PhotoBook Journal Environment | Thinking About Photography

PhotoBook Journal

I'm pleased to feature reviews from PhotoBook Journal with selections from Gerhard Clausing, Douglas Stockdale and their team of Contributing Editors on photobooks that explore our relationship with our environment.

Hyperborea: Stories from the Russian Arctic by Evgenia Arbugaeva

Review by Rudy Vega

Hyperborea: Stories from the Russian Arctic, the latest book by Evgenia Arbugaeva, offers a profound exploration of life in the Siberian Arctic. Published by Thames and Hudson, the book is described as a journey to the most inaccessible Arctic regions of Siberia, showcasing dreamlike encounters with its people, landscapes, and fauna—a description that accurately sets the stage for an enthralling path of discovery.

Arbugaeva, who grew up in Tiksi, a town on the shore of the Laptev Sea in the Republic of Yakutia, presents a collection of visual narratives that are as unforgettable as they are deeply personal. Her intimate connection with her homeland illuminates the fragile beauty and desolate grandeur of both the land and its inhabitants. This unique perspective, born out of her personal history and deep-seated relationship with the region, lends an authenticity to her work that transcends mere photographic experience. Use this link to read the rest of the review, additional images and information.

Niemandsland by Daniel Chatard

Review by Matt Schneider

Niemandsland by photographer Daniel Chatard is a wonderful addition to Eriskay Connection’s thoughtful lineup of photobooks on the politics of climate change, which includes other notable titles like Forgotten Seas by Tanja Engelberts and Bron by Zindzi Zwietering. With 224 matte pages measuring 240 x 320 mm, it’s an imposing and visually interesting work to engage with and study. Chatard is clearly a skilled photographer, but it is worth noting that this photobook is as much a work of history and political commentary as it is a work of photography. Truthfully, writing a review for Niemandsland has been a difficult task, not because I did not enjoy the photobook or because I thought it was of poor quality, but because I am afraid that I cannot write a review that does this excellent book justice. Use this link to read the rest of the review, additional images and information

Aqua, by Maria Elisa Ferraris

Review by Hans Hickerson

In Maria Elisa Ferraris’ Aqua we witness the wild, terrible, awesome, raw, relentless power of water. In 34 spectacular photographs it rises, falls, lifts, pushes, pounds, churns, heaves, hammers, roils, boils, breaks, surges, slams, crashes, smashes, thunders, roars, and rages. It comes at you and doesn’t stop.

The images in Aqua were made in Nazaré, the coastal town and surfing mecca in Portugal known for having the largest waves ever surfed. The book is not about surfing however. You do not see any humans, and in only a few places do you even see the shore.

The photographs are black and white, apparently made with a longer focal-length lens that slightly flattens the images. They offer a varied inventory of wave forms, many of them breaking, some details and some wider views. The light is saturated with deep shadows. Rich, bold blacks and shining highlights are favored and mild, nuanced midtones are mostly absent. If it were music, Aqua would be played fortissimo rather than piano.

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

The End Sends Advance Warning by Todd Hido

Review by Paul Anderson

Memories came flooding back to me as I paged through Todd Hido’s 2023 photobook The End Sends Advance Warning. When I was growing up in the upper Midwest, there were moments of a winter’s evening when the combination of cold, clouds, a blurry sun and the stillness of open spaces produced a uniquely melancholy mood. These emotions are eloquently evoked here in the photographs of Todd Hido.

The book is largely a collection of landscape and environmental photographs made between 2013 and 2023. These are images that you might be see while driving down a lonely back road at dusk, or while walking through fallow fields with poor weather closing in. The images feature flat, low horizon lines, obscured suns, desolate roads, abandoned houses, skeletal or misshapen trees, and lonely railroad tracks.

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

Why We Photograph Animals by Huw Lewis-Jones

Review by Gerhard Clausing

The documentation of animal life all around us has long been a favorite area of photography. This very important volume illuminates animal photography of all sorts from a vast number of angles, featuring a number of photographers who concentrate on documenting animal life, as well as essays dealing with animal issues from a variety of perspectives. Not only do we get to understand various methodologies, but also many purposes, and we are able to familiarize ourselves with all kinds of applications of animal photographs.

This photobook presents very interesting sections of explanations and background data that are interspersed with the images. First and foremost are the Profiles sections, which feature 28 different animals photographers. Mixed in are some 20 sections labeled Insights, Histories, and Fragments, which present various rationales, past and current viewpoints, as well as some historical backgrounds about photographing animals. Use this link to read the rest of the review, view additional images and information

Creatures Found by Adam Thorman

Review by Hans Hickerson

Photography is a surprising medium. You think that everything has been done already, that you have seen it all, and – surprise – along comes something original. Who knew? Maybe it has been done before, but Adam Thorman’s photobook Creatures Found was a new one for me.

What Thorman has done is look around and see things – shapes, forms, textures, colors – that look like life forms, mostly imaginary. Rocks, roots, trees, shadows, sand, bark, paint, plants, wood, water, cloth, furniture, a fence, a jellyfish, a dry mount press, a stump, and a hedge become eyes, arms, mouths, faces, heads, skulls, bodies, lizards, Orcs, Ents, space aliens, and spirits.

Who knew to look for such things? Who even knew that they were out there to be seen? Use this link to read the rest of the review, view additional images and information

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