Justine Kurland’s Girl Pictures was the Charcoal photobook-of-the-month for June 2020. I preordered Girl Pictures well before its release, and so swapped it out for George Georgiou’s Americans Parade. This was probably my fourth swap, and the process couldn’t be easier: Jesse Lenz and Charcoal Books are super easy to work with.

But this isn’t about Charcoal.

A Mycological Foray was the Charcoal photobook of the month selection for July 2020, and it’s one of the more unique and niche books to come to me thanks to my long-running subscription.

Following my acquisition of Jason Lee’s A Plain View, I kept an eye on Lee (and FilmPhotographic), and when news of the “OK: Jason Lee Photographs” exhibition at the Philbook Muesum, Downtown, appeared I made plans to go.

I remember seeing something about a special edition Refueled magazine/exhibition guide that was scheduled to come out late in the run of the exhibition, so I went late in the run. Alas, when I went, in October 2019, the gallery guide was still unavailable (or wasn’t at the refreshingly tiny museum shop, anyway), so I ordered one, and I’m glad I did, as it’s the only record of the exhibition (there wasn’t a catalog).

Richard Misrach on Landscape and Meaning is the latest (as of 2021) entry into Aperture’s “The Photography Workshop Series,” and, like others in the series, it’s something like a visiting artist’s lecture at a small state college somewhere in middle America, where almost no one has heard of the person. There are wildly useful and helpful nuggets interspersed, for those that will benefit, but it’s sufficiently general interest to bring some alumni and locals in that might contribute to the program.