The Contemporary Photobook Magazine
Review by Olga Bubich · Addressing traumatic or otherwise challenging pasts and processing childhood trauma have long been among the most common subjects in photography, and photobooks are no exception. Every year, numerous projects are created, sharing with distant readers stories of close proximity: those of complicated – or non-existent – relationships with fathers, those... Continue Reading →
Review by Lee Halvorsen • This book is a masterful blend of history, urban transformation, and culture brought together in the context of a street known round the world: Manhattan’s Broadway. Throughout 1905, C.G. Hine a businessman and amateur photographer made images along Broadway, organized them geographically by city block, and then created hand-made books... Continue Reading →
Review by Lee Halvorsen • This delightful photographic journey through parts of Mexico is a fun, heartfelt connection to the culture and the car that brings them together. That car, an icon of their national identity, imagination, and energy, is the Volkswagen Bug, The Beetle, and, in Mexico Los Vochos! Villar moved to Mexico in 2016 with... Continue Reading →
Review by Rudy Vega · Sean Perry’s Fairgrounds is a modest book in scale but not in feeling. There are no crowds, no bright over the top color, and no appetite for nostalgia as popular entertainment. Instead, the book treats the fairground as a site of afterimage and projection: a place to re-enter through atmosphere.... Continue Reading →
Review by Gerhard Clausing • How do you show moods and emotions in your photographs? How are a photographer’s feelings transmitted? And what about the people being photographed, and what do places and environments signal to us? Furthermore, what is the nature of the relationship between the photographer and the model? Such are the issues... Continue Reading →
Review by Hans Hickerson · No wonder many photographers have given up using photography to hunt down and capture individual images of things seen in the world. Today with photobook publishing so accessible photographers have other possibilities. Exploring your past, for example. Or your family relationships. Or a particular historical time and place. Or, as... Continue Reading →
Review by Hans Hickerson · Is it just my impression or are there fewer photobooks today about observed, external, “objective” reality and more about the inner reality of relationships and personal situations? Photographers are using books to explore their lives and experiences – mothers and daughters, daughters and fathers, brothers, sisters, parents, families. Elizabeth Clark... Continue Reading →
Review by Hans Hickerson · Disarmingly direct and unassuming, Tom Lyon and Pauline Vanden Neste’s On est venus ici pour la vue presents people and places in the Aurore neighborhood of Brussels, Belgium. Built in the 1960s, the neighborhood comprises seven high-rise apartment blocks set among green spaces along a canal. Like other engineered housing... Continue Reading →
Review by Hans Hickerson · Qeshm Island in the strategic Persian Gulf has been in the news lately. It is a large island of about 600 square miles, just off the coast of Iran in the Straight of Hormuz. In 2018 in more peaceful times Kuwaiti photographer Huda Abdulmughni visited Qeshm. She stayed in a... Continue Reading →
Review by Lee Halvorsen • This stunning book—a joy to hold and behold—captured and held my attention for hours. Carefully designed to reflect the art of bookmaking itself, this custom volume employs traditional presswork on the cover, bespoke papers throughout, stunning images, and thoughtfully chosen typography, all curated to honor the historical and visual essence... Continue Reading →
PhotoBook Journal 