Editor’s note: what follows is a sort of writing exercise, undertaken in response to Janet Malcolm’s brilliant “Forty-One False Starts.” I didn’t do it justice, though I did have some fun writing it. If you want a proper, if brief, review, jump to the bottom. If you want to see me have some fun, well, …
Category Archives: Photobook
Nathan Benn – ‘A Peculiar Paradise’
A Peculiar Paradise: Florida Photographs is exactly what it claims to be: photographs, made in Florida, by former National Geographic photographer (and one time head of Magnum) Nathan Benn. Most—if not all—of the photographs were made in two Geographic-funded trips, one in 1973, “to fill out another photographer’s coverage of the flourishing Cuban-born community centered …
Talia Chetrit – ‘Showcaller’
For Showcaller, the 2018 exhibition at Kölnischer Kunstverein and this 2019 monograph from Mack, Talia Chetrit deftly wove together selfies and pictures of her friends and family from the early 1990s, with early art projects and much later series, to make something of a statement about gaze and agency and power and things. I’m pretty …
Tod Papageorge – ‘Dr. Blankman’s New York’
The very first picture that appears in Tod Papageorge’s Dr. Blankman’s New York shows a pair of storefronts: a florist, and the titular Dr. S. H. Blankman Optometrist, who offers (small print) Contact Lenses, and, in larger print than his name, claims “EYES EXAMINED.” Ok. Ok. I’m not that dense. 1) this echoes the opener …
Continue reading “Tod Papageorge – ‘Dr. Blankman’s New York’”
André Kertész – ‘The Polaroids’
After reading or hearing about André Kertész’s The Polaroids, it lived on my wish list for several years, and thanks to Mom (or was it my darling wife?) one appeared for my birthday!
Gary Briechle – ‘Maine’
If not for Charcoal Books, I likely wouldn’t be aware of Gary Briechle. His first, self titled, monograph Gary Briechle was the Charcoal Book Club selection for June, 2018, and this book, Maine, featuring color digital photographs made roughly concurrently with the collodion prints featured in his first book, was the Charcoal selection for February, …
J A Mortram – ‘Small Town Inertia’
Small Town Inertia is a moving collection of Jim Mortram’s portraits of his friends and neighbors in Dereham, UK, portraits that Dave Stelfox, writing in 2014 in the Guardian called “intimate depictions of social exclusion in Britain.” I couldn’t describe it any better, really, so let’s get into the unboxing. Or, just go order a …
