The Contemporary Photobook Magazine
Review by Wayne Swanson • “Let’s go for a walk.” That might sound like a pleasant invitation, but in the Spain of dictator Francisco Franco, it was often a chilling euphemism for a death sentence. During the Spanish Civil War (1936–39) and its aftermath, armed bands would round up people, take them to a remote... Continue Reading →
Review by Douglas Stockdale • What is a museum? One brief definition is offered by Wikipedia; an institution that cares for a collection of artifacts and other objects of artistic, cultural, historical, or scientific importance. Then what is an imaginary museum? This is the subject of Julia Borissova’s recent photobook Nautilus. Borissova’s urban setting for... Continue Reading →
Review by Melanie Chapman • As a college student in the early 1980s, I had my first opportunity to visit the beachfront area of Atlantic City, the coastal town in New Jersey that inspired the board game MONOPOLY. Being from California, I was familiar with West Coast beach scenes that included palm trees and attractive... Continue Reading →
Review by Douglas Stockdale • The foil embossed book cover with undulating lines of the type font appears as though it is shimmering in the humid heat provides a hint as to what lies within. The third image in Arturo Soto’s photobook, In the Heat, is a wonderful sublime urban landscape photograph of Panama that... Continue Reading →
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 →
PhotoBook Journal 