Charles Johnstone The Court At High Elms

  Sometimes, all it takes is a corner and a series of evaporating shadows to serve as a conduit to greater understanding of the built environment and all the human activity that has transpired within it. In studying Charles Johnstone’s court photography, what is exceptionally evident is the simplicity with which the rendering of space […]

David Armstrong Contacts

Contact sheets offer an incredible look at the back end of a photographer’s process. Often hidden, they also present a slight enigma in that they also show all manner of warts. Every photographer is aware of the personal nature of contact sheets, which are used as a work tool to decide which images may eventually […]

John Lehr The Last Things

This is certainly one of the most misleading photobooks that I have seen in some time, despite being a fan of the artist’s previous book. What appears on the outside as a simple reading of America’s vernacular signage is, in fact, a kind of premonition, or perhaps an acknowledgement of where things stand along the […]

Lucile Boiron Bouche

I first encountered the visceral photographs of Lucile Boiron a few years ago when I bought a copy of her book Mise en Pièces, also published by Belgian publisher Art Paper Editions (APE), like her new book Bouche. I remember being very excited about the book, as it reminded me of the visceral tendencies in […]

Bharat Sikka Ripples in the Pond

You have to admire the rise of Bharat Sikka’s career over the last decade. I have had the opportunity to speak with him several times, both about his practice and his interest in book-making. One of the exciting things about Bharat is that he has been working for a long time, but it wasn’t until […]

Ruth Lauer Manenti 4 Sides of the Table

It is hard to deny the strange feeling of sharing a room with one of your loved ones who has passed on. The implicit silence is an acknowledgement of toil’s end, though at the time, the personal trauma overtakes this thought in the mind of the living. It casts small echoes. Of course, there is […]

Sam Hutchinson Charred Cell

From the publisher or author or both Charred Cell is formed from a period of visual research into the clinical estrangement of domestic environments- the work eludes to a cynicism that coexists alongside enlightenment, stuck between an escapist alternative of the present, and the tension that fluctuates between trauma and awakening. Suggestions of manipulation, both physical and emotional, arise […]

The Blueprints of Robert Rauschenberg & Susan Weil

The cyanotype is a very flexible process developed from water. One paints or layers ferric ammonium oxalate and potassium ferricyanide on a substrate, usually paper, but also fabric. One then exposes a negative or an object to direct sunlight. After a test has been made, the print is washed in water, revealing a beautiful Prussian […]

Daphne Kotsiani These Earthly Shores

There is a penchant, over the past ten to fifteen years or so, for photographic image-making to re-examine landscapes as scratchy abstractions, almost imperceptibly detailed beyond the reach of their granular vistas. This is most evident in the work of Korean/American artist Jungjin Lee, whose series of books and bodies of work detail the shift […]

Florian Merdes Steamcracker

  What strikes me as an interesting premise in Florian Merdes’s book Steamcracker is the enforced myopic rendering of details and patterns, which turns the book and its intense sequences into something minutely chaotic. There is a world underneath the surface of things, a rhythm and a dedication to line that emanates in Florian’s book. […]