The Contemporary Photobook Magazine
Review by Douglas Stockdale • Lady Clementina Hawarden (1822 – 1865) was a 19th century British photographer who photographed her adolescent daughters, frequently incorporating the use of mirrors and other reflecting surfaces creating multi-faceted portraits and visual narratives exploring self-reflection and introspection. Interestingly little is known of her life, who remains a mystery and what is suspected... Continue Reading →
Review by Brian O’Neill • The Devil’s Pool is a roughly 15-foot-deep by 25-foot-wide basin of water tucked within Wissahickon Valley Park located in Northwest Philadelphia, USA. But, if you Google “Devil’s Pool,” the aforementioned pool does not appear. Instead, you will find “Devil’s Pool, Victoria Falls.” You will read that it is “a tourist attraction in... Continue Reading →
Review by Melanie Chapman • Now that new COVID infection rates are decreasing, “the world” seems eager to open up again after more than 700 days of lock down and rationing basic necessities such as food, medicine and even toilet paper. Millions of people have seen restrictions relaxed and have begun traveling again, for business and... Continue Reading →
Review by Wayne Swanson • Toshio Shibata likes to blur boundaries. Between the natural and the human-made. Between the representational and the abstract. Between photography and drawing. Shibata, one of Japan's preeminent landscape photographers, has focused his attention since the early 1980s on the intersection of nature and infrastructure, finding art in scenes of bridges, dams,... Continue Reading →
Review by Gerhard Clausing • Connecting with the past is a challenge, particularly when the present is such a mess – viruses, warfare, economic worries, etc., etc. As I am writing this, a major new assault on yet another group of people is in progress: this time the victims are the Ukrainians. How many more... Continue Reading →
Review by Douglas Stockdale • I may not be a relationship expert, but I highly suspect that stating the reason for another person to stay in a relationship is that otherwise if they left all of the plants would die may not be the most enticing of rationales. The book’s title appears to be a retrospective... Continue Reading →
Review by Wayne Swanson • Many people see melancholy in the dying of the light, but French photographer Philippe Ciaparra sees utopia. At twilight he finds himself “in a chiaroscuro theater, immersed in the daydreams of my inner journey.” Ciaparra is a Paris-based fashion and portrait photographer, but in his personal work he focuses on long-exposure... Continue Reading →
Review by Douglas Stockdale • Living in Southern California, I have a familiarity with border walls, specifically the American-Mexican wall that lies less than 100 miles south of my home. After relocating to California, a trip to the Tijuana tourist shops in near-by Mexico was usually on the list of go-to places for visiting relatives, parking... Continue Reading →
Review by Wayne Swanson • The everyday landscape is filled with the banal, the kitschy, and the mundane. But that doesn’t mean it can’t be artful and engaging. Philadelphia-based photographer Martin Buday spent two decades traveling around the United States, collecting images that capture the wonder in the ordinary. The result is Prophetic Kingdom, which shows that... Continue Reading →
Review by Melanie Chapman • Perhaps the greatest compliment one can pay a photographer is to be so inspired by their work that you go out into the world and attempt to make pictures in the same vein. Thus, on Christmas Day, Ken Light’s new photobook Course of the Empire compelled this reviewer to drive downtown, seeking images... Continue Reading →
PhotoBook Journal 