Kentaro Kumon – Smoke and Steam

  With Japanese photography, I have had to change how I look at it from the surface level toward something much more intricate in my understanding of how Japanese artists approach the camera. When I first started looking into the national camera of Japan, the obvious references were already a known quantity to me. Classic […]

Sage Sohier Americans Seen

I had not held a copy of Americans Seen until this new remastered edition, published by Nazraeli Press, landed on my doorstep a few weeks ago. I had previously come to Sage’s work through her book Animals, published in 2019 by British publishers Stanley/Barker. It was at that point that I became aware of Americans […]

Fumitsugu Takedo – Ambience Decay

  I feel slightly guilty posting this as I know by the time you read it, that it will be improbable you will find a copy as there are only 50 copies in the edition. Hopefully, it will inspire the publisher Photobook Daydream Editions to consider publishing more, as Fumitsugu Takedo’s Ambience Decay is one […]

Larry Clark – Return

This is a fascinating and unexpected title. I suspect that some people might consider it a repeat of images that circulate through Larry Clark’s opus Tulsa, and that is not a wrong way to feel about it, but what is important is how we see the periphery of images from that incredible body of work […]

Sergio Purtell – Moral Minority

With the publication of Sergio Purtell’s first book, Love’s Labor (Stanley/Barker, 2020), I found myself thinking that portraiture has a very uncanny way of reaching people to tap into their emotions and nerves, and all of this is done without knowing the person in the photograph. I have spent much of my mid-years avoiding portraiture […]

Martin Essl – Le Bateau Ivre

  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 […]

Akihiko Okamura – The Memories of Others

  As I found with Whatever You Say, Say Nothing by Gilles Peress (Steidl), The Troubles and their representation are incredibly difficult to write about from the point of view of an outsider. It is a very touchy subject. Even posting about it on social media platforms (as I also found out) will have opposing […]

Smoke – Umihara Chikara

  I am confident that most of us are stringing life together one moment at a time without a significant game plan or goal to outline our actions’ progression. Nothing is holding the seams of it all together, and for that, I am partially thankful and partially disappointed. Life is a never-ending chain of circumstances […]

Joel Pulliam on Ikko Narahara

Ikko Narahara – Where Time has Vanished by Joel Pulliam It has been on my mind for a while to write about something that I am provisionally calling “New Orientalism.” It is the phenomenon of highly regarded photographers dropping into Tokyo for a few weeks or months, taking pictures, and then publishing a book. I […]

Trent Parke – Monument

  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 […]

Yoshi Yubai – Asakusa

I recently came across Yoshi Yubai’s work. I was fortunate enough to nab a copy of his last book, Radiation Inspiration (2023), published by La Generale Minerale (screenprinted by Ben Sanair), which I purchased through Le Plac’Art Photo in Paris. The screen printing by Sanair in that book is phenomenal. The book has an introduction […]

Tommaso Protti – Terra Vermelha

    I had to take a bit of time to digest this book. I remember receiving it before the end of the year and being genuinely overwhelmed with it for a few different reasons that I will outline here. I think the feeling of being overwhelmed first stemmed from the photographs being of an […]