Review by Douglas Stockdale • What initially struck me in reading Kevin Bubriski’s latest photobook, Mustang in Black and White, was the pictorial framing and sequential interweaving of the landscape and portraits photographs of Nepal. In a turn-about, this colorful region is illustrated using higher contrast black and white photographs that border on abstraction. As... Continue Reading →
PhotoBook Journal – Issue #9
Welcome to our Ninth Issue! • We hope you had a wonderful holiday season, which for some of you, may still not be over just yet. We think that the holidays are a great time to find new photobooks or spend time with recent book purchases. As we do each year, we share our annual... Continue Reading →
Shane Rocheleau – The Reflection in the Pool
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 →
Jeff Bridges: Pictures, Volume Two
Review by Wayne Swanson • Now playing at a bookstore near you is a behind-the-scenes look at the spectacle of moviemaking, filmed in epic widescreen black and white. Jeff Bridges: Pictures, Volume Two, by an accomplished photographer who also happens to be an actor of some acclaim, is a welcome sequel to Bridges’ 2003 book about... Continue Reading →
Leo Goldstein: East Harlem – The Postwar Years
Guest review by Brian Rose • Coming out of the 103rd Street subway station the other day, I was struck by how much this neighborhood, once commonly referred to as Spanish Harlem, has changed since I came to New York in the late ‘70s. It’s not that the Latin nature of the place has been... Continue Reading →
An ICP Photo and Bookmaking Course – Photographing New York: The Lower East Side
by Brian Rose • For several years I have been teaching a course at the International Center of Photography (ICP) that combines making pictures and bookmaking. The class is called Photographing New York: The Lower East Side. Each student chooses a subject or theme focused on that famous immigrant neighborhood now undergoing rapid change, and... Continue Reading →
Allison Stewart – Bug Out Bag: The Commodification of American Fear
Review by Gerhard Clausing • We find ourselves in a time of greater uncertainty. Thus our anxieties and fears are also greater, and we expect disasters – sudden catastrophes that can come about naturally, accidentally or by intent. Fires, earthquakes, storms and flooding are our main threats here in California; nuclear accidents and military aggression... Continue Reading →
Nico Bick – Parliaments of the European Union
Review by Steve Harp • Nico Bick’s Parliaments of the European Union (nai010 publishers, 2019) is an imposing volume. The book — 12" x 15", 272 pages, weighing in at almost 9 pounds — exudes the gravitas of its subject matter. Consisting of 30 four-page foldouts (double gate-folds), it depicts the legislative chambers of the 28... Continue Reading →
Patrick Brown – No Place On Earth
Review by Melanie Chapman • When Never Again Repeats Itself: If ever there was a singular book that exemplifies the meaning of “Photo Evidence” (FotoEvidence), this essential publication documenting the tragic plight of Myanmar’s Rohingya refugees certainly must be that book. So beautiful are the images and so heavy is the topic; this new collection of... Continue Reading →
Erik van Cuyk – Rijnwijk Mijn wijk
Review by Wayne Swanson • Every city has one — that neighborhood “everybody” knows to stay away from. It’s too rough, or too hostile, or too unsafe, or just too different in some way or another. For Arnhem, a medium-sized Dutch city near the eastern border with Germany, that neighborhood is Rijnwijk. This insular 100-year-old... Continue Reading →