Alex Harvey Cockroft, Jr., my dad, passed away in late August 2022. I haven’t written about his passing or mentioned it in social media at all: it’s a personal thing and I don’t air out my grief in public… assuming there’s any grief to air out. In cleaning out his apartment and disposing of his …
Author Archives: James Cockroft
Mark Helfrich – ‘Naked Pictures of my Ex-Girlfriends’
As you might expect, Mark Helfirch’s 2000 book Naked Pictures of My Ex-Girlfriends: Romance in the 70s is wholly inappropriate for a believing Muslim like myself. My excuse for buying (and continuing to own) isn’t any good, really, but I have one. And surprise, surprise, it smells as good as every other excuse.
Mike Mandel – ‘Good 70s’
Good 70s collects Mike Mandel’s most famous work from the 1970s, all contained in a facsimile 8×10 Agfa film box. You can still find copies for almost double what I paid a few short years ago. Is it worth it?
Mike Mandel & Larry Sultan – ‘Evidence’
What is there to say about Mike Mandel and Larry Sultan’s classic, groundbreaking, and wildly influential Evidence? I don’t really know, as I haven’t read any reviews in quite awhile, so I’ll just ramble on for a bit and maybe say something new or different—and probably very, very wrong.
Charles Johnstone & Heather Malesson – ‘Escape’
Charles Johnstone and Heather Malesson‘s Escape is the follow up to their well-regarded, out of print, and far out-of-my-price-range The Girl in the Fifth Floor Walk-up. I recall reading something about the earlier book, looking for it, finding it out of print and far too expensive, and snatching up a copy of Escape to a) …
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Bobby Abrahamson – ‘Rabbit’
I tend to stay away from Instagram. The feed is incomprehensible these days: it’s 80% ads or Suggested accounts (which are mostly ads), and finding actual posts from the actual humans I follow is nigh-on impossible. Somehow, though, back on January 22, 2023, I stumbled across @swerdnaekalb’s thumbnail review of Bobby Abrahamson‘s Rabbit and ordered …
Larry Sultan – ‘Swimmers’
It’s probably heresy to talk about Larry Sultan’s Swimmers (1978-1982) before mentioning Evidence. I mean, Evidence is famous, and Swimmers, while exhibited a few times, was never before published and was (as far as I know) largely unknown prior to this book coming out. I don’t feel too bad, though: I seem to be going …
