PhotoBook Journal Experimental | Thinking About Photography

PhotoBook Journal

Many thanks to PhotoBook Journal, with selections from Gerhard Clausing, Douglas Stockdale and their team of Contributing Editors we have a very interesting selection of books reviews, ranging from Man Ray to AI, of artists who are expanding our ideas about photography.

Computational Photography by Darin Boville

Review by Paul Anderson

This photobook is full of mystery and angst, encompassing a very eclectic mix of ideas and images. Its essays and associated images address societal disconnect, fatal flaws, personal fears, wonder and mystery, and alternative or imagined views. Boville has gathered some very personal bodies of work and presented them in one tome. His motives for doing so are summarized in the following quote:

“I have dedicated my photographs and videos to the private amusement of my relatives and friends, so that when they have lost me (as soon they must), they may recover here some features of my habit and temperament, and by this means keep the knowledge they have of me more complete and alive.”

The book is divided into three broad subject categories: war, art, and technology. There are five to six projects per category. Each opens with an introductory image, an extensive essay written by Boville, and then the remaining images.

Use this link to read the rest of the review, additional images and information.

Man Ray: Liberating Photography by Nathalie Herschdorfer

Review by Gerhard Clausing

This photobook provides us with a refreshing new look at the photographic creations and experiments of Man Ray, especially those from the 1920s and 1930s. It presents interestingly juxtaposed examples of the artist’s work that allow us to compare his style, his excellence in combining light and shadow, as well as his new approaches to form as it enhanced content, both real and imagined, especially regarding ambiguity and sojourns into surrealism. With a reputation as a painter as well, Man Ray led photography toward new ways of thinking for most of the 20th century. As Wendy A. Grossman says in her essay, he was “a man both of and ahead of his time.”

I will discuss some of the examples from the book, as excerpted in the double-page spreads shown below. First of all, he rediscovered photograms, which he called “rayographs,” created by placing objects on photosensitive paper that is subsequently processed in the conventional ways of the pre-digital era... Use this link to read the rest of the review, additional images and information

Machine Learning by Phillip Kalantzis-Cope

Review by Paul Anderson

Two questions come to mind when looking through the 2022 photobook Machine Learning by Phillip Kalantzis-Cope. First, can ”machines” learn a specific task, and second, is this productive learning? The author, Kalantzis-Cope, presents us with ten examples of a specific kind of “machine learning.” In each example, he provides a single titled image (we will call this the reference image) accompanied by four associated untitled images.

The four untitled images have presumably been generated by a “machine” (a computer and its related software) based on the machine’s past learnings and a look at a reference image. There is no text in the book to confirm this presumption, but the book’s title leads us to assume this is the case. Use this link to read the rest of the review, for additional images and information

Experimental Relationship Vol.1 (2007–2017) by Pixy Liao

Review by Gerhard Clausing

This photobook was more than ten years in the making, and it is an engrossing experience for the viewers as well. Pixy and Moro are a young couple somewhat less predictably matched, if one goes by social expectations – she is five years older than he is; she is of Chinese descent and he has Japanese origins; they have been living all this time in the United States, in English-speaking environments. To add to the complex picture, he is a musician (PIMO) and she is a photographer with an MFA from the U of Memphis, and they collaborate in creating both challenging photographs and music performances – a most creative couple indeed.

So this photographed personal narrative is also a humorous challenge for the audience, done with much verve and a twinkle in everyone’s eyes, showing delightful visual and verbal surprises, yet with serious implications for greater gender equality and tolerance in relationships... Use the link to read the rest of the review, additional images and information.

High Water by Emily White

Review by Douglas Stockdale

Emily White utilizes large format photographic equipment in conjunction with alternative photographic technics to investigate an urban and its bordering natural landscapes. There is an undercurrent of mystery, as though something is being haunted, in the dark moody body of work that White exhibited in her first solo show with Candela Gallery, which resulted in this demurely printed exhibition monograph.

As a practitioner of solar cyanotype printing, another alternative photographic methodology, I am learning how these inexact historical techniques also lend themselves to creating unexpected outcomes. Nevertheless, over time, a personal understanding develops in working with the natural atmospheric elements and the alternative photographic chemistry in how certain results might occur... Use this link to read the rest of the review, view additional images and information

Studies of Falls by Magdalena Wysocka

Review by Paul Anderson

A first look through Magdalena Wysocka’s photobook Studies of Falls can be a very mysterious experience. There is nothing here to help point the way. The images are vague, there is no introductory text, there are no image captions, and no artist statement. There is, however, an important hint printed in the top right corner of the cover: “Sylacauga, Ala. 30 XI ’54.” To wit, in Sylacauga, Alabama on November 30, 1954, a meteorite fell to earth and plunged through the roof of a home, striking and injuring a person inside. That person was Ann Hodges, and through this encounter with an interstellar object she became something of a local celebrity. It was an event that had a significant impact on her life. In Studies of Falls, Wysocka reimagines the narrative of this exceedingly rare event. According to the website of the book’s publisher, Outer Space Press:

‘Studies of falls’ is a photobook which attempts not only to examine the meteorite as a mysterious physical object, but also the role which chance and accident plays in our lives, taking the meteoritic fall into Ann Hodges’ life as a starting point."

Use this link to read the full review, view additional images and information.

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