The Contemporary Photobook Magazine
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 →
Review by Brian Arnold · The first photograph in Ruth Lauer Manenti’s new book, 4 Sides of the Table, shows two rulers placed side by side. Both enter the picture from the right, their full-length cut off by the edge of the frame. They look as though they’ve been around for decades and are chipped... Continue Reading →
Review by Hans Hickerson · New photobooks of unpublished early work from well-established (read: saleable) photographers can be hit or miss, some justifying the hoopla surrounding their publication and others not. Martin Parr’s The Non-Conformists, a detailed, well-crafted exploration of an English village, is a thumbs up. Fresh out of university as a young photographer,... Continue Reading →
Review by Gerhard Clausing • Thomas Hoepker’s DDR / East Germany – Colour Works 1972–1990 is a remarkable photobook, not because it reveals shocking new truths about the German Democratic Republic, but because it insists on looking carefully, patiently, and in color at a place that was more often described than seen. The photographs, so... Continue Reading →
Review by Olga Bubich · Photobooks have long offered artists a field of expanded possibilities, allowing them to move beyond a single, linear narrative and challenge conventional expectations of what a book could look like. The history of the medium, with examples ranging from the canonical works such as Robert Frank’s The Americans (1958) and... Continue Reading →
Review by Lee Halvorsen • As I paged through this book it was as if I’d wrapped myself in a flannel blanket of memories…soft colors, warm textures, familiarity, and comfort. Well, not my memories, but the memories of Tilton whose work often takes her to Paris. Over several trips she’s captured the emotions and feel... Continue Reading →
Review by Brian Arnold · With Love, from an Invader – Rhododendrons, Empire, China and Me by Yan Wang Preston is a complex, layered book that explores the intersections of colonialism, botany, and personal identity. It is beautifully designed, a sort of guidebook structured around the seasonal changes in the hills just outside Burnley in... Continue Reading →
Review by Hans Hickerson · In much the same way that the Internet has democratized speech but also cheapened it, the ability to produce photobooks easily today is a blessing and a curse. It is a blessing because photographers can package and share their work with fewer barriers. It is a curse because everyone is... Continue Reading →
Review by Hans Hickerson · The Johnny Chronicles, An Anthology of Love and Absurdity, is a good reminder that one way to evaluate art is to look at how it communicates or offers consequential human experience. The Johnny Chronicles definitely does this. The book fits into the narrative / documentary photobook tradition and you can... Continue Reading →
Review by Steve Harp · Scott Offen’s 2025 monograph Grace is a lovely book. As an object, its beauty confronts the viewer from the first look – the “porthole” opening cut into the cover gives a view of a tipped-in, beautifully subtle gray-scale image beckoning mysteriously to the viewer. The image, of a large, leafy... Continue Reading →
PhotoBook Journal 