The Contemporary Photobook Magazine
Review by Melanie Chapman • Though we may wish that it were not so, now is not the age of poetry. We live in bombastic times. Giant waves crash, rivers flood, forests burn, plagues descend. We reach for metaphor and instead are inundated with product placement versions of morality; superheroes peddle mega merch. Collagen lips... Continue Reading →
Review by Gerhard Clausing • Puberty and coming of age—a time to look inward as one reaches out to the world. We are not all the same, and in accepting and welcoming various different orientations, we may reach some levels of discomfort as we reexamine old stereotypes and preconceived categories into which we previously may... Continue Reading →
Review by Gerhard Clausing • Raising kids is hard even without additional challenges, such as multiple food allergies and some learning difficulties. When these are added to a mother’s slate, the task can seem more than overwhelming, much worse than endless piles of dishes and pots and pans in the kitchen. Yet Sandra Bacchi not... Continue Reading →
Review by Gerhard Clausing • What moment can be more appropriate than a major holiday to write about a book of 50+ years of photographs documenting the happenings at an iconic American mecca for folks living out their holiday fantasies? The beach and entertainment areas known as Coney Island are located at the southwestern tip of... Continue Reading →
Review by Gerhard Clausing • “What do we yearn for? What exactly have we lost?” There is something very refreshing about Juan Barte’s new photobook. It is based on his observation that our freedom has been severely curtailed in recent times, both by ever-present technology and by the pandemic. Both of these hold us captive... Continue Reading →
Review by Steve Harp • Where to begin with Jason Francisco’s Alive and Destroyed? Where does one begin considering, weighing, wrestling with a volume as unsettling and provocative as Francisco’s images of “small and forgotten” sites of the Holocaust across Eastern Europe, made between 2010 – 2019? One place to begin might be with the... Continue Reading →
Review by Gerhard Clausing • The categories of genders and gender-related behaviors and preferences are not as binary as some would have us believe. According to Western psychology, we all have both male and female sides; either side can predominate or be more pronounced at times in individuals. The same is true of a variety... 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 Kristin Dittrich • While visiting the first “Photobook Fest“ on May 22, 2022, a new art fair at ICP New York dedicated to the contemporary photobook, I discovered this wonderful small photobook, like a zine, with the title Fragments. This project tells a strong and visually beautiful story about the immigration of a woman... Continue Reading →
Review by Gerhard Clausing • When Scot Sothern was a young man, he became, by his own description, an ‘itinerant photographer’ who, having escaped from the formal studio work edicts of his father’s practice, decided to mix with and get to know the folks on the street in the 1970s, especially since at that time... Continue Reading →
PhotoBook Journal 