Thinking About Photography
Dedicated to expanding our ideas about photography
PhotoBook Journal
It's been over three years since I queried Douglas Stockdale about including PhotoBook Journal book reviews as part of the showcases. That first one, Photographers and Text, seemed like a perfect fit - and since then we've included almost sixty reviews. For this showcase, I wanted to pull back the curtain and give you a bit of insight into the Journal, their team of contributing editors - how they approach their reviews and links to their own work as well as a recent photobook review for the Journal.
© Brian Arnold
Brian Arnold
I prefer books that are themselves the art object, not just a vehicle for disseminating the pictures – so books that use sequencing, narrative, or the physicality of the book as necessary for understanding the photographs. As a reviewer, generally I start by trying to find a context for interpreting the pictures and determining the photographer’s intentions, utilizing historical, personal, cultural, or aesthetic associations for reading the book.
A recent review of Chilean photographer Sergio Larrain's Valparaíso
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© Gerhard Clausing, The Cosmic Egg, India Mythology, 2025 (currently exhibited at the Los Angeles Center of Photography)
Gerhard Clausing
Gerhard (Gerry) Clausing served as Associate Editor and Editor of the Photobook Journal from 2016 to 2025 and continues as Editorial Consultant. So far, he has contributed more than 230 photobook reviews, drawing on a background that includes a Ph.D. from UC Berkeley, extensive studies in psychology and art, as well as many academic publications and several major textbooks. His reviews reflect a deep interest in visual narratives that challenge and engage: “I am particularly interested in projects that explore cultural identity, everyday experience, and emotional resonance through carefully constructed sequences. I value ambiguity, layered meaning, and the ‘indecisive moment’ as powerful elements in photobook storytelling.”
Widely exhibited and recognized for his work, he applies these same principles to his own photography and photorealistic illustration (two examples attached). Currently, he is focused on visualizing ancient myths and folktales, blending various techniques to reimagine timeless stories through compelling imagery.
A recent review of Birthe Piontek's Zero Hour
© Gerhard Clausing, Munich’s Freedom, 2024 (exhibited at the Orange Camera Gallery, 2024)
© Steve Harp, Munich
Steve Harp
www.blurb.com/user/sharpdepaul
My approach as a reviewer has relatively little to do with taking an evaluative or judgmental approach to the works. I generally only agree to review books which in some way have already piqued my interest, that have aroused my curiosity or enticed me in some way(s). What I look for - and use writing as a way to explore - is a way to enter and navigate the book, a way to think about and consider how the artist is telling the story. This includes not only considerations of sequencing, layout, design, type(s) of imagery, use (if any) of text but, and perhaps most importantly, looking for those associations or connections that seem to best illuminate the work and let it speak.
A recent review of Gilbert McCarragher's Prospect Cottage: Derek Jarman’s House.
© Hans Hickerson, Portland, 1979
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© Hans Hickerson, Portland, 1979
Hans Hickerson
hans-hickerson.squarespace.com/work
Photobook Journal Editor Hans Hickerson has contributed some 30 articles and reviews since joining the magazine in September 2024. He attributes his enthusiasm to his curiosity to discover what holds the photos together in books and makes them work.
Hickerson has been a photographer since the late 1970s. He self-published his first photobook in 1982, made a few more books into dummies after that, and then worked with photocollages for several decades before returning to work on books during the pandemic. Since 2023 he has published six photobooks and two zines and currently has several more in various stages of completion.
A recent review of Kevin Cooley's The Wizard of Awe
© Brian F. O'Neill, A Desert Transect
© Brian F. O'Neill, A Desert Transect
Brian F. O'Neill
Brian is a Contributing Editor at The Photobook Journal and Assistant Curator at Immaterial Books.
My relationship with photobooks began as I started collecting work that interested me as both a photographer, but also a sociologist (the field in which I am formally trained). As a result of these two dimensions of my work, I found myself reading criticism and theory. This became intriguing territory, because I begin to ask, not only why a project or a picture “works,” but how it figures in the larger field of photography and history, and even why an object like a photobook exists as it does. In The Pleasures of Good Photographs, Gerry Badger describes how he got into “criticism” - he needed to articulate for himself what an image or photobook meant, more than any external motivation. This is true for me too, and with great new work emerging all the time, I enjoy the process of interpreting people’s work, which I hope can be of interest to others of course, but it also informs my own projects. Furthermore, one of the most rewarding aspects of criticism is that I quite often am able to have calls and discuss the work with the authors. Reviews are a way to constantly be open to new worlds, ideas, and people.
A recent review of Nora Bibel’s Uncertain Homelands.
© Matt Schneider, 2025
Matt Schneider
Matt Schneider is a visual sociologist and professor at the University of North Carolina Wilmington. He has personal and academic interests in community and civic engagement, urbanism, environment, and racial and ethnic relations. In his own work, he sees photography as a tool for social commentary and a vehicle for social analysis. Likewise, when reviewing photobooks, he is typically drawn to works that go beyond personal reflection or apolitical documentation. Instead, he prefers photobooks that directly and intentionally contribute to ongoing public debate, often relating to built environments/infrastructure, practices of political engagement, and climate change. You can read more about his work at mjschneider.net
Photo Caption: June 14, 2025. As a military parade timed for President Trump's birthday takes place in Washington, D.C., protestors in Wilmington, NC gather for "No Kings Day," braving the rain to rebuke President Trump's nativist and authoritarian agenda. Wilmington Police estimate that 4,500-5,000 attended the event. Across the country, millions more participated in similar demonstrations.
A recent review of Kaushik Mukerjee’s Visible Voices: Graffiti Across Berlin.
© Douglas Stockdale
Douglas Stockdale
When I founded PhotoBook Journal (originally The PhotoBook), in 2008 as a photo-blogger I was interested in discussing the photobooks in my library: what were the books that I found intriguing. This was also a transitional period as small-press, self-publishing and digital lithography were becoming a reality. I began to broaden my review perspective to include the publishing attributes that I felt created a difference in the quality of a photobook.
I have now been published by Punctum Edizioni (Rome), self-published five artist books, a how-to book, started my own publishing imprint and have been teaching book development workshops across the country, most recently I am a Photolucida Critical Mass Finalist in 2023 and 2024.
IG @douglasstockdale
Bluesky @stockdale.bsky.social
A recent review of Alan Gignoux’s Russian Rustbelt.