Coca-Cola and the Implied Apathy of Tomatsu Shomei’s Photographs

Full Article with More Images on Patreon   It is essential to understand the biography of Tomatsu to understand what the emotion of rage or anger may be prevalent in his work. As a pubescent teen during the atomic bombing of Japan and the subsequent end of the Second World War, Tomatsu recalls the occupation […]

Alejandro Acin The Rest is History

Alejandro Acin The Rest is History ICVL Studio and supported by Sala Kursala Programa Cultural   The machinations of history are in constant flexes of exchange. They are impermanent, their concept a flux, or are often a mess of contradictions. We are taught history as if it were permanent, an established and often binary set of […]

Esaias Baitel Zonen 1982

Full Article on Patreon   This is an incredibly complicated book. It is one that I have been chasing for a year or so since I first became aware of it. It has a cult-like status for many reasons, least of all are the photographs, which are also incredible. The story of Baitel amid a […]

Nick Gervin Portlanders

Full Article on Patreon   Gervin’s work reflects the American moment in the second decade of the second millennium through tendencies similar to those seen in a good deal of American photography during the Vietnam War era.  I see some resemblances to protest coverage by Gene Anthony, a Black Star agency photographer who captured the […]

Dave Heath One Brief Moment

  Dave Heath – One Brief Moment Review by Simon Bray   Within the opening pages of Dave Heath’s ‘One Brief Moment,’ there is a certain air of occasion. Gathered masses fill the middle of the street, suggesting that these are not singular moments but a crowd united by a collective sense of anticipation and […]

Mimi Plumb The Golden City

  We have yet to reconcile the deep chasm of exchange in the American order during the fateful summer and winter of 1969. During the rightfully dubbed Summer of Hate, the Manson Family murders shook the very bedrock of the American free lovin’ psyche. The significance of the murders ended the free wheelin’ summer of […]

Paul Graham: Troubled Land

We fail our images and images fail our desires. In trying to deliberate over which side of failure images are consigned to, the human side versus the side of the function of the image itself, it is hard to not implicate oneself in misunderstanding the function of a photographic image. We have come to expect […]

Ulrich Wüst Cityscapes 1979–1985

  I am attracted to the idea of audibility in photographs. In assessing my desire to hear photographs, I would suggest that this stems from a few reasons. Firstly, the static and still nature of a photograph rent from the passing and often raucous movement of life is singular in its condition to be viewed […]

Luigi Ghirri: Puglia. Tra albe e tramonti

  One of the enduring traits found in the photography of Luigi Ghirri is the way in which the artist played with the camera and the optical alignment of photographic images. His quest for optical games, shooting from behind the corner or through the veil as it were created a dialogue in photography that at […]

Paolo Gasparini Field of Images

  Paolo Gasparini’s lengthy career and intense scrutiny of the Latin American social and political landscape from the point of view of an outsider looking in has produced, by proxy of his many photobooks and serial investigations of place, an incredibly rich document of Latin America caught in-between disjointed moments of upheaval and the hope […]

Cristóbal Hara España Color 1985-2020

Cristóbal Hara is a name that I had not explored until late last year with the co-publication of his book España Color 1985-2020/Spain in Color 1985-2020. The Spanish and English versions were respectively handled by  Editorial Rm and Matt Stuart‘s Plague Press. I had seen it advertised throughout the year, mostly from Matt’s Instagram page […]

Mark van den Brink The Minox Files

  The Minox pocket camera was developed in 1936 by Walter Zapp to provide the public with a small compact camera that was easily portable and that was economically feasible for a budding amateur class of photographers to purchase. Its innovative design, compact, small, and easily hidden were later co-opted as something of a novel […]