The Contemporary Photobook Magazine
Review by Hans Hickerson · Photobooks today explore themes that photographers of previous generations never would have imagined. You name it, and some intrepid photographer is turning it into a photobook. There are books, for example, that deal with family relationships, memories of past times, emotional landscapes, and problematic real-life situations. Sunniva Hestenes’ A Tear... Continue Reading →
Review by Hans Hickerson · There are many ways to make a photobook. One is to use photographs to construct meaning through carefully curated repetition and association. You introduce photographs to establish a theme or mood, you develop, and you introduce other themes and variations and build a narrative or story. Photographer Elise Corten’s Warmer... Continue Reading →
Review by Hans Hickerson · Photobooks are a great medium for telling stories, but also for re-creating emotional landscapes. Alex Blanco’s Meat, Fish, and Aubergine Caviar does both and also mixes in memories, cookbook recipes, and idealized fantasy. If this sounds like a lot it is because the book operates simultaneously on several levels, like... Continue Reading →
Review by Brian Arnold · Imagine, if you will, a couple stripped down to their underwear, together leaning against a tree along a lakeside beach in Cheryomushki, Siberia. It’s hard to determine the variety of tree but it bends like it was designed to cradle the woman. The couple looks a little intoxicated, giving the... Continue Reading →
Review by Hans Hickerson · You can’t thumb through some photobooks. You have to look at them front to back and read the texts, otherwise they don’t work. Jordan Baumgarten’s Family Tree Removal is like that. If you don’t read the text, you don’t understand what the pictures and the book are really doing. I... Continue Reading →
Review by Hans Hickerson · Wow. There is a lot to like about Kevin Cooley’s The Wizard of Awe. A happy marriage of book design, storytelling, and photography, it elevates the photobook conversation to a level higher than anything I have seen in a long time. For starters the cover is spectacular. It shows falling... Continue Reading →
Review by Gerhard Clausing • The press release for this photobook states, “Vanishing is an unforgettable depiction of how beauty and brutality coexist in the hearts of men and beasts.” I would go even further: Vanishing is the definitive depiction of the range from every imaginable positive daydream through the weightiest nightmares possible, from the... Continue Reading →
Review by Hans Hickerson · Looking at Zach Callahan’s photobook Exhaust, the three words that occurred to me were simple, focused, and convincing. Let me explain the simple part first. There are 36 color photographs, one to a page spread. Ten or so are portraits where the subject is engaging the photographer directly, and in... Continue Reading →
Review by Gerhard Clausing • This artistic photobook gives you the impression of looking through a universal family album that encompasses more than your immediate surroundings. It gives you a look into the past that seems like an ambiguous societal cross section, a composite view with many personal nuances. Not only that, but photographs printed... Continue Reading →
Review by Gerhard Clausing • All you have to do is watch “Gorilla Videos” on Facebook to recognize that some animals are very similar to us. And that is not really a case of anthropomorphism, which can be defined as attributing human characteristics to other creatures. But assigning animals to a lower class and denying... Continue Reading →
PhotoBook Journal 