Reuben Radding’s “Heavenly Arms,” published by Red Hook Editions, is a book that resists easy categorization. It’s a collection born from a decade of wandering city streets, a search for what Radding calls “the musicality of American life, the scent of human connection and conflict.” And in its sprawling, often enigmatic tapestry of images, it…
Diana Markosian’s “Father”, presented by Aperture, has settled within me like a quiet ache, a profound meditation on the fractured landscape of family, the enduring weight of loss, and the fragile, often stumbling journey towards reconnection. I spent a good portion of yesterday afternoon with it, the spring sunshine warming my back as my wife…
Fred Ritchin’s “The Synthetic Eye: Photography Transformed in the Age of AI” is, without a doubt, a fascinating and deeply unsettling read. As a photographer and artist (no laughing), I find myself grappling with the very questions Ritchin poses, particularly as someone who holds a deep-seated suspicion of AI’s ability to create lifelike images. My…
Lukas Felzmann’s Across Ground, a two-volume stunner from Lars Müller Publishers, isn’t the kind of photobook you just flip through in a fifteen minute sit down like some. It asks you to slow down, breathe, and properly look. It’s an antidote to the noise of modern life, a reminder to appreciate the quiet poetry tucked…
Every once in a while, a book comes along that isn’t just a collection of images but an experience in itself. Sticks by Patrick Dougherty and James Florio is one of those books. A massive, heavy tome with a presence as striking as the sculptures it documents. The hardcover alone feels monumental, solid, weighty, the…
Diving into Ray’s a Laugh: A Reader, edited by Liz Jobey, feels like peeling back the many layers of an extraordinary work that continues to provoke, challenge, and captivate nearly 30 years after its original release. In preparation, I finally read Richard Billingham’s Ray’s a Laugh itself, an oversight I can’t believe I’d let linger…
Nik Roche’s As Far As They’re Concerned We Are A Normal Family is an extraordinary piece of work, deeply human, utterly compelling, and the kind of photobook that stays with you long after you’ve closed its pages. Having finally read Ray’s a Laugh in preparation for diving into this book, a glaring gap in my…
Nuevo León: The Future is Unwritten, curated by Ariadna Ramonetti Liceaga and Mauricio Maillé, is a striking showcase of how photography can unravel, challenge, and reimagine the complex social threads of Monterrey, Nuevo León’s post-industrial capital. Published as a companion to an exhibition at MARCO, this photobook combines the visual narratives of twelve Mexican photographers…
On the surface, absolutely nothing, one’s a history-rich, empire-soaked cornerstone of Western civilisation, and the other’s a desert-born shrine to excess and fleeting thrills. But in Rome – Las Vegas: Bread and Circuses, Iwan Baan tears up the rulebook, stitching these two wild cities together in ways that’ll leave you reeling. Published by Lars Müller,…
Flipping through Utopia Ending by Gianluca Calise feels like stepping back into a chunk of my life I had not pieced together until now. From August 2012 to early 2014, I was hopping planes every Sunday from Aberdeen to Heathrow, working as a change and configuration manager on a massive IT rollout for an oil…