The Contemporary Photobook Magazine
Review by Melanie Chapman • Perhaps the greatest compliment one can pay a photographer is to be so inspired by their work that you go out into the world and attempt to make pictures in the same vein. Thus, on Christmas Day, Ken Light’s new photobook Course of the Empire compelled this reviewer to drive downtown, seeking images... Continue Reading →
Review by Wayne Swanson • Bruce Haley is a photographer known for his international coverage of war and its aftermath. His work during Burma’s bloody civil war in 1990 earned him the coveted Robert Capa Gold Medal. Yet in his quiet personal work he keeps the home fires burning. The lands of his youth and his... Continue Reading →
Review by Melanie Chapman • American Geography, the new Thames and Hudson book by photographer Matt Black, is like the artist himself, both handsome and intimidating. Even the cover, imageless with stark lettering on a surface that is indeed matte black, does not invite the viewer in. Nor does it reassure one that this is a... Continue Reading →
Review by Gerhard Clausing • There can be no doubt that our relationship with other creatures, the “animals,” is in need of improvement, and when optimal, gives great joy and a calm feeling to all participants. Even though many have seen such creature parallels before, such as Winogrand in The Animals, similarities and shared emotions... Continue Reading →
Review by Douglas Stockdale • A cross country road trip, perhaps conceptually relating to Robert Frank’s ‘The Americans’, is an opportunity to view, witness and document an ensuing social and environmental landscape. What if that road trip is through a country that appears to be almost devoid of vegetation, animals and man-kind, a region that is... Continue Reading →
Reviewed by Steve Harp • North Korea, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) seems in many ways as distant and inaccessible – to Americans, at least – as the moon. And like the moon, I have long had a kind of ambivalent desire to experience it first-hand. A desire, that is, as long as it is unlikely. Should... Continue Reading →
Review by Wayne Swanson • Colorado may be known as a land of snow-capped peaks, ski slopes, and the mystique of a certain bland beer brewed with pure Rocky Mountain spring water. But that’s just the half of it. Head east from Denver, and you enter another world. A flat, semi-arid world. A world of dust. ... Continue Reading →
Review by Wayne Swanson • We all know Cuba as that land of classic but disintegrating American cars, Fidel Castro, cigar-making and smoking, the evils of communism, classic but crumbling architecture, and béisbol. Yet all of these stereotypes are centered on the nation’s few urban centers. In reality, 85% of Cuba is rural. “Cuba was from its dawn... Continue Reading →
Review by Douglas Stockdale • War, conflict and then its aftermath can create terrible consequences for man-kind. But what if what occurs afterward is benign and seemingly without any drama? Could this justify the conflict or afford one the opportunity to ignore or look away? This appears to be the indirect question raised by Emanuel Cederqvist’s... Continue Reading →
Review by Wayne Swanson • It starts a ways up Pacific Coast Highway from Malibu and ends 50 miles to the east, a bit past the HOLLYWOOD sign. It’s Mulholland Highway in the west and Mulholland Drive in the east, with a dirt path in the middle. But it’s all simply Mulholland in the mythology of... Continue Reading →
PhotoBook Journal 