I just wanted to provide a very quick update on the ongoing crowd-sourcing discussion about the Future of PhotoBooks being moderated by Miki Johnson on the Resolve blog, in which I provided my thoughts about The Future of PhotoBooks. I have provided a follow-up on The PhotoBook for the Innovative PhotoBooks for 2009 that I reviewed. To date on the... Continue Reading →
Riitta Paivalainen – Imaginary Meetings
Copyright Riitta Paivalainen, 2009 courtesy Kehrer Verlag In Imaginary Meetings, the eight year retrospective of the young Finnish photographer Riitta Paivalainen, I have found some very delightful and thoughtful conceptual photographs. This book is an accumulation of a number of projects that Paivalainen has created, building on a similar theme utilizing similar subjects, advancing her ideas... Continue Reading →
Harry Cock – Omstreken
Copyright Harry Cock 2006, courtesy Stichting Fotografie Noorderlicht Omstreken (Environs) is the title for the twenty-five year retrospective of Dutch photojournalist Harry Cock. The Dutch word is used to indicate the area and localities that are surrounding you, a fitting description of the territory for Cock’s focus. Similar to Gunnar Smoliansky who photographed his local Swedish surroundings for the... Continue Reading →
Stefan Heyne – The Noise
Photographs copyright of Stefan Heyne 2009, courtesy of Kehrer Verlag Heidelberg The title of Stefan Heyne’s recent photobook “The Noise; The Exposure of the Uncertain” is perplexing. The three accompanying essays that have translated from the original German to English only provide a little assistance. In an attempt to understand the accompanying photographs, I am digressing... Continue Reading →
Hisashi Shimizu – Portraits of Silence
Copyright Hisashi Shimizu 2009, courtesy photo-eye & Kodansha On the surface, the subjects of Hisashi Shimizu’s book Portraits of Silence are soldiers who perished during the Iraq conflict, indirect portraits developed from the perspective of the soldier’s parents. But Portraits of Silence is also about the desire to maintain the memory of a beloved, and... Continue Reading →
Christopher Thomas – New York Sleeps
Copyright Christopher Thomas 2009, courtesy of Prestel Verlag When I recently shared my thoughts about the future of photobooks when looking out another 10 years, I can not imagine at the moment an electronic version that would be capable of simulating the feel of a wonderful photobook lying in my hands. Christopher Thomas’s recent book... Continue Reading →
Nan Goldin – Variety
Photographs copyright Nan Goldin 2009 Courtesy Skira Rizzoli New York and photo-eye Bette Gordon’s famous, perhaps infamous, 1983 independent film Variety evolved from an earlier series of cinematic narrative photographs created by Nan Goldin. A few of the photographs from Goldin’s Variety were incorporated in her earlier opus, The Ballard of Sexual Dependency. This photobook is the... Continue Reading →
Arnoud Bakker – Atropa bella donna
Copyright Arnoud Bakker, 2009, courtesy Stichting Fotografie Noorderlicht To be in love, or perhaps in lust, is to experience a kind of narcosis and paralysis, with an inability to focus, while the heart rate becomes erratic. There are other symptoms of which there may be a lack of awareness in the moment; dilated pupils, blurred... Continue Reading →
Lukas Felzmann – Waters in Between
Copyright Lukas Felzmann 2009 Courtsey Lars Muller Publishers Water is an elusive essential to both man-kind and nature, without it you will certainly wither away and perish, and if by chance there is too much, you may drown. People have tried to control, manage and harness water, to force it to do what they feel... Continue Reading →
Duane Michals – 50
Copyright Duane Michals 2009, courtesy Edizioni Siz and photo-eye Spending time with the recent Duane Michals book, 50, a fifty year retrospective by the Italian publisher Siz, was essentially re-experiencing much of my own photographic life, having come of photographic age with his somnambulist period. His fascination with dreams, dreamlike states and dream-walking precedes our current interest with making connections to memories. Michals is... Continue Reading →
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