The Contemporary Photobook Magazine
Review by Brian Rose · During the 2020 pandemic, Bethany Jacobson escaped the confines of her apartment and took to the winding paths of Green-Wood Cemetery in Brooklyn. For those of us in New York, the whoops and wails of sirens seemed never to cease, a constant reminder of the presence of disease and death in... Continue Reading →
Review by Paul Anderson • Memories came flooding back to me as I paged through Todd Hido’s 2023 photobook The End Sends Advance Warning. When I was growing up in the upper Midwest, there were moments of a winter’s evening when the combination of cold, clouds, a blurry sun and the stillness of open spaces produced a... Continue Reading →
By Douglas Stockdale, portraits by Donna Cosentino • I just received notice of the recent passing of Wayne Swanson (1951 – 2024) on Wednesday, June 5th, 2024 after a protracted illness. Wayne was a very talented photobook reviewer, a friend and a Contributing Editor of PhotoBook Journal (2019 - 2024), whose legacy with us includes 70 succinct... Continue Reading →
Review by Melanie Chapman • As the old saying goes, “Home is where your heart is.” Epic poems and countless songs have been written on the topic; missing home, coming home, longing for home... “I’ll Be Home for Christmas”, “Home on the Range”, “There’s No Place like Home”... but what if you have no home? What if... Continue Reading →
Review by Lee Halvorsen • Lisa McCord’s “Rotan Switch” is a superb synthesis of content, design, and emotion…more than a story, more than photos, more than a book, it’s an experience. The design is unique and subtly compelling. At first look, the white space, the seemingly random text blocks, and the image arrangement didn’t click... Continue Reading →
Review by Debe Arlook • The Meaning of Gravity is the first endeavor by Luhz Press, an independent art book publisher based in Los Angeles. Helmed by Zoe Lemelson, it is also the first monograph of the late Ken Graves’ mixed-media collage. Graves (1942-2016) is a 2000 Guggenheim Fellow well known for his street photography and books from the 1960s -1970s.... Continue Reading →
Review by Paul Anderson • Two questions come to mind when looking through the 2022 photobook Machine Learning by Phillip Kalantzis-Cope. First, can ”machines” learn a specific task, and second, is this productive learning? The author, Kalantzis-Cope, presents us with ten examples of a specific kind of “machine learning.” In each example, he provides a single titled image (we... Continue Reading →
Review by Gerhard Clausing • This fascinating photobook combines images of two seemingly unrelated subjects, old cars and cattle. In recent travels across the United States, Ute Behrend was struck by the ubiquitous presence of these two elements throughout the landscape. As we involve ourselves in the contents and juxtapositions found in this project, we... Continue Reading →
Review by Douglas Stockdale • Katherine Longly and Cécile Hupin have created a conceptual photojournalistic project; a series of interviews, quotes, screen grabs and reuse of photographs, repurposed to create a narrative that asks the question: If money cannot buy happiness, what drives people to participate in a lottery? The book is design and sequenced in... Continue Reading →
Review by Lee Halvorsen • Before starting a photo book, I usually flip quickly through the pages from back to front to give me a feel for the book. I started to do the same with this small book but surprisingly found myself often pausing to absorb the abstract images more purposefully. The book is an... Continue Reading →
PhotoBook Journal 