The Contemporary Photobook Magazine
Review by Steve Harp · In 1975 Martha Rosler exhibited a group of 24 diptychs titled “The Bowery in Two Inadequate Descriptive Systems.” The work juxtaposes banal images (think of Ed Ruscha’s gasoline stations) of rundown facades in New York’s Bowery district with text panels listing euphemisms for inebriated states (“blind drunk,” “dead drunk,” “embalmed,” “buried,” “gone”). The... Continue Reading →
Review by Hans Hickerson ∙ Sap in Their Veins offers portraits of loggers as well as their personal narratives. Photographer David Paul Bayles was able to document loggers as an insider, as he himself spent four seasons working in the woods with logging crews. Looking at and reading the book we develop a better understanding... Continue Reading →
Review by Lee Halvorsen • The individual street images in Perfect Strangers are delightful and bursting with the emotion and environmental texture of the moment. Teri Vershel connected with people and places so candidly I felt as if I were looking through the camera’s viewfinder with her. In his foreword for the book, Sam Abell called her images... Continue Reading →
We are very pleased that six reviews dealing with photography and resistance are featured as a part of Ann Mitchell’s Winter Showcase, THINKING ABOUT PHOTOGRAPHY, just published: https://www.thinkingaboutphotography.com/photobook-resistance Mitchell writes, "the photographers in this showcase are giving voice to those who have been silenced. They celebrate lives and cultures that persist despite outside forces to... Continue Reading →
Review by Gerhard Clausing • All you have to do is watch “Gorilla Videos” on Facebook to recognize that some animals are very similar to us. And that is not really a case of anthropomorphism, which can be defined as attributing human characteristics to other creatures. But assigning animals to a lower class and denying... Continue Reading →
Review by Gerhard Clausing • Mo Yi is an interesting Chinese photographer of Tibetan origin. He has had only a few major exhibitions in the West; this photobook and the related exhibitions (UCCA Center for Contemporary Art and Arles Photography Festival) are a welcome change. His work encompasses several decades of experimenting with images of... Continue Reading →
Review by Gerhard Clausing • There are a number of reviews of photobooks about warfare that I have reviewed over the years. You can enter war in the search box and look at as many of them as you like. But none of them are as comprehensive, as complex, and as personal as this one,... Continue Reading →
Review by Melanie Chapman • As the old saying goes, “Home is where your heart is.” Epic poems and countless songs have been written on the topic; missing home, coming home, longing for home... “I’ll Be Home for Christmas”, “Home on the Range”, “There’s No Place like Home”... but what if you have no home? What if... Continue Reading →
Review by Lee Halvorsen • Lisa McCord’s “Rotan Switch” is a superb synthesis of content, design, and emotion…more than a story, more than photos, more than a book, it’s an experience. The design is unique and subtly compelling. At first look, the white space, the seemingly random text blocks, and the image arrangement didn’t click... Continue Reading →
Review by Gerhard Clausing • The documentation of animal life all around us has long been a favorite area of photography. This very important volume illuminates animal photography of all sorts from a vast number of angles, featuring a number of photographers who concentrate on documenting animal life, as well as essays dealing with animal... Continue Reading →
PhotoBook Journal 