The Contemporary Photobook Magazine
Review by Lee Halvorsen • The images, the book as an object, the story, the people, and the artist weave, then blend together to create the soul of this incredible work of art. Shahria Sharmin spent a dozen years listening to and coming to know people in Bangladesh’s Hijra community. In the Afterword, Sharmin walks... Continue Reading →
Review by Lee Halvorsen • The Japanese have a word that perfectly describes how I imagine Willett approached making this book…”Komorebi” (木漏れ日) often translated as sunlight filtering through leaves, creating patterns of dancing light and shadow, and, importantly, a feeling of discovering light in the darkness. In an Afterword, which is a large sticky on... Continue Reading →
Review by Sebastian Boute and Matt Schneider · Thus, whether riding or walking, the process becomes about forms of reflection. Importantly, it is about the obstruction/mediation. Perhaps it is this kind of limitation that makes knowledge possible – that enacts a kind of deep inscription, if not a mapping, in the artist/writer/photographer/documentarian. And so, what... Continue Reading →
Review by Hans Hickerson · Some readers of this review might know what “asa nisi masa” means, but most of you presumably do not. I definitely did not, and so I Googled it, and here is what I found: "Asa nisi masa" is a phrase from Federico Fellini's film 8½ (1963) that is a code... Continue Reading →
Review by Lee Halvorsen • This is small book with a very large heart, capturing generations living strong, but challenged, in rural Kansas…far from the bustling crowds but also distanced from metropolitan healthcare. Steward’s Master of Arts, Journalism project found him spending a great deal of time with Larry Engstrom and his family after Larry... Continue Reading →
Review by Hans Hickerson · Where photographer Bruce Haley lives, BLM does not stand for “Black Lives Matter.” It stands for “Bureau of Land Management,” the federal agency that manages some 245 million acres of public land, or about ten percent of the United States, an area bigger than France and Italy combined. Most of... Continue Reading →
Interview by Brian Arnold · I can’t tell a lie – the first time I read Jasper by Matthew Genitempo, I didn’t get it. This isn’t a bad thing, rest assured, because I can say that about many of my favorite books. I think this is largely a result of complexity – in an initial... Continue Reading →
Review by Lee Halvorsen • History, art, colonialism, exploitation, humanity…all swirling about in Stupich’s monumental collection of visual and textual art in this book. He brings North America’s Camino Real alive from the time of the Spanish Conquistadores to twentieth century’s Guggenheim’s vice like grip on silver and copper mining that are on the same trails ridden... Continue Reading →
Review and Interview by Hans Hickerson · Publishers of photobooks publish photography books, but sometimes they also publish books about photography books. Jason Eskenazi’s The Americans List, published by Red Hook Editions, is a good example. It is about Robert Frank’s seminal book The Americans. Eskenazi asked photographers he knew and met, as well as... Continue Reading →
Review by Matt Schneider · In Mingas+Solidarity, photographer and anthropologist Tristan Partridge introduces us to the cultural tradition of minga in the ancestral community of San Isidro, Cotopaxi, Ecuador. The word “minga” is adapted from the Kichwa/Quechua word Mink’a or Minka, and as we learn from the book’s introduction, indicates “collective or communal work, based... Continue Reading →
PhotoBook Journal 