Unboxing ‘twenty seven, twenty eight’

In twenty seven, twenty eight, Dylan Barnes documents the last half of his 27th year and the first half of his 28th, a transformative period for him, like many of us. A simple introduction describes the project better than I can: These images were created between January and December of 2016, a time that encapsulates my last …

Unboxing some new zines from Nate Matos

‘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 …

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 …

Unboxing ‘Beyond Caring’ (Errata Editions)

In Beyond Caring, Paul Graham chronicles the breakdown in the British Social Welfare system during the heyday of Thatcherism in the early- and mid-1980s. This Errata Editions version (Books on Books #9) reproduces every page in the original book, alongside essays by David Chandler and Jeffrey Ladd, and it’s a great way to experience the …

Unboxing William Kline’s ‘New York’

William Kline’s Life is Good and Good For You in New York Trance Witness Revels is one of those low print run, long out of print, wildly expensive, classic photobooks that pop up in discussions from time to time. I don’t recall what brought it to mind for me, but I went hunting and was able …