Note: There is a soluble parable lurking in the back of my mind that I wish to tether to this review of Francesco Merlini’s photobook The Flood. I am not sure I believe in it myself. Parables are strange pronouncements offered by someone as if in authority, moral or other. Therefore, one cannot help […]
Cristóbal Hara is a name that I had not explored until late last year with the co-publication of his book España Color 1985-2020/Spain in Color 1985-2020. The Spanish and English versions were respectively handled by Editorial Rm and Matt Stuart‘s Plague Press. I had seen it advertised throughout the year, mostly from Matt’s Instagram page […]
The Minox pocket camera was developed in 1936 by Walter Zapp to provide the public with a small compact camera that was easily portable and that was economically feasible for a budding amateur class of photographers to purchase. Its innovative design, compact, small, and easily hidden were later co-opted as something of a novel […]
Luis Baylón or simply Baylón is a Madrid-based photographer who works on the streets of Spain’s capital, sculpting images from the thousands of possibilities in front of his lens on his daily walks through the city. The images, in their minimal and contrasty monochrome palette, feature a number of different possibilities from which […]
As per Donavan Smallwood’s admission in his new book Languor (Trespasser, 2021), I also wanted to be an archaeologist when I was a child. I spent at least a few summers basking in the glow of having seen the first two Indiana Jones films which had made an indelible impression upon my youthful, as […]
Images of intimacy, are often suggested, as a foregone conclusion, as images of love, closeness, and empathy. Intimacy is a term that is laced with positive and nurturing qualities and suggests a decoupling of the reality that forms its basis-namely the trials, as well as tribulations that are part of what makes a shared […]
I have been thinking about Jet Swan’s book Material for the past week. This is a fortunate sign. It marks it as one of those books that float across my desk that at first glance I feel some sympathy with, not total, but then it, or the images inside of it, burrow into my […]
I’m going to start this review in a slightly off way by suggesting that the subject matter, no matter how expertly handled in the beautifully produced self-published set of books proposed by Regina Anzenberger is not my cup of tea. This will be a failed review as I cannot find the words to speak […]
There isn’t much more that can be said regarding the importance of Friedlander’s work on the psyche of subsequent generations of photographic enthusiasts and artists alike. From his self-portraits to his Little Screens, Friedlander’s work is simultaneously charged with an inner and external pathos that presents both as a partial reflection of the artist’s psyche […]
I have just returned from Athens from our first Nearest Truth Workshop and have been considering at great length the duality of living and being in a city. Having lived a large portion of my life in a city, and have now removed myself and my family to the remoteness of the countryside, this trip, […]
It is perhaps unsurprising that humans cling to material relics that remind them, in their shallow wisdom, of former glories that they themselves may never have lived. Monuments, crumbling statues, cenotaphs, and national symbols are built in order to honor perceived historical moments that shutter the mind, present illusions of grandeur, and present failed […]
“It’s how I fill the time when nothing’s happening. Thinking too much, flirting with melancholy.” Tim Winton, Breath This land that surrounds us, this land that gives impregnable meaning to our terminal character and its capacity to acknowledge our decline never fails to remind us of our place on this spinning orb, […]