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 …
Category Archives: Reviews
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 …
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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 …
Art Gore – ‘Speak Softly to the Echoes’
I stumbled across Speak Softly to the Echoes in a Half Price Books some years ago. It was cheap and I snatched it up for the combination of image and text more than anything. It’s given me an idea about something, reminded me of a twitter exchange (I think… I can’t find it now) some …
(photo)book(s) of the year, 2020
I looked at and read more books in 2020 than I did in the entire decade 2010-2019. I didn’t keep count, but I averaged 1 book a day for the first half of the year, and then 2-3 a week since. I’m not proud. Most of it was virtually indistinguishable from broadcast television and the …
