a rise in research-oriented photographic projects in which the photograph is not left to stand on merits apparently internal to it. In this second modality, the photographs and the larger sequence within which the... Continue Reading →
Review by Hans Hickerson · An unflinching, comprehensive exploration of the current situation of women in Afghanistan, No Woman’s Land is an important book. It reminds us that while we take our personal possibilities for granted, women and girls in Afghanistan are treated barely better than slaves. Along with mutually reinforcing images and texts, the... Continue Reading →
Review by Gerhard Clausing • Rich-Joseph Facun’s 1804 examines Athens, Ohio, an Appalachian town whose economic and cultural life is closely tied to Ohio University. Rather than constructing a conventional documentary narrative, Facun structures the book through a carefully paced sequence of portraits, architectural observations, and quiet still-life fragments. As the images accumulate, the photographs... Continue Reading →
Review by Hans Hickerson · To write or not to write, that is the question photographers ask when assembling their projects into books. What do you say to accompany your photographs? What needs to be said that the photographs do not already say? Will the viewer understand what you are doing if you do not... Continue Reading →
Review by Matt Schneider · “Although we can refer to much of my work as memory-inspired, I like to think of it as documentary in nature. It serves as a historical record of urban changes, which for the most part appear invisible.” – Waisman, p. 1. Sunset Colonies: A Visual Elegy to South Florida’s Mobile... Continue Reading →
Review by Hans Hickerson · Dropping jaws do not make noise, and neither do smiles. If they did, you would be able to hear people looking at Xenia Nikolskaya’s Plastic Jesus. Nikolskaya’s book is a collection of photos of religiously-themed merchandise interspersed with interior views of Egyptian Coptic Christian monasteries. In her photographs the objects... Continue Reading →
Review by Hans Hickerson · A heartfelt plea, a cri de coeur documenting the ravages of poverty in the United States, Matt Black’s American Artifacts reads like a contemporary complement to Let Us Now Praise Famous Men. Unlike the single location of the Evans / Agee book, Black traveled over 100,000 miles around the US... Continue Reading →
Review by Lee Halvorsen • Paolinelli’s powerful images immerse us in the artistry, mechanics, family, faith and community of Albuquerque’s Lowriders. The images are intense, a brilliant mixture of color and black and white bringing each page alive while blending perfectly into a single, heartfelt story. Many of the images are captioned with names and places... Continue Reading →
Review by Hans Hickerson · Sometimes it takes time to figure out a photobook. Robert Adams’ 1985 Summer Nights is one of my all-time favorite books, and a year ago I was eager to see what he had done with his 2023 version, Summer Nights, Walking. But I was so disappointed that I almost couldn’t... Continue Reading →
PhotoBook Journal 