The Contemporary Photobook Magazine
Review by Wayne Swanson • It’s not easy to find Doug’s cabin. Or Doug himself, for that matter. Doug lives deep in the rainforest at the remote northwestern tip of Vancouver Island. He’s the proprietor of the San Josef Heritage Park and Campground, a grand name for a struggling collection of primitive campsites. He’s a... Continue Reading →
Review by Wayne Swanson • “Let’s go for a walk.” That might sound like a pleasant invitation, but in the Spain of dictator Francisco Franco, it was often a chilling euphemism for a death sentence. During the Spanish Civil War (1936–39) and its aftermath, armed bands would round up people, take them to a remote... Continue Reading →
Review by Wayne Swanson • “. . . we went up to Mangapapapa to establish a place of wānanga for the river and it's many connections through whakapapa.” That neatly sums up Te Ahi Kā: The Fires of Occupation by photographer Martin Toft. But it takes quite a journey up the Whanganui River on the north... Continue Reading →
Review by Melanie Chapman • As a college student in the early 1980s, I had my first opportunity to visit the beachfront area of Atlantic City, the coastal town in New Jersey that inspired the board game MONOPOLY. Being from California, I was familiar with West Coast beach scenes that included palm trees and attractive... Continue Reading →
Review by Douglas Stockdale • The foil embossed book cover with undulating lines of the type font appears as though it is shimmering in the humid heat provides a hint as to what lies within. The third image in Arturo Soto’s photobook, In the Heat, is a wonderful sublime urban landscape photograph of Panama that... Continue Reading →
Review by Douglas Stockdale • TJ Norris has recently released his first monograph, Shooting Blanks, that investigates the potential abstract and graphic patterns created by commercial signage that is in a state of disuse or disrepair, aspects of the modern urban landscape. That these signs are now “blank” is a small aspect of this body... Continue Reading →
Review by Melanie Chapman • One of the many pleasures of photo-books is the sense that they wait for you. In a pile or on a shelf, we see the title on the binding and it calmly states “When you are ready, open me and enter in.” In the case of renowned Magnum photographer Harry... Continue Reading →
Review by Dan Johns & Douglas Stockdale • This book and the images within define a generation. The myopic, narcissistic psychological disposition of a generation is clearly the focal point of these photos; the mobile phone photographer, the “viewer”, although without name or discernable form, plays a major role in the story: not the Louvre;... Continue Reading →
Review by Douglas Stockdale • This is a collective body of work by the husband and wife team of Deanna and Ed Templeton that investigates their upper middle class Southern California neighborhood. Their Huntington Beach (HB) neighborhood is also not far from my residence/studio in Orange County and appears somewhat similar, except for their... Continue Reading →
Review by Douglas Stockdale • Lorena Turner provides an emotional complex personal narrative in her self-published photobook A Habit of Self Deceit. She reveals her lasting emotional trauma sustained during her youth from her alcoholic mother and now after many years, the futility to obtain reconciliation due to her mother’s steady memory decline as a... Continue Reading →
