Peter Van Agtmael‘s Disco Night Sept 11 was on the shortlist for Aperture’s Book of the Year back in 2014. I missed it at the time, and I picked this copy up, if I recall, during a Magnum book sale in 2019 or 2020. I botched the unboxing video, lost track of the book, and it wound up on the “already reviewed” shelves somehow.
Continue reading “Peter Van Agtmael – Disco Night Sept II”Enter the Minuta Stereo (preproduction model)
It was an early, sleepy Monday morning, the first of February, 2021, and the year was off to a frustrating start, when I opened my email to find a note from Dominick Oczkowski, creator of the Minuta Stereo camera. I knew something of Oczkowski already, thanks to a podcast or something I saw on Twitter back in January, and within 3 minutes of hearing of his project had signed up for the mailing list, and I felt honored and strangely validated when he offered to send me a preproduction model to try out, try to break, etc.
Well, after six weeks and (shamefully) only four rolls, and with about 10 days left on the Kickstarter, I haven’t managed to break it… But what do I think about it?
Well…
Continue reading “Enter the Minuta Stereo (preproduction model)”John Whitmore – “Choosing & Losing” #1
“Choosing & Losing” is a quarterly zine from John Whitmore, featuring his words and images around some sort of theme: this quarter (Q1 2021) it’s ‘A Long December,’ after the Counting Crows song.
Continue reading “John Whitmore – “Choosing & Losing” #1″Mark Steinmetz – ‘Summer Camp’
I never went to Summer Camp. Boy Scout camping weekends and that one Jamboree, a couple of weekends with various church groups (one at a summer camp that was closed, because it wasn’t the summer, and so it was only the two vans from the church) and a family trip to (another closed) vacation camp thing was as close as I ever got. So Mark Steinmetz‘s Summer Camp presents something of a foreign land to me. I recognize some of the features, and, of course, I’ve seen many movies and television shows about camp, but it’s still foreign.
Continue reading “Mark Steinmetz – ‘Summer Camp’”Quick Walk with a Vivitar Ultra Wide & Slim
I didn’t (and don’t) need another camera. Really and truly. I don’t.
And then, one early morning, I noticed a Twitter post* claiming the Vivitar UWS to be the end all and be all, and 10 minutes later, I found one for a good-enough price on the ‘bay, and, well, here we are.
Continue reading “Quick Walk with a Vivitar Ultra Wide & Slim”Liam Wong – ‘TO:KY:OO’
TO:KY:OO is something unique in my photo library. I’m not sure where I came across his work. It was probably recommended by someone or something. I don’t really remember.
Long term readers will know that I’m mostly a film photographer, for the past 6 years or so, anyway, and that I never did a huge amount of manipulation, but I really like the look Wong pulls out of his images. So when he announced a crowdfunding campaign for his first book, I jumped on it.
Continue reading “Liam Wong – ‘TO:KY:OO’”Shinya Fujiwara – ‘American Roulette’
After several decades photographing the Middle and Near East, India, and Tibet, and making some influential and popular photobooks (in Japan), Shinya Fujiwara went to the United States, where he spent seven months puttering around in an RV photographing, well, nearly everything that caught his fancy. There’s the desert, long stretches of empty dirt or asphalt road, tract homes, second hand shops, theme parks, all kinds of things.
Back home in Japan, as was his usual practice, he published American Roulette, which I only learned about thanks to David Campany’s The Open Road, which I almost wish I’d never heard about… Mr. Campany and his great book cost me quite a few dollars and added a handful of books to the shelf…
Continue reading “Shinya Fujiwara – ‘American Roulette’”