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I'm pleased to welcome back PhotoBook Journal with selections from Gerhard Clausing, Douglas Stockdale and their team of Contributing Editors on books that explore our theme of Home. This selection includes a wide range of approaches by interesting artists.

SINK / RISE: The Day May Break – Chapter Three by Nick Brandt

Publisher: Hatje Cantz Verlag GmbH, Berlin, Germany

Review by Gerhard Clausing

There can be no doubt that climate change is affecting our daily lives. Nick Brandt is a leading advocate for people and animals threatened by and suffering under these changing conditions. He is also a fantastic impresario of environmental portraits, thinking of unusual perspectives and locations for making a point on behalf of various populations and to allow us to confront the predicaments involved.

This is the third of a series, and in its own way an even more astounding accomplishment. We discussed the other two volumes previously, as referenced in the notes below. This time Brandt took groups of South Pacific Islanders to Fijian waters below the surface, in order to create very graphic portrayals of what the oceans are increasingly doing to low-lying lands, and Hatje Cantz has published the results in this impressive large-size volume.

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

Oceano by Lana Z Caplan

Publisher: Kehrer Verlag Heidelberg, Germany

Review by Douglas Stockdale

Whose land is it? This is probably the underlying question for Lana Z Caplan’s photodocumentary project of an expansive region of coastal California, which also represents a broader question for all of North America and the world beyond.

Her specific subject is an area generally identified as Oceano, located on the Pacific coast of middle California, historically the land of the yak titʸu titʸu yak tiłhini (ytt) Northern Chumash, who still claim parts of this area, but also overlapping ownerships by the state of California, US Federal National Wildlife Refuge and corporate land title by the Chevron Corporation. Implicitly, the State and Federal ownership of large expanses this area is with the general public, which is part of the social tension that is created by how groups of individuals want to use, if not exploit, this same area, and who are the subjects of her book.

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

Coming and Going, by Jim Goldberg

Publisher: MACK

Review by Rudy Vega

When one begins as a prolific photographer and embarks on creating a visual memoir spanning three generations of family, the outcome could very well be Jim Goldberg’s Coming and Going. Indeed, it is. The work is also a scrapbook of unvarnished life, with raw documents presented candidly. Thousands of shutter actuations, captured in mere fractions of a second, come together to weave narratives that recount a life lived. The title, “Coming and Going,” encompasses birth, death, and everything in between – from the joy of becoming a parent to the sorrow of a parent’s passing. Use this link to read the rest of the review, for additional images and information

Division Street by Robert Gumpert

Publisher: Dewi Lewis Publishing

Review by Melanie Chapman

As the old saying goes, “Home is where your heart is.” Epic poems and countless songs have been written on the topic; missing home, coming home, longing for home… “I’ll Be Home for Christmas”, “Home on the Range”, “There’s No Place like Home”… but what if you have no home? What if home was a place of suffering and heartbreak, if your sense of home was not safe, or secure, or was constantly changing? What if you could no longer afford the place that had once been your home? What if you hadn’t had a place to call home in so long you forgot what that even felt like? What does that do to a person’s spirits, or a family’s ability to stay together? Is being without a home equivalent to being without hope?

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

Rotan Switch by Lisa McCord

Publisher: Kehrer Verlag Heidelberg, Germany

Review by Lee Halvorsen

Lisa McCord’s Rotan Switch is a superb synthesis of content, design, and emotion…more than a story, more than photos, more than a book, it’s an experience. The design is unique and subtly compelling. At first look, the white space, the seemingly random text blocks, and the image arrangement didn’t click with me but just a few pages in, everything fell into place: the layout was interactive…as if I were having a conversation with McCord. The book transported me to the front porch of her grandparent’s cotton farm in Rotan, Arkansas, and McCord is telling me about this place, the people who lived here, and the time she’d spent growing up here.

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

Nowhere to Go but Everywhere by Dotan Saguy

Publisher: Kehrer Heidelberg Berlin, Germany

Review by Melanie Chapman

During these past few months of the pandemic, haven’t we each found ourselves staring out windows, looking for signs of life, and longing to travel near and far once again?

Dotan Saguy’s newest work Nowhere to Go but Everywhere arrives at a perfect time. Even if the book’s title, taken from a Jack Keroac quote, does not seem familiar, the cover image of two young children staring up and out of windows will immediately draw the viewer in to Saguy’s intimate portrait of lives lived on the road.

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

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