The Contemporary Photobook Magazine
Copyright Mark Klett 2008 courtesy of Cavallo Point Lodge & Edition One Books Time is such an elusive element, and for photographers, it is also an essential component for creating a photograph. As a result, the relevance of time to photography has been written about by John Berger, John Szarkowski, Susan Sontag, Roland Barthes, Andy... Continue Reading →
Copyright Chris Jordan, 2006 courtesy Princeton Architectual Press Artist’s have long realized that they could use their creative efforts in an attempt to influence public opinions and policies that are aligned with their environmental and social concerns. Jacob Riis photographically documented the New York slums in the 1880’s dates, Thomas Moran applied his paint in... Continue Reading →
ParisChanging: Revisiting Eugene Atget's Paris by Christopher Rauschenberg for Princeton Architectural Press, 2007 A photobook that is almost 50% composed of photographs by Eugene Atgetis going to be difficult for me to objectively review. I have to admit that I have a relatively strong bias about Atget, because I like his straight forward photographic content... Continue Reading →
Copyright Debbie Fleming Caffery 2009, courtesy Radius Books The dark and shadowy lead-in photograph for Debbie Flemming Caffery’s photobook, The Spirit & The Flesh, provides adequate notice that this is not going to be a straight forward documentary. Caffery creates mysterious photographs about the life and economic survival in a small Mexican village. As a... Continue Reading →
Copyright Eugene Richards, 2008, courtesy PHAIDON Press After reading Eugene Richards recent photobook The Blue Room, I found myself thinking about the book’s title, perhaps more so than other books that I have recently reviewed. I think that I have two interpretations of his title, which are complementary and indicative of this body of work.... Continue Reading →
Photographs copyright of Jerry Burchfield 2009 courtesy of Laguna Wilderness Press Jerry Burchfield’s recent (2009) photobook Understory: Florida Lumen Prints, is his sequal to his 2004 photobook Primal Images, both of which utilize his camera-less photographic process to create his unique Lumen prints. The subject of this book has shifted from the plants and flora of... Continue Reading →
Copyright Dan Nelken, 2008, courtesy Kehrer Verlag Dan Nelken’s Till the Cows Come Home, is a culmination of nine years photographing county fairs in the rural NorthEast region of the United States. His project evolved into creating moving portraits of the farming participants, especially the youth and the animals that they raised. Not shown are... Continue Reading →
Copyright Debra Bloomfield, 2008 courtesy Chronicle Books The subject of Debra Bloomfields latest book, Still, published in 2008 by Chronicle Books, is a series of oceanscapes; composed of part ocean and part sky with a horizon somewhere in between. Which is also to say that she treads softly on the edge of sentimentality and cliché.... Continue Reading →
Copyright Roger Ballen, 2008, courtesy Phaidon Press For most of the photobooks I review, they usually are stand alone books, but I feel that Roger Ballen's recent book Boarding House needs to be placed into a larger perspective. Specifically to the content of his two previous books, Shadow Chamber, published in 2005 and Outland, published in 2001, both by Phaidon Press. Otherwise, it feels... Continue Reading →
Copyright Garciela Iturbide, 2008 courtesy ROSEGALLERY This an interesting little book, perhaps two books within one set of covers, a fictional story, complemented by a related photographic body of work. The fictional story is written by Mario Bellatin, titled Demerol, Without Expiration Date and is about the "recent" artistic work being completed by Frida Kahlo. Except of course that Kahlo... Continue Reading →
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