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Lúa Ribeira – Subida al Cielo

How much should a photographer’s style define the documentation of their subjects? Inspired by religious painting, theater, and film, Lúa Ribeira’s first photobook depicts people in the margins, a fuzzy category that, in this case, includes economic migrants, religious communities, residents of special needs institutions, and those living and working on the streets. Subida al […]

Toshio Shibata – Day For Night

I’m often put off by the cliquey culture around Japanese photobooks, but there was something hypnotizing about the cover picture in Toshio Shibata’s Day for Night of hundreds of stacked Pepsi Cola crates illuminated by the fervent light of dusk. Simply put, it made me want to see more, which is as good a job as a […]

Mikiko Hara – Small Myths

I came to Small Myths entirely unfamiliar with Mikiko Hara’s work, but I was immediately taken by the beauty of her images, which lingered in my head for months after encountering them. A functional book design (lustre paper, paperback cover, manageable size) guarantees that the focus remains on the work, not on the empty pyrotechnics that materiality […]

Curran Hatleberg – River’s Dream

Curran Hatleberg’s River’s Dream (TBW, 2022) is a personal exploration of the American South. The book – an eagerly awaited, critically acclaimed, and exquisitely printed object with plenty of good pictures – didn’t resonate with me as much as I wanted. It all starts with how Hatleberg posits the sequence as a journey into a dream world, […]

Ben Huff – Atomic Island

The melancholy of Ben Huff’s Atomic Island is palpable before even opening the book. The textured cloth gray cover evokes the muddiness of melting snow and, as an extension, beauty’s ephemeral nature. A tipped-in picture on the back of a nautical horizon offers a pensive respite to end (or begin) our journey into the city where this […]

Aglaia Konrad – Japan Works

In the same way that we tend not to think of novels as archives of words, even if philologists can study them in such a way, it seems odd to describe photobooks as archives of images, even if that’s what they are on a fundamental level. Aglaia Konrad’s book Japan Works (2021) includes colour and […]