Matt Stuart – ‘Into the Fire’

Someone on YouTube alerted me to Matt Stuart‘s Into the Fire about two months before it came out. I can’t find the comment now, and if it’s you, thanks! I missed All that Life Can Afford by about 6 months, that is, it came out just around the time I started buying photobooks, I didn’t …

Morgan Ashcom – ‘Open’

‘Open’ is a set of 34 prints, made from 4×5 negatives exposed, in camera, in Palestine by Morgan Ashcom in 2009, then re-exposed to fluorescent light by Israeli border guards prior to development, housed in a recycled 4×5 negative box. Ashcom offered these as a sort of “Thank You” gift for donating to Human Supporters, …

Deanna Templeton – ‘What She Said’

Despite not looking at it until now (the first week of 2022), Deanna Templeton’s What She Said hit my 2021 Best list as the “best for remembering my adolescence.” Despite being roughly a decade younger than Templeton, and roughly a decade or two older than her subjects, despite being male, I recognize myself in almost …

Sabiha Çimen – ‘Hafiz’

For Hafiz, Sabiha Çimen‘s spent a handful of years photographing young women and girls at a hifz school in Istanbul. For many viewers it may be eye opening, it may humanize or familiarize; for me, it’s all fairly normal: school uniforms are terribly common, and women, young or old, wearing hijab and modest clothing just …