I get a rapturous effect when I search through early twentieth-century illustrated books on archaeology. I know that it is a relatively niche endeavor, but there is something otherworldly about the effort that allows my imagination to stir in ways that are not easy to equate. Some of this is because the images are fantastical. […]
I recently picked up a copy of Vince Aletti’s The Drawer from Self Publish Be Happy/MACK, a title released last year that won the 2023 Aperture Photobook award. At the time, I knew about the book. Still, I had not picked it up as I was unsure of what I could add to it, being […]
The Sight of It, Translated as Home Maša Seničić I wished to begin with, “when I saw it for the first time,” but I don’t know if I even have a recollection of looking at the building with intent before, if I had ever paid particular attention to its monumental nature, to its allure, or its […]
I know very little about architecture. I am aware of certain Starchitects, of which Mexican architect Luis Barragán could be considered part of the milieu. A starchitect is one of the high-profile architects who became a household name. A list of starchitects could include, but is not limited to, Zaha Hadid, Tadao Ando, Frank […]
With the recent emphasis on street photography found in volumes such as Matt Stuart’s Think Like a Street Photographer (Laurence King Publishing, 2021) and Reclaim the Street: Street Photography’s Moment, Matt Stuart with Stephen McLaren (Thames & Hudson, 2023), there seems to be a renewed awakening to the genre. If the countless YouTube videos about […]
Some photobooks are detailed by their direct exercises in story building. In contrast, others ask that the viewer read them holistically as an environment, a stage in which ideas are distributed, but with fewer absolutes regarding their nature. Hints are dropped, and some images carry the conceptual load of what the press release suggests as […]
Paul Graham’s new books Ambergris/Verdigris, published this year by MACK, have several parallels worth exploring. First and foremost, it should be said that these titles feel like a return to form. While I am a fan of most of Graham’s bodies of works, the last books have been very inward and family-oriented. There is […]
It is challenging not to mention Martin Scorsese’s 1976 film Taxi Driver, concerning Bill Henson’s recent book Liquid Night, published by Stanley/Barker. I am unsure why some writers have avoided it, but here we are. Liquid Night is a sumptuous and gem-like nighttime foray into Times Square (1989) and the adjacent cinema district, beginning at […]
Ruptures and Raptures It is hard to know where to start writing about a book with such ominous tendencies at its heart. Monuments by Trent Parke, published by Stanley/Barker in 2023 and its third printing in spring 2024, has a doomsday proximity to it. It is hard to explain why I feel this […]
An image I find myself returning to over and over again is a photograph by RaMell Ross titled Dream Catcher (2014). The photograph pictures a young boy lying down on a chain-link fence, staring up at the sky as if enchanted and transfixed by a spell. The photograph was shot at midday in Hale County, […]
Full Article and Full Sequence of Book on Patreon The desire found in that book functions incredibly obliquely. Images of women do not, even when on a bed and nude, represent sex or an objectifying element; they are reduced to the same void as everything else and feel like a piece of the vortex. […]
In reading Darius Khondji’s interview with American Cinematographer Magazine from November 5th, 2018 regarding his cinematography work on various films, including David Fincher’s epic noir Se7en (1995), I am reminded of the significance that color balance plays when sculpting atmosphere in a film and also in a photographic body of work. In regarding […]