For Memory City, Alex Webb and Rebecca Norris Webb took five trips to Rochester, NY over the year following Kodak’s bankruptcy, when Kodak, and, indeed film photography in toto, seemed almost certainly on its last legs.

Thankfully, by the time Webb and Norris Webb finished their trips, and certainly by the time Memory City came out, Kodak emerged from bankruptcy as two businesses: Kodak, which handles movie film, print kiosks, and consumer product branding; and Kodak Alaris, which handles document solutions, photo paper, and print and reversal films: Tri-X and T-MAX, Portra, P3200, and now Ektachrome. Long live film!

But back in 2012/13, things looked grim…

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Slant Rhymes (La Fabrica, 2017) is a collection of photographs from Alex Webb and Rebecca Norris Webb that explores the relationships between their work. After reading/flipping through their excellent Aperture Workshop book on Street Photography and the Poetic Image, I needed more Rebecca Norris Webb photographs in my life, and quickly ordered this book and Memory City (review forthcoming), and after spending some time with these, I still need more RNW in my life.

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My affair with Aperture’s Photography Workshop Series of books started with Todd Hido’s incredible on Landscapes, Interiors, and the Nude. Later on, I picked up Larry Fink’s on Composition and Improvisation, thanks to a recommendation I saw on Twitter (review forthcoming), and before I knew it, I hunted down and picked up copies of the other two books in the series, Alex Webb and Rebecca Norris Webb‘s on Street Photography and the Poetic Image and Mary Ellen Mark on the Portrait and the Moment (review forthcoming).

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Zanele Muholi’s Somnyama Ngonyama (Hail the Dark Lioness) is an incredible collection of Muholi’s self portraits, rendered huge, capturing and taking control of the colonial imaginings of black female bodies, as domestic workers, enslaved peoples, witches and soothsayers, making them all her own and forcing viewers to confront her power, her strength, her gaze, on her own terms.

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Gary Briechle was Charcoal Book Club’s photobook of the month for June 2018. It’s an interesting book, beautifully designed and full of somewhat disconcerting photographs of Briechle’s family and friends. That said, had it not been for my subscription, I might not have picked it up myself. One of the benefits of a Charcoal Book Club subscription, I suppose… Timothy Whelan was the guest curator that month, so I have him to thank for it, I guess. 

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Rayon Vert explores portraiture, the sometimes intimate interaction between photographer and sitter, the little moments in between, as the model twists, uncomfortable from sitting so long, or moving into a different pose, or staring blankly into space in a mixture of boredom and impatience. With it, Senta Simond has given us a glimpse of what a nonpatriarchal gaze might look like.

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Walker Evans’ American Photographs is one of those seminal photobooks that belongs on every photographer’s bookshelf, full stop. There’s not much more to say about it, really.

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