Author Archives: James Cockroft

Poulomi Basu’s Centralia is a disturbing and violent book of a disturbing and violent subject. It’s not for the faint of heart, it’s equally not for the hard of heart. Basu calls it “an Indian docu-fiction” that “…push[es] the boundaries of my own documentary practice – to construct a narrative that borrows from the tropes …

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I’m something of a Nate Matos fan, I guess. I came late to his Serif & Silver series, and every 6 or 8 months, I pop into his website and buy most or all of the zines he has on offer, leading to the acquisition of his ‘Blandscapes‘ and a group of other zines. Now, …

Continue reading “Nate Matos – ‘Resort Town'(s)”

Anil Mistry‘s Goodnight Sweetheart: A miscellany of morose, misanthropic middle-aged musings and mattresses is a collection of photographs featuring discarded mattresses, paired with statements, aphorisms, poems from some friends. As a middle-aged man myself, it hits some buttons, for sure…

Look closely at the cover of Anil Mistry’s ‘GAH!,’ and you might just end up uttering the title without even thinking about it… and if you miss the fun stuff on the cover, by about page 6, you’ll be “gah”-ing on almost every page…

Keiko Nomura’s Otari — Pristine Peaks was the Charcoal Book Club selection for April 2019 (if I recall correctly) and documents the people and lifestyle of a small village in Japan. It’s not a book I would’ve likely come across on my own, and so I’m once again glad to be a Charcoal subscriber.