Change is not always a fast process. Stating what is an obvious observation, ruminating over the nature of change or our perception of change in local geography is pertinent. I think we like to denote the object status of “change” as being implicit, noticeable, and understood as event-driven, clear, and not necessarily attached to […]
A and not THE. Let’s be clear from the get-go that what we are talking about is A, or one, interpretive history of London’s East End through the prism of photography and, arguably, property and labor by esteemed archivist/documentarian Chris Dorley Brown, whose recent book A History of the East End, published by Nouveau Palais […]
The story a nation tells itself is crucially important to its people’s sense of national identity. It serves also as a way of establishing and maintaining a shared set of values. Primordialism is the dogmatic belief that one’s national origins are defined by skin colour, blood and a spiritual belonging, but if you don’t subscribe […]
I am sure many of these people are dead. That is not what distinguishes the book or what makes it great. Instead, what is challenging is being alive during that part of history when the faces and bodies inhabiting the frames are familiar, enhanced by the glow from a window. Some of their bodies […]
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. […]
It would be hard to hand this photobook to someone in a decontextualized state and expect them to understand the modalities of ecstasy and horror that permeate the frames. In the first seventy or eighty percent of the book, figures cavort and twist and are undetermined by a common goal. They are bodies of a […]
Recovery – Muriel Verbist by Sofie Crabbé A woman is looking at us. She stares at us. We stare back. An act we can carry out rather casually, given that we’re observing photographic portraits. The format is reminiscent of identity card photos. We see a face, shoulders, and part of an upper body. A […]
Bharat Sikka has been on a substantial creative streak, publishing photobooks often and with high integrity and significance. I had a conversation with him about his last FW: Books titled The Sapper, a tome that explored his relationship with his father, a retired military man. One can see it as a type of collaboration, and […]
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 […]
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 […]
How does one begin to excavate memories that lie in the distressed trough of the murder of a loved one? When he was seven years old, Jean-Michel André was staying at a hotel with his father and his father’s new girlfriend in Avignon, France, when a robbery turned into a homicide with both his father […]
Nikita Teryoshin returns with another great book in 2024. The German artist continues his typological studies following his award-winning long-term project Nothing Personal (GOST) on private arms dealing fairs. Nikita is the master of working on short—and long-term projects that keep him moving. This strategy is excellent because it allows short-term ideas to become books, filling […]