The Contemporary Photobook Magazine
Review by Douglas Stockdale • Throughout his photographic career, Bill Brandt (Hermann Wilhelm Brandt, b. 1904 Hamburg, Germany – 1983) continued to explore the poetry of the nude form. Brandt had assisted Man Ray in his Paris studio in the 1930’s when Brandt started to think of using a nude subject to investigate the unique perspective... Continue Reading →
Copyright 2012 Laia Abril self-published First be warned, this is a troubling, if not disturbing, photobook. As such, it is a photo-documentary of a community of mostly young women who appear to obsessively starving themselves to death. In a bazaar twist on social networking, these women post and share self-portraits of their current anorexia state... Continue Reading →
Copyright 1986, 2010 Renee Jacobs published by The Pennsylvania State University Press (Stiff cover) Limited Edition hard cover book with print (Sonny Mekosh) Renee Jacobs first photobook is subtitled A Photodocument of Centralia, Pennsylvania and investigates a city and region of Pennsylvania that is slowly being eroded away by an underground coal fire that... Continue Reading →
Copyright Chris Killip 2011 published by Steidl and GwinZegal During an intermittent period of fourteen months spanning 1983 and 1984 Chris Killip photographed a small hardworking but tight-knit community located on the Northeastern coast of the United Kingdom. His subjects are the families and individuals who were making their living collecting and selling the coal found... Continue Reading →
Copyright Douglas Stockdale 2011 Warning Notice: this is a self-serving personal shout-out about the availability of my book in a Limited Edition Book + Photograph set. You may find yourself spending a small amount of loot while yet making a wonderful investment so be warned before proceeding any further!! I recently published two small versions of a Limited Edition Book +... Continue Reading →
Review by Douglas Stockdale • I think that the concept for this book is best stated by Benge: These photographs follow my recent four part series AS IT IS? Here I continue to question the nature and substance of the things I see and the idea of ITness itself. Copyright Harvey Benge 2011 courtesy of the... Continue Reading →
photographs copyright Rafal Milach 2011 courtesy of Kehrer Books The seven short stories attempt to provide a collective insight into his subject's existence in this region of the Soviet Union, with a heavy dose of reality clashing with hope. Accompanying each narrative are quotes by his subject to broaden the visual context. I found the pathos to be unrelenting and that it darkly... Continue Reading →
Copyright Hiroshi Watanabe 2008 published by Mado-sha Co. Ltd With the recent the passing of Kim Jong II and the changes to the family leadership in North Korea I am motivated by an opportunity to review an earlier photobook by Hiroshi Watanabe who was allowed “access” to travel and photograph within North Korea in 2007. Hiroshi states,... Continue Reading →
Review by Douglas Stockdale • My first impression of Harvey Benge’s photobook All of the Places I’ve ever Known was that this book is meant to be autobiographical. It is also a statement of the obvious: that you cannot take a photograph of a place unless you have been to that place. Cheeky. Benge has self-published numerous photobooks and in... Continue Reading →
Copyright Louie Palu 2007 published by Photolucida At the conclusion of the Photolucida's Critical Mass event in 2006, three photographers were awarded monographs, Hiroshi Watanabe, Sage Sohier and Louie Palu, for his photo-project Gage Call: Life and Death in the Hard Rock Mining Belt. For Palu, along with Charlie Angus who conducted the interviews, their project... Continue Reading →
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