The Contemporary Photobook Magazine
Review by Melanie Chapman • Though we may wish that it were not so, now is not the age of poetry. We live in bombastic times. Giant waves crash, rivers flood, forests burn, plagues descend. We reach for metaphor and instead are inundated with product placement versions of morality; superheroes peddle mega merch. Collagen lips... Continue Reading →
Review by Douglas Stockdale • This is another retrospective monograph of the late Henri Cartier-Bresson, frequently known as HC-B, focusing on his photographic oeuvre based on his time in Paris, a place that was his home base as well as a touch-point for the duration of his photographic career. I will admit that Cartier-Bresson’s photojournalist photobooks... Continue Reading →
Review by Gerhard Clausing • Thana Faroq is not only a successful exiled woman from Yemen who found a new home in the Netherlands, she is also an excellent storyteller who uses her considerable photojournalistic talents to present us with a captivating account of the travails of age-old sojourns, once again taking place in our... Continue Reading →
Review by Gerhard Clausing • Why do some still consider war a useful method of dealing with conflicts? Armed encounters between groups of people, whether within a country or between countries, do not seem like a very sophisticated way of solving problems, or of improving the human condition. Where are the boundaries between “necessities” and... Continue Reading →
Review by Gerhard Clausing • In this photobook the documentary photographer Tomas Wüthrich provides us with a visual glimpse into our own past, into a world without supermarkets that supply us with our meat, fruits, and vegetables. It is a fascinating journey into the disappearing world of the Penan people of Borneo, who were discovered... Continue Reading →
Review by Gerhard Clausing • Charlie Koolhaas likes to see the world and share her observations in photographs and in writing. She was born in London, is of Dutch origin, has also been educated in the United States, and has lived in a number of countries for extended periods of time. Thus she is truly... Continue Reading →
Review by Gerhard Clausing • We are not all the same, and it would be naïve to expect others to be or to become exactly like ourselves and to share identical visions. So the notion of what is represented by the concept “masculinity” also requires many diverse responses; hence the title of this retrospective of... Continue Reading →
Review by Paul Anderson • Images in Transition, Wirephotos 1938 - 1945 presents artistic interpretations of wartime wirephotos from the second world war. Wirephoto technology was used to transmit black and white photographs from the war-front back to media centers, in this case located in the United States. Stephen Wirtz collected these wirephotos, and at the... Continue Reading →
Review by Gerhard Clausing • We can judge the heart of a man by his treatment of animals. – Immanuel Kant • Everyone photographs animals, but very few do it well. While we can capture cute expressions of our pets, to understand and depict our fellow creatures from a more comprehensive perspective and with all... Continue Reading →
Review by Gerhard Clausing • China, the country that mass-produces for the rest of the world, has also undergone many internal changes in the 21st century, and this project illuminates one such aspect: the upscale desires of China’s rising middle class. For several years Joyce Rohrmoser was hired as a foreign ‘presence’ for the marketing... Continue Reading →
PhotoBook Journal 