some Nate Matos zines

‘Various Shades Of’ and ‘In the Middle’ are the first two zines in Nate Matos‘ new “Color Theory” series. Like the Blandscapes, each issue contains a group of photos on a single theme: ‘Various Shades Of’ chronicles the brown that pervades manmade landscapes and ‘In the Middle’ features trees and shrubs in urban settings. The Color …

Agfa Optima Sensor 535 overview

During my mad rush for a compact rangefinder, I went on a hunt for an Agfa Optima Sensor 1535, one of the more unique- and interesting-looking, and one of the last, compact rangefinders out there. They’re fairly rare, and usually in the $100+ range, so when I spotted one on Etsy for $50, I jumped …

Unboxing ‘Suburban East Tokyo’

Dominic Teagle‘s “Suburban East Tokyo” zine documents the Edogawa district of Tokyo, a not-yet-gentrified part of the sprawling metropolis. I don’t know much about Tokyo, but this area looks like every other suburb of a large, sprawling city I’ve ever seen, a humble, working class melange of homes and small businesses—Teagle refers to them as …

Unwrapping ‘The Life and Death of Buildings’

I found Joel Smith’s The Life and Death of Buildings: On Photography and Time at a Half Price Books some months ago. It was still shrink-wrapped from the publisher and looked like it might fit in with something I’ve been thinking about lately (and that Jim Grey touched on recently at Down The Road), so I …