Forest photography is a challenging art. I mention this regarding the photobook format, as the most significant complication of sequencing a book from a photographic forest yield is the difficulty of repetition. The question is, “How many photographs of trees can I look at without losing interest?” and “How much minute variation of a […]
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 […]
2024 has been an excellent year for photobooks. I am surprised that after the past few years with fewer titles surfacing into greatness, 2024 has presented so many outstanding titles. It gives me a bit of hope that the medium is picking up again, though I suspect inflation and a general shrinkage of audience […]
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 […]
As an American living in Europe, I have never gotten my head around the vestigial tail of pagan rituals that still occasionally surface here. They do not happen often, but I am continuously bemused when they do. They seem to function on either fire or water. During the opening season, which includes springtime fertility […]
Editor’s note: I just got some more background info on the making of the book. So, it turns out this has always been the intended size (as designed in totality by Chris) and that Steidl actually did print it one point, but the estate rejected the printing for it being overly muddy, which is really […]
Letting my unconscious, rather than my intellect, dictate the progression was important. For reasons I don’t entirely understand, being nude became part of the project early on. And working against that white wall near the two front windows in the so-called living room became a central point. —Melissa Shook I might’ve mistakenly read Sally Stein’s […]
Matthew Genitempo is producing serious photobooks. Of the three books that I am fortunate to have on my shelves, his latest Dogbreath is one of his finest, but it is hard to create a hierarchy between it, Mother of Dogs, and Jasper. All three titles are excellent offerings, and it would benefit photobook makers […]
The discourse surrounding this book is less bleak than the images themselves. Being a fan of Michael Ashkin’s work, I find this book to be his bleakest, yet when I read his words about the meaning of the book, I do not get the impression that it is necessarily its intention. First, we will start […]
Finding a nameless source’s review of The Lizard online, I read about how I should interpret Gabriele Rossi’s outsized publication published by Deadbeat Club. In its summation, the author points out several pictures from the book from which they wax lyrical about the sublime qualities of the photographs from the position of a non-American, likely […]
Everything in this book reminds me of my upbringing in the Midwest. It feels so painfully familiar. When I mention pain in my assessment, it is because some of this experience gnaws at me and upends the chapters of my life that I have found hard to celebrate or close. I am woefully disobedient […]
There has been a much-needed turn away from the constraints of documentary photography over the past couple of years in favor of something less direct and more lyrical. I can think of several fantastic artists working away from the documentary with a tendency toward erasing its constrictive need for relational dialog. Federico Clavarino, […]