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 […]

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 […]

Chris Killip – Skinningrove 1982-1984

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 […]

Bill Henson – Liquid Night

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 […]

Dave Heath One Brief Moment

  Dave Heath – One Brief Moment Review by Simon Bray   Within the opening pages of Dave Heath’s ‘One Brief Moment,’ there is a certain air of occasion. Gathered masses fill the middle of the street, suggesting that these are not singular moments but a crowd united by a collective sense of anticipation and […]

Christopher Anderson Son

Every photographer parent that I know has what to the non-parenting world seems like a self-indulgent family album project. Every. one. of. them. Myself. included. Some have several. Making photographs of the family is part of the experience of getting through life. We use the camera to illustrate the mundane, the banal, and the exciting […]

Bill Henson – Sic Transit

Synaesthesia is a condition present in between 2 and 4% of the world’s population. Its literal translation is “joining of the senses” and this is exactly what it means – the combination of visual cues with, for instance, auditory or olfactory sensation. Some people would see the number 4 as always green, no matter the […]

Robbie Lawrence A Voice Above the Linn

“We do not like to view images of elderly citizens from the vibrant position of youth or mid-life. There is is taciturn position in our collective youthful spirit that opts out of the discussion”   Old age isn’t something you often see depicted purposefully in photography. It is marginalized age and the stories that do […]

Massimo Leardini’s Elv: Limbs Both Human and Other

  “Her one arm is half-raised above the parapet of the water’s edge all soft and white-gone from the limb its rose pigment associated with the flourish of life”   Her one arm is half-raised above the parapet of the water’s edge all soft and white-gone from the limb its rose pigment associated with the […]

Photobooks of the Year 2020/Welcome to the Castle

“Earlier this year, there were some high-profile twitterstorms, in which particular left-identifying figures were ‘called out’ and condemned. What these figures had said was sometimes objectionable; but nevertheless, the way in which they were personally vilified and hounded left a horrible residue: the stench of bad conscience and witch-hunting moralism”         This […]

Mimi Plumb: Sheltering Under The White Sky

“I hear the sound of victory. I hear the sound of victory. I hear the sound of victory”. 1976, the centenary-a procrastinator’s wet dream”   The kids are smiling, their bodies are interlaced within the disused tire mound and the coyote snarls staring dead-eyed and hungry from the top of the bare picnic table. He […]