The Contemporary Photobook Magazine
Review by Steve Harp · Oyvind Hjelmen’s 2024 monograph Being Here begins with a poem by the Norwegian Nobel laureate Jon Fosse. The poem, A Human Being is Here, begins: A human being is hereand then disappearsin a windthat vanishesinward There is a sense of disappearing, of vanishing also in Hjelman’s elegant photographs contained within... Continue Reading →
Review by Hans Hickerson · Photobooks are a great medium for telling stories, but also for re-creating emotional landscapes. Alex Blanco’s Meat, Fish, and Aubergine Caviar does both and also mixes in memories, cookbook recipes, and idealized fantasy. If this sounds like a lot it is because the book operates simultaneously on several levels, like... Continue Reading →
Text and photos by Hans Hickerson · Photobooks were visible everywhere this year in Arles at the 2025 photo festival. The official program included a book market as well as prizes for photobooks in several categories. The book market took place in two separate venues, but there were also a number of unofficial events, including... Continue Reading →
Review by Hans Hickerson · If you haven’t visited Fairfield, Illinois, you might be excused for thinking it looks like Nathan Pearce’s photographs. I hadn’t, so I googled Fairfield and traveled down Main Street via Street View. I did not spot any vegan restaurants, food carts, indie record stores, e-bike shops, or comedy clubs. But... Continue Reading →
Review by Lee Halvorsen • You’re in the eye of the storm…you’ve seen the chaos and change that just occurred and in the not-too-far distance, you see more coming. Through Gray’s images, this is the storm’s eye view of mankind’s interaction with the planet and the mostly uncertain nature of that contact. You're standing on the... Continue Reading →
Review by Hans Hickerson · Context is everything, and without it you are lost. If you look at the 48 photographs in John Volynchook’s Faultlines by themselves, you would not know what country you were in, or even what century. They depict timeless views of nature, all except two photographs where you see tractor tire... Continue Reading →
Review by Hans Hickerson · Woven into the pages of Allison Grant’s almost family album Within the Bittersweet are questions that pack a punch. What future are we giving our children? What will the land that they inherit look like? Will they grow up physically scarred by the way we have treated our environment? How... Continue Reading →
Review by Lee Halvorsen • This book is more experience than observation, more emotion than entertainment, more subtle and captivating than literal and descriptive. The volume is finely made, medium weight…two hundred twenty-seven fascinating pages filled with meditative styled images not typically brought together in such an immersive volume. And, immersive it is…slowly wrapping itself around... Continue Reading →
Review by Hans Hickerson · The Future Without You is a great example of the reality of today’s interconnected world: transparencies of stock photos made in the US in the 1990s, rescued decades later from a recycling center in China by French collector and editor Thomas Sauvin, printed as a book in Belgium in 2023... Continue Reading →
Review by Hans Hickerson · Moemoeā is not really a book, it is an event. It is a party, a celebration of storytelling, design, illustration, photography, and a cultural reawakening. In fact, Moemoeā is two books that fit together hand in glove. One is a hardback spiral bound fictional story of some ninety pages, The... Continue Reading →
PhotoBook Journal 