Colin Westerbeck & Joel Meyerowitz – ‘Bystander’

Back in 2011/12, when I first got (back) into photography, Colin Westerbeck and Joel Meyrowitz’s Bystander: A History of Street Photography was an oft-mentioned bit of unobtanium, with copies of the 2001 edition running a few hundred dollars. I wrote it off as one one of those books I’d just never see and quickly forgot about it. Years came and went, and if not for the Laurence King Publishing email list, I might never have known of the 2017 expanded edition, which I believe I got on sale. If you’re a capital-S, capital-P Street Photographer or Street Photography aficionado, Bystander is a must have. Insofar as I’m neither, well… I am (or was) something of a photobook collector, and it therefore makes total sense.

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Victor Burgin – ‘Between’

Victor Burgin’s Between collects interviews and occasional writings around a double handful of Burgin’s photo/art projects from the mid-1970s to the mid-1980s. The book originally appeared in 1986 and was out of print for a couple of decades until Mack reprinted it in 2020. As someone interested in art history & theory (I hold a master’s degree in same from Stony Brook: if you know, you know), as a conceptual art-o-file, and as a fan of work that mixes image and text, it was a no-brainer.

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Antone Dolezal & Lara Shipley – ‘The Devil’s Promenade’

I’m not sure where or how I heard about Antone Dolezal & Lara Shipley‘s wonderful mix of photographs, archival images and documents, and text exploring a small part of Eastern Oklahoma known as The Devil’s Promenade. I’m a sucker for books like this, and it doesn’t disappoint.

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Kikuji Kawada – ‘Chizu’ (Maquette Edition)

Kikuji Kawada’s Chizu is one of those photobooks that I read about many times, looked for many times, always blanched at the price, and expected I would never see. First edition copies from 1965 rarely come up for sale, the Nazreli 2005 version runs about $1000, well above even my most wasteful outrageous photobook purchases, and even the 2014 Akio Nagasawa Reprint is quite out of range for me, most of the time anyway.* So when Mack announced its printing of the Maquette Edition, I preordered a signed copy immediately.

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Bertien van Manen – ‘Archive’

Archive is my introduction to and only photobook from Bertien van Manen, so far, and as far as I know/recall. Where has she been all my life? smh. Anyway. The book collects selections from projects undertaken over roughly 40 years and across three continents. In black & white and color, the work has looks almost effortless in a way. I would give the book a wholehearted recommendation, but it failed in being a book in a way that I’ve never seen before and hope to never see again…

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