The Contemporary Photobook Magazine
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 →
Book review by Rudy Vega • The recent publication, Time Traveler by Gianluca Galtrucco is a love letter to the daydreamer in all of us. Making clever use of props, settings, archival footage and captions–Galtrucco has produced a book that guides us back to engage in youthful wonderment. Gazing up to the night skies, who has not pondered... 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 Steve Harp • As I looked through Ara Oshagan’s 2021 monograph displaced, for some odd reason I was reminded of James Agee’s 1941 study of tenant farming in the American south, Let Us Now Praise Famous Men. There is a surface level of similarity in that both books are, in a sense “documentary” - considerations of the lives of... Continue Reading →
Review by Wayne Swanson • The hills and hollers along the Appalachian Mountains running down the eastern United States are steeped in folklore and folkways. In From Yonder Wooded Hill, photographer Riley Goodman spins a narrative tale from his experiences there and the stories he heard growing. Drawing from his own photos, archival images, short passages of text and poetry,... Continue Reading →
Review by Rudy Vega • Photobooks come in all different shapes and sizes. Generally speaking, they adhere to more or less standard configurations. A foreword and an introduction, followed by photographs in support of a concept. A typical photobook might be organized around a central theme or it may consist of series of images investigating typologies... Continue Reading →
Review by Douglas Stockdale • While on a holiday it can be entertaining to purchase and send postcards depicting the local points of interest. To jot down a quick personal observation that can help the person receiving it to know a little about your experience. While working in Europe this is a way I tried to... 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 →
Review by Gerhard Clausing • When a photographer’s viewpoint and methodology are totally in tune with the subject matter and with the tenor of the times, we have a degree of synchronicity that makes the viewer’s experience unforgettable. Such is the case with Simon Vansteenwinckel’s Wuhan Radiography. The first thing we notice when we receive... Continue Reading →
PhotoBook Journal 