After hearing about, and subsequently purchasing, ‘Midwest Dirt,’ I’ve been a fan of Nathan Pearce‘s work. I’ve picked up a few over the past couple of years, too many to link to, and his use of an Action Sampler-type camera for one zine continues to inspire.

So when I stumbled across a new Pearce zine, I jumped on it.

I came across Chris Neophytou‘s Tourista on Instagram one day. I’m not sure what account, maybe Out of Place Books, maybe somewhere else. I was intrigued by and interested in the format, and so ordered up a copy.

Nahea An’s Perversión subverts advertising tropes and calls attention to the sexualization and exploitation of female bodies. Sex sells, sure, but in the age of #metoo these sorts of détournement are useful and necessary reminders.

Rachel Filler‘s Do I make you happy more than I make you sad? is a sort of celebration of youthful friendship and relationships. In the faces and gestures, I see some of the exuberance and wonder I felt, like, 20 years ago, and I simultaneously miss that feeling and am glad to be beyond it now…

On this Site: Landscape in Memoriam is best summed up, in my mind, with a quote from Sternfeld himself. In his Afterword, on going to Central Park (in 1993) to photograph the spot where Jennifer Levin was strangled (in 1986), he writes “It was bewildering to find a scene so beautiful . . . to see the same sunlight pour down indifferently on the earth.”

Sometime in 2019, Andrea Modica moved and set up a new darkroom. In the process of moving, she came across an unopened case or two of her long out of print book Treadwell.

Luckily for Charcoal Book Club members, Modica had just enough copies to pass on to us, and Treadwell became the photobook selection for September 2019.