The Contemporary Photobook Magazine
Review by Wayne Swanson • The renowned photographic artist Keith Carter has been called a “poet of the ordinary,” and this sumptuous new retrospective is truly an epic poem, lyrical yet down to earth. Fifty Years is epic in size and scale. The 320 unnumbered pages include 267 images from his half-century (so far) career. They... Continue Reading →
Review by Douglas Stockdale • I Don't Explain. Urban street art, graffiti and variations of guerrilla art make for a tantalizing photographic subject; intensively colorful, graphic, layered, complex, playful and temporal. Investigating urban site art has a tradition that can be traced back the Abstract Expressionistic photographic work of Aaron Siskind. In the reading of... Continue Reading →
Review by Douglas Stockdale • TJ Norris has recently released his first monograph, Shooting Blanks, that investigates the potential abstract and graphic patterns created by commercial signage that is in a state of disuse or disrepair, aspects of the modern urban landscape. That these signs are now “blank” is a small aspect of this body... Continue Reading →
Review by Melanie Chapman • One of the many pleasures of photo-books is the sense that they wait for you. In a pile or on a shelf, we see the title on the binding and it calmly states “When you are ready, open me and enter in.” In the case of renowned Magnum photographer Harry... Continue Reading →
Review by Gerhard Clausing • Callous attitudes toward our natural environment and a non-scientific ignorance regarding current and impending climate calamities are prevalent these days. Economic and population pressures and interests in short-term economic gain also abound. These are recognized as contributing to the demise of humans and other creatures. Encroachment on habitats, competition for... Continue Reading →
Review by Douglas Stockdale • This photographic book is the second of his three-part series, the first being Farmed, published by Dewi Lewis Publishing, 2016. Paul Hart investigates the English Fens, a region of reclaimed marshland in Eastern England. It is a very flat lowlands that appears strikingly similar to the lowlands of The Netherlands,... Continue Reading →
Review by Kristin Dittrich • "The places where life works – that is not where we photographed," comments Ute and Werner Mahler, one of the most famous living artist photographer couple in Germany. Over a period of three years, they travelled to more than 100 small towns to take portraits of young people, architecture, and... Continue Reading →
Review by Melanie Chapman • For anyone who has ever visited Venice Beach in Southern California, comparisons to New York City’s Coney Island might not seem much of a conceptual stretch. Both are famous urban beachscapes that have been luring tourists from around the world for decades, both are celebrated more for the colorful locals... Continue Reading →
Review by Kristin Dittrich • The Japanese photographer Seiichi Furuya arrived in Dresden in 1984 with his wife and then three-year-old son. Today Furuya could be considered as one of the rare authors bringing up a coherent photographical work about the life during the 1980’s in the former German Democratic Republic (GDR). At the end of... Continue Reading →
Review by Melanie Chapman • Upon opening UPSTATE for the first time, this reviewer was immediately taken back to her own years spent living in the Hudson Valley while attending Bard College. Not only because the subject of Tema Stauffer’s new work is the nearby city of Hudson and the surrounding landscape, but because Stauffer’s... Continue Reading →
PhotoBook Journal 