The Contemporary Photobook Magazine
Review by Steve Harp • Where are we? In looking through Sebastian Rogowski’s 2020 self-published monograph, Suicidal Birds, I was taken, strangely enough, back to my youth and to my fascination with the 1968 science-fiction film Planet of the Apes. Rogowski’s opening three images—particularly the second, which could almost be a still from the film—recalled for... Continue Reading →
Review by Wayne Swanson • Is trying to explain Garry Winogrand’s photographs an interesting challenge or a fool’s errand? After all, Winogrand repeatedly rebuffed attempts to philosophize about his work with statements like “You’re talking about meaning. I want to talk about the pictures.” Nevertheless, Geoff Dyer gives it a shot in this big book of... Continue Reading →
Review by Gerhard Clausing • Overcoming the past is a prerequisite for a better future. While we cannot change any of the things our predecessors have done, our obligation is to open ourselves to an honest assessment of the past and to bring about improvements. An honest acknowledgment of historical events and of cultural shifts... Continue Reading →
Review by Steve Harp • One of the few things – perhaps the only thing – I remember from high school chemistry is the teacher referring to water as “the universal solvent.” That concept or image has stuck with me, the idea that if left in water long enough, everything will dissolve, fade away, disappear.... Continue Reading →
Review by Wayne Swanson • There’s a classic Irish short story in which a child in a village asks an Irish Traveller girl “Do you never tire of the road?” The girl’s quick response is “Do you never tire of being fettered?” That pretty much sums up the world views that divide mainstream society from the... Continue Reading →
Review by Melanie Chapman • Escape is on the minds of many people these days, now that we are in various stages of “Stay at Home” efforts to reduce the spread of a global pandemic. As warmer weather approaches, fantasies of trips to the beach have been curtailed by a reality that few could have... Continue Reading →
Review by Steve Harp • It’s more than a little unsettling to characterize a book which can be described - in the words of its creator - as a “succession of dark days” as lovely. But that’s the first word that comes to mind in looking through Fabio Ponzio’s East of Nowhere. There is a... Continue Reading →
Review by Wayne Swanson • Bodie, that 19th-century gold rush ghost town in the California hills east of the Sierra Nevada mountain range, has been a theme park for photographers for years. Everyone from Ansel Adams down to Mom, Dad, and the kids with their point-and-shoots has captured the picturesque “arrested decay” of what is now... Continue Reading →
Review by Wayne Swanson • German photographer Florian Schwarz takes on the entire universe in his new book A Handful of Dust. Schwarz spent four years traveling to observatories in some of the most remote places on Earth. These observatories, operated by the Las Cumbres Observatory Foundation (LOC) in Santa Barbara, span the globe to allow... Continue Reading →
Review by Madhu Joseph John • They say that the American South is a land in transition what with the incursions of globalization and the migrations of diverse populations. Some of us might be familiar with images of the “new South” depicted by artists such as Eugene Richards, Mitch Epstein, Tommy Kha and Shane Lavalette. Perhaps... Continue Reading →
PhotoBook Journal 