The Contemporary Photobook Magazine
Review by Melanie Chapman • Crumple the Dress, Handle Tenderly the Lens Arresting Beauty, the new Thames and Hudson publication of photographs by Julia Margaret Cameron (1815-1879) is truly a thing of beauty to behold and be held. Drawing from the archives of the Victoria and Albert Museum (home to the world’s largest collection of Cameron’s... Continue Reading →
Review by Gerhard Clausing • When we are trying to visualize ancient times or the future, we do not have access to pictures taken with cameras. At best, we have a few sculptures, drawings, and paintings dealing with the past, and nothing at all when it comes to showing us what we imagine might come... Continue Reading →
Review by Douglas Stockdale · Just like with marriage, our kids do not arrive with user’s manual. It also seems, from my own experience, that the older our children become, the more out of (our) control that they seem to evolve. Which in turn, can be crazy making for both the parents as well as the... Continue Reading →
Review by Wayne Swanson • In the spring of 1975, a budding photographer from Cheyenne, Wyoming, just 21 years old, checked in to a single-room occupancy hotel in Hollywood. During her three-month stay there she created portraits of her fellow residents that launched what would be a long and successful career. “All I had to do was... Continue Reading →
Review by Melanie Chapman • Why would someone carry a 258-page hardcover photobook with them across an ocean and throughout four countries when much of the photographer’s work is accessible on-line? When the book is the new retrospective Vivian Maier published by Thames and Hudson, the only appropriate response is “Why Not?!” - As the “someone” who... Continue Reading →
Book review by Rudy Vega • As art mediums go, photography situates itself nicely as a means to aid in recollecting. Photography assists one in filling gaps left by the leaky apparatus known as our memories. Photographic images are still open to interpretation, but placed within the appropriate context can be powerful triggers, enabling one to... Continue Reading →
Review by Gerhard Clausing • This impressive photobook starts with the well-known quote by George Santayana: “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” And sure enough, the publication of this book is very timely, since we again find ourselves experiencing various similar expansive acts of aggression and a variety of autocratic... Continue Reading →
Review by Wayne Swanson • The hills and hollers along the Appalachian Mountains running down the eastern United States are steeped in folklore and folkways. In From Yonder Wooded Hill, photographer Riley Goodman spins a narrative tale from his experiences there and the stories he heard growing. Drawing from his own photos, archival images, short passages of text and poetry,... Continue Reading →
Review by Gerhard Clausing • Summer … sunshine … the beach … nuances of reddish hair and warm skin colors: the perfect combination for a carefree holiday feeling – moments of relief from the tedium of everyday stress. These are the perfect ingredients for this project by Joel Meyerowitz; these features captured his attention for... Continue Reading →
Review by Gerhard Clausing • The process of depicting simulated people in fake ‘portraits’ has reached new levels of perfection. The software programming known as GAN (Generative Adversarial Network) combines features from known human portraits to create endless new simulated ‘portraits’ depicting nonexisting pseudo-people, looking quite real. When I first came across this process in... Continue Reading →
PhotoBook Journal 