When Lomography announced their LomoMod No.1 cardboard DIY camera with fancy Sutton, liquid-filled lens, I wasn’t even tempted. Sure, I read the announcement, looked at the pictures and all, but I wasn’t even tempted. But then, days later, one of my Twitter buddies mentioned it, talked about buying it just to play with the lens …
Author Archives: James Cockroft
Stephen Shore – ‘American Surfaces’ (2020 Revised & Expanded Edition)
American Surfaces probably needs no introduction. Produced during a road trip from NYC to Amarillo, TX in 1972 (with a jaunt to the England and the US Virgin Islands) and exhibited at the LIGHT Gallery in October 1972, it’s part of the photography canon now. It took what Robert Frank (and Walker Evans before him) …
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Stephen Shore – Tranparencies
Transparencies: Small Camera works 1971-1979 collects, for the first time, Stephen Shore’s work with small cameras (mostly Leicas) during the period just before the American Surfaces period through the transition to large format and the vast majority of shooting for Uncommon Places. It’s interesting to see how Shore’s vision changed from the American Surfaces period …
Matthew Genitempo – Jasper
Matthew Genitempo’s Jasper was, I believe, the January 2019 photobook-of-the-month selection from the Charcoal Book Club.* It was beautifully printed and lovingly published by Twin Palms, and is a really beautiful portrait of a really beautiful place.
Some Instant Fun
The Spring 2020 Polaroid Week went down, as usual (I think), in the last week of April, and I started a day or two late and ended up rushing through most of every pack on the last day… Now, two weeks later, I still haven’t scanned everything, but I’m itching to share some photographs for …
Poulomi Basu – Centralia
Poulomi Basu’s Centralia is a disturbing and violent book of a disturbing and violent subject. It’s not for the faint of heart, it’s equally not for the hard of heart. Basu calls it “an Indian docu-fiction” that “…push[es] the boundaries of my own documentary practice – to construct a narrative that borrows from the tropes …
Nate Matos – ‘Resort Town'(s)
I’m something of a Nate Matos fan, I guess. I came late to his Serif & Silver series, and every 6 or 8 months, I pop into his website and buy most or all of the zines he has on offer, leading to the acquisition of his ‘Blandscapes‘ and a group of other zines. Now, …
