Carla Williams – Tender
Carla Williams can make the world beyond us seem a simple place. Looking at the self-portraits she made over a fifteen year period, from 1984-1999, may briefly lull us into a false apprehension of the world as containing little interest of its own. Such is the poetic depth of these pictures, which, when edited and […]
Lee Friedlander Fundación MAPFRE
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 […]
John Divola: Time, Vandalism and the Engineering of Crypto-Architecture
“Vandalism” is a way in which to authorize or sign off on a negation of agreement of form and intent. It is to suggest that at its heart, what vandalism does is to distort the fabric of time in appearance governed by the individual” Crypto-architecture is not purposeful on the plane of first person experience. […]
Ivars Gravlejs: Necessary Book of Wrongs
“The savior of technological disgrace is error and possibly humor.”
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 […]
Margot Jourquin – Transi
Within the context of death, I have spoken about, and I am sure that I am not alone in this, the strange feeling when a person, persona, and life slip from the realm of the personable to the world of an object, a thing, a husk, though still loved, ultimately lacking the anima necessary to […]
Gregory Halpern: “ZZYZX” This Town Could Be Anywhere
“The bucolic west is no longer a benign horizon in which to measure the imagination and fantasy of pioneer aspirations”
Trophy Camera: A New Fear of Organizing Principals
“The AI eventually begins making decisions based on the data analyzed and begins to wade through the torrent of images available in its repository selecting successful images for a hierarchy or production and re-distribution of usefulness within the sets of codes previously implied”
Chris Killip: The Station and a Note of Gratitude
“Killip was a human first and an observer or lucid chronicler second” Chris Killip is known for his immeasurable and singular vision of Britain during the 70’s 80’s and 90’s. To place emphasis on his work in a genre-fied manner would belittle his and its true humanity and potential. Killip was a human […]
Justin Kimball: A Country Opening Soon, Indefinitely Closed for Renovations
“FREE HUGS from the opioid den”
Anne Immelé Oublie Oublie
Anne Immelé’s Oublie Oublie is a book about a transitional time and place. Between 2019 and early 2020, the French artist surveyed municipal works and changes in the neighborhood of Le Nouveau Drouot in Mulhouse, France where she lives and teaches photography. The urban environment of her images suggests the 1950s’ and 60’s city planning […]
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 […]
Matthew Connors: Cairo’s Crow Black Eye
At its surface, the need to stand, to rise, and to disembowel the state looks permeable
Avo Tavitian & Daido Moriyama | Los Angeles x Shinjuku
Daido Moriyama I feel bad saying this, and you will have to read on to find more positive suggestions about this book, but I think Moriyama has become quite a pastiche of his earlier glory. I understand how he arrives at that conclusion, and frankly, most people will likely be inclined to argue with […]
Orianne Ciantar – Olive Les Ruines Circulaires
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 […]
Pedro Alfacinha 1985
Full Article on Patreon Returning to the idea of memories, one can feel all of these tendencies in the work used to enforce a slippage of time. Close-up images and somewhat obscure faces place the photographs inside a dream factory or memory farm. These fragments of realism play heavily with our ability […]
Carmen Winant The Last Safe Abortion
Access to medical attention should be a right, no matter religious qualification or moralizing over another adult person’s decision. In the case of abortion, this is complicated by how we judge human sentience in the form of an unborn child. It is complicated. To say otherwise would be a misstep that does not account […]
Bryan Schutmaat – Sons of the Living | Perspective II
Sons of the Living (Trespasser 2024) is Bryan Schutmaat’s opus. It is the summation of a decade-plus of making exceptional photographs. I have been familiar with his work for some time, and seeing his work and career grow has been a pleasure. He is also a good dude and supportive of other artists. That should […]
Charlotte Lybeer and the Teletubby Who Hung Himself
Charlotte Lybeer’s “Epidermis II” for APE is not about teletubbies or suicide, but it is about the veil or a practice of shrouding oneself called “Zentai”, which like all things post-taboo seems to be Japanese in origin.
2019: A Short Guide To White People & Their Photography Books
It was the best of years…. Once again it is that time of year where I try to drum up some sort of edit from all of the incredible work the photography book world offers up. This year is difficult as I felt it has been one of the strongest years in recent memory […]
Iris van der Zee: Violence is an Art Form
“When is an artwork finished? Are the World Trade Centers only finished when the planes sink into their steel bellies? Can we assume Babylon’s work at an end when pneumatic drill erases their façade?” We spend long hours illustrating our human form. We seek a representation of ideals and we look backwards over the canons […]
Francesco Merlini – Better in the Dark than His Rider
In sleep or in wakefulness, we are inhabited by images. Swimming just below the surface, they sometimes dash before us with the swoop of the flying fish. Slippery, they can be hard to hold onto. We are a repository of latent images that linger within us, awaiting to be conjured. Whilst the primary visual cortex […]
Isak Uitto Maskineri
Throughout the 1990s, there was a distinct emphasis on the body and its decline. Work produced during the 90s, whether from the aids crisis or the ideological shift away from the Catholic church toward an atheistic and bodily autonomy, signaled a visceral approach to photography. The documentary Vile Bodies (1999), produced by Chris Townsend and […]
Max Pinckers & Thomas Sauvin – The Future Without You
The introduction of computers in the workplace well prefigures the advent of the internet. Before the release of the PC in the 80’s, computers were mostly vast, immovable machines which by today’s standards had relatively low processing power. Located in air-conditioned comms rooms, various forms of cabling sprawled out from them into patch cabinets resembling […]