By Elin Spring and Suzanne Révy
The Confucian adage, “may you live in interesting times” throws a very positive spin on the challenges of the past year and a half. Since the foibles and triumphs of humankind have endured, photographers have continued to grapple with them in remarkable ways. Once again this year, we are pleased to share some beautifully conceived and produced artistic expressions in our Favorite Photobooks of 2021.
In our first section, we present ten new monographs; in the second section, we feature seven retrospectives and exhibition catalogs; our third section features a new take on the classic picture magazine; and in the final section, we list the eleven books we’ve admired enough to review in 2021. All listings are in alphabetical order by author’s last name and include a link in blue to a site where the publication can be purchased, just in case you have gift list with someone special on it.
NEW MONOGRAPHS
You can call me Nana by Will Harris
Will Harris: You can call me Nana
Images and Text by Will Harris, Overlapse, 2021, trade hardcover, 17 x 21.5 cm portrait, 96 pages, section-sewn binding with paper covers and tip-in; interior tip-ins, 120 photographs and illustrations, $40.
An intimate book that explores the biography of a grandmother whose memories are lost to dementia. In this moving tribute, Harris blends family photographs, contemporary pictures and hand-written questions and answers between himself and his grandmother. The changing dynamics between generations are palpable with fading memories that may never be recovered. Harris describes feeling as though he lost her twice, first to dementia and again, when she passed on in 2018.
The Unchosen Ones by R. J. Kern
R.J. Kern: The Unchosen Ones
Photographs by R.J. Kern, Essay by Alison Nordström, MW Editions, 2021, 9.25”x 11.75”, 136 pages, 111 color illustrations, $50.
This monograph weaves together two points in time, creating a story greater than the sum of its parts. The inspired project of photographing children who competed with their livestock- and lost – at Minnesota County Fairs in 2016 focuses on personal resilience to an all-too-human experience. By revisiting his subjects in 2020, R.J. Kern deepens their narratives, nurtures our curiosity, and increases an appreciation for both the beauty and hard truths of American pastoral life. Masterfully photographed and empathetic from cover to cover, this mesmerizing monograph aims right for the heart.
Yesterday by Sal Taylor Kydd
Sal Taylor Kydd: Yesterday
Photographs and poem by Sal Taylor Kydd, Foreword by Aline Smithson, Datz Press, 2021, 20 x 28 cm, 56 pages, Limited Edition of 200 including signed and numbered archival pigment print, $120.
Arising as an intuitive response to the pandemic, Kydd layers the lyricism of selective focus and warm-toned monochromes into airy compositions that situate youthful flesh in the palm of ancient landscapes. Her ethereal photographs seem meditative but carry an undercurrent of tension between yesterdays and tomorrows, knowns and unknowns. This jewel of a book closes with one of Kydd’s poems, gratefully accepting the restorative power of nature in the face of despair – crowning a hopeful keepsake amidst so many dark visions delivered during the pandemic.
Family Matters by Gillian Laub
Gillian Laub: Family Matters
Photographs and text by Gillian Laub, Aperture, 2021, hardcover, 9.5”x10.75”x0.87”, 200 pages, 85 images, $50.
Laub tackles the dynamics of opposing political stances among her extended family in this riveting collection of photographs. An expressive group of relatives, Laub’s pictures reveal a family living large, often celebrating in each other’s company until a riff appears over the rise of Trumpism. She navigates the arguments with aplomb, and concludes with a touching letter to her daughters.
Life Narrated by Nature by Rhonda Lashley Lopez
Rhonda Lashley Lopez: Life Narrated by Nature
Photographs by Rhonda Lashley Lopez, Datz Press, 2021 18×23.5 cm, French folding and Korean traditional hand stitch binding, wooden slipcase with a poem by Mary Oliver, $120.
This is an exquisitely crafted softcover book with a traditional Korean hand stitched binding presented in a wooden slipcase. Lopez photographs the land, flora, and fauna and employs a variety of non-traditional printing techniques to create expressive odes to the redemptive and quiet power in the small details and grander vistas of nature. The work is accompanied by a Mary Oliver poem with Korean translations. It is a delight to the touch.
SHE by Rania Matar
Rania Matar: SHE
Photography by Rania Matar, Texts by Mark Alice Durant and Orin Zahra, Radius Books, 2021, 11.5” x 13.5”, 184 pages, 83 images, $60.
SHE is a tour-de-force of images that transcend portraiture, mining the cusp of adulthood and illuminating that evanescent phase of developmental change. Matar succeeds in portraying the mystery of each young woman’s emotional ambivalence, balancing their sense of apprehension with expressions that reveal serious determination. Although her subjects may be on the cusp of transition, Matar herself has come into full bloom with sensitive, nuanced photographs that radiate artistic brilliance.
Hero by Shawn Records
Shawn Records: Hero
Photographs and text by Shawn Records, Ain’t Bad 2021, 9”x6”, 96 pages, hardcover, perfect bound, edition of 300, $35.
This small red tome functions as a stream of conscience journey through random photographs that are at times wistful, humorous and occasionally melancholy. Rooted in daily ritual and loosely organized into chapters, this delightful book satisfies with a hodgepodge of visual puns and an affinity for the prosaic.
The Forgotten by Rosalind Fox Solomon
Rosalind Fox Solomon: The Forgotten
Photographs by Rosalind Fox Solomon, poetry by Ilya Kaminsky, MACK, 2021, embossed hardback, 24x28cm, 160 pages, $40.
Straddling a retrospective and monograph, this powerful book explores the wounds of war on bodies throughout the world. Leafing through the pages, the journey grows darker, but Solomon is unflinching. Black and white images made decades ago are interspersed with more recent pictures made in a wide range geographic regions, emphasizing the deep well of interests and interactions throughout her photographic career. She underscores the global nature of war and the profound impacts it leaves on the lives of individuals, punctuated by the charged poetry of Ilya Kaminsky.
Balancing Cultures by Jerry Takigawa
Jerry Takigawa: Balancing Cultures
Photographs by Jerry Takigawa, Foreword by John Hamamura, Dayo Press, 2021, 96 pages, $50.
Amidst the burgeoning expressions of anti-Asian sentiment in the United States, Takigawa’s eloquent and poignant collaged photographs give voice to the enduring effects of WWII internment camps on the artist’s own family. His intimate yet enigmatic imagery summons empathy for all who are victimized by racism, functioning at once as an elegy and a cautionary tale.
Remnants of an Exodus by AJ Thompson
Al J. Thompson: Remnants of an Exodus
Images and Poem by Al J. Thompson, Gathering Remnants essay by Shane Rocheleau, Gnomic Book, 2021, case bound 104 pages book with a red PVC insert, 55 black and white photographs, $42.
This vertical format book featuring black and white images of city and landscapes, interspersed with portraits made in the New York City suburb of Spring Valley, explores the ramifications of gentrification. A Caribbean immigrant community, we learn that between 2000 and 2010, Spring Valley’s proportion of African American residents decreased from 60% to less than 40%. Thompson had lived there as a teenager in the mid-90’s and returned over several years to consider the economic, social and political shifts over time. Rocheleau’s powerful essay underscores the myriad ways that racism undermines the human spirit, yet Thompson’s empathetic and poetic photographs embrace community and a sense of belonging.
RETROSPECTIVES AND EXHIBITION CATALOGS
Devour the Land, Edited by Makeda Best
Devour the Land: War and American Landscape Photography since 1970, Edited by Makeda Best
Edited by Makeda Best; With contributions by Makeda Best, Steven Hoelscher, Abrahm Lustgarten, Courtney J. Martin, Katherine Mintie, Ed Roberson, and Will Wilson. Yale University Press, 2021, 8”x 10”, 262 pages, 137 color and B&W images, $50.
This catalog details the impressive photographic exhibition curated by Makeda Best, Richard L. Menschel Curator of Photography, at the Harvard Art Museums. Asking how photography can record both the glaring and the imperceptible environmental, political, and economic effects of our vast military-industrial complex, this broad and deep interrogation features notable work by sixty artists. With the impacts radiating from cumulative domestic and foreign wars becoming increasingly alarming, the photographs in this compendium pose a chilling existential question and an urgent call to action.
A Civil Rights Journey by Doris Derby
Doris Derby: A Civil Rights Journey
Photographs and text by Doris Derby, essay by Constance Slaughter-Harvey, MACK, 2021, paperback with flaps, 21.5×28.5 cm, 168 pages. $40
Active in the Civil Rights movement, Doris Derby (American, b. 1939) photographed in the delta region of Mississippi through the 1960’s, motivated by the politics of her grandmother and father, who fought for equal rights and dignity under the law. Her images are intimate and her subjects are relaxed in front of her camera. Derby’s affecting portraits reveal how personal strength and familial connection can garner progress toward more equitable societies. Her work, which has been somewhat overlooked in more mainstream accounts of the Civil Rights movement, remains relevant today in the wake of last summer’s protests against police brutality and systemic racism.
A Time of Youth: San Francisco, 1967-1968 by William Gedney
William Gedney: A Time of Youth: San Francisco, 1966-1967
By William Gedney, edited by Lisa McCarty with an essay by Philip Gefter, Duke University Press, 2021, hard cover, 9 1/4”x9 1/4”, 176 pages, 127 color illustrations, $45
The late William Gedney (1932-1989) made photographs on long trips to Kentucky, India and San Francisco. Among his archive, which is housed at Duke University, are myriad contact sheets, prints, detailed notebooks and completed maquette for the photographs he made of youth culture in San Francisco. Staying as true to his vision as possible, editor Lisa McCarty deftly reanimates Gedney’s vision which had lain dormant for decades. Gedney was a master at using every inch of the frame, filling his negatives with gesture and empathy. His life was too short, leaving the work unfinished. Through McCarty’s stewardship and Gefter’s essay, this well regarded, but little known photographer’s projects are finally being published in books, as Gedney had envisioned.
Encampment, Wyoming: Selections from the Lora Webb Nichols Archive 1899-1948, Edited by Nicole Jean Hill
Encampment, Wyoming: Selections from the Lora Webb Nichols Archive 1899-1948, Edited by Nicole Jean Hill
Photographs from the Lora Webb Nichols archive, Edited by Nicole Jean Hill, Texts by Nicole Jean Hill and Nancy F. Anderson, Fw: Books, 2021, 21.5 x 28 cm, 208 pages, $68.
Picture a collection of photographs of a dusty Wyoming town at the dawn of the 20th century, long after the boom of copper mining has passed. Now imagine these pictures made with sparkling precision, dynamic composition, and a decidedly female perspective and you’ll have an inkling of the imagery culled from over 24,000 photographs by the clear-eyed, intrepid photographer Lora Webb Nichols, as well as some by amateur photographers she collected as the proprietor of a photofinishing business. Candid portraits, yes, but also rarely documented domestic scenes, from the disabled and dying to the antics of kids and their pets. This book offers a viewpoint as fresh and exhilarating as it is rare.
Eikoh Hosoe: Pioneering Post-1945 Japanese Photography, Edited by Yasufumi Nakamori
Eikoh Hosoe: Pioneering Post-1945 Japanese Photography
Edited by Yasufumi Nakamori with Christina Yang, translation by Lili Selden, with selected texts by Eikoh Hosoe and others. Embossed hardback, 25 x 32.5cm, 400 pages, MACK, September 2021, In English, $80.
A beautifully printed and meticulously assembled 400-page volume of Hosoe’s most memorable and influential work, arranged by project in roughly chronological order. This is the definitive retrospective, including illuminating essays by the 88 year-old photographer and various friends and scholars, along with chronologies from his life, exhibits, bibliographies, and museum collections. If you are interested in one of the most celebrated Japanese photographers in the world, this is a gorgeous keepsake.
Mona Kuhn: Works
Mona Kuhn: Works
Photographs by Mona Kuhn. Essays by Rebecca Morse, Simon Baker, Chris Littlewood, and Darius Himes and interview by Elizabeth Avedon. Thames & Hudson, 2021, 224 pages, 180 illustrations, 10″ x 12.4″, $60.
Known for her naturalist nude figure studies, this is Kuhn’s first retrospective, featuring the sensual and tender B&W images from the start of her career in the 1990’s to the metaphorical, selective-focus color imagery of today. Background and insights into Kuhn’s process, subjects and locations by Rebecca Morse, Simon Baker, Chris Littlewood, and Darius Himes and Elizabeth Avedon complement her beautifully reproduced and distinctive imagery – by turns mystical, reverent, or playful, and always intimate.
Georgia O’Keeffe, Photographer, Edited by Lisa Volpe
Georgia O’Keeffe, Photographer
Photographs by Georgia O’Keeffe. Text by Lisa Volpe. Contribution by Ariel Plotek.
Yale University Press, New Haven, USA, 2021. In English, 288 pp., 588 illustrations, 10″x 10¾”, $50.
The famous painter Georgia O’Keeffe was married to the famous photographer Alfred Stieglitz, who helped make her image nearly as iconic as her paintings. But it wasn’t until after his death in 1947 that O’Keeffe seriously pursued photography. Despite her declaration that, “I want to be a painter, just a painter,” from 1956-1986, her photographic practice exemplified and extended her signature artistic approach. With voracious inventiveness, she experimented with angle, framing, format, and time of day and year, rendering light with precise vision and essential form. This exhibition catalog features over one hundred richly reproduced plates of O’Keeffe’s Abiquiú home, surrounding landscapes, travel, and still-life, along with portraits of friends and her pet Chows. Significantly, it includes a complete catalogue of her photographic work. The lucid essay by exhibition organizer and book editor, Lisa Volpe, Associate Curator of Photography at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, is a revelatory photographic discovery and enlightening contextualization of O’Keeffe’s artwork, broadening appreciation for one of America’s greatest artists.
AND SOMETHING A LITTLE DIFFERENT
The Curious Society No. 1, inside cover spread featuring a photograph by Rob Lamkey/American Reportage.
The Curious Society No. 1
Kenneth Jarecke, Editor in Chief, various contributors, 14 1/2″x11″, softcover with flaps, 256 pages, Curious Society, 2021, annual membership, $300, individual issues, $95
The Curious Society aims to reimagine the classic magazine format and to showcase photojournalism and documentary photography in print. The brainchild of Montana based photojournalist Kenneth Jarecke, The Curious Society is a member driven endeavor which released the first of four expansive magazines earlier this year featuring a broad range of photographic styles and stories. In addition, they have supported students with grants, paid reproduction fees, built a community through their call for work and hosted a gathering for all members in Montana last summer. The annual fee entitles you to four issues of this oversized publication, which can also be purchased individually.
BOOKS WE REVIEWED IN 2021
A WAY WITH WORDS – PART ONE (published 2.23.21)
Five recently published volumes employ a blend of images and text in ways that are unique and indelible. Here, we review two completely different books whose prodigious use of descriptive prose guides our visual interpretations.
Karen Davis’ Still Stepping: A Family Portrait: https://afamilyportrait.net/
Mark Alice Durant’s compendium of images and essays, Running Falling Flying Floating Crawling: https://www.saintlucybooks.com/shop/p/h3oaar1buto624t0seccpuujbq0eef-4sg38-rhsxx
Link to our review: https://www.whatwillyouremember.com/still-stepping-a-family-portrait-by-karen-davis-running-falling-flying-floating-crawling-by-mark-alice-durant-book-reviews/
A WAY WITH WORDS – PART TWO (published 2.25.21)
In Part Two of A Way With Words, we examine three photo books that feature allusive lyricism or cunning journalistic text to guide our interpretations of their imagery.
Sandi Haber Fifield’s The Certainty of Nothing: https://www.sandihaberfifield.com/books
Rebecca Norris Webb’s Night Calls: https://www.radiusbooks.org/all-books/p/rebecca-norris-webb-night-calls
Amani Willett’s A Parallel Road: https://www.amaniwillett.com/a-parallel-road-book
Link to our review: https://www.whatwillyouremember.com/the-certainty-of-nothing-by-sandi-haber-fifield-night-calls-by-rebecca-norris-webb-a-parallel-road-by-amani-willett-book-reviews/
THE NEW WOMAN BEHIND THE CAMERA (published 3.16.21)
The New Woman Behind the Camera, curated and edited by Andrea Nelson, Associate Curator of Photographs, National Gallery of Art and Mia Fineman, Curator of Photographs, Metropolitan Museum of Art, sets out to define the modernist movement from the 1920’s to the 1950’s and highlight the contributions of an international cast of notable women photographers whose work during that era has been overlooked. Along with five other photography scholars and curators, Nelson and Fineman’s essays offer context for a variety of photographic practices, reframing the prevailing oeuvre by broadening the scope of historic inquiry. The exhibition will open this summer at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City, and this fall at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC.
Order the exhibition catalog: https://shop.nga.gov/the-new-woman-behind-the-camera.html
Link to our review: https://www.whatwillyouremember.com/the-new-woman-behind-the-camera-by-andrea-nelson-and-mia-fineman/
PIONEERING WOMEN (published 3.18.21)
It’s women’s history month! Below, we review three recently published books about two pioneering early 20th century west coast photographers, Anne Brigman and Imogen Cunningham.
Anne Brigman: The Photographer of Enchantment by Kathleen Pyne:
https://yalebooks.yale.edu/book/9780300249941/anne-brigman
A Visionary in Modern Photography: Anne Brigman
by Ann M. Wolfe with contributions by Susan Ehrens, Alexander Nemerov, Kathleen Pyne, Heather Waldroup: https://www.rizzoliusa.com/book/9780847862870
Imogen Cunningham: A Retrospective, by Paul Martineau with contributions by Susan Ehrens:
https://shop.getty.edu/products/imogen-cunningham-a-retrospective-978-1606066751
Link to our review: https://www.whatwillyouremember.com/pioneering-women-photographers-anne-brigman-and-imogen-cunningham-book-reviews/
AS I LAY LONGING (published 4.28.21)
After this cold, dark winter, I long to feel the warmth of the summer sun on my skin. Following an interminable confinement, I yearn for reconnection with my far-flung family and close circle of friends. In anxious anticipation of normalcy, I have busied myself making photographs and reading photography books. Two recently published books, Knit Club by Carolyn Drake and In Plain Air by Irina Rozovsky feed my visceral need for mild weather and human connection with their rich, earthy palettes, warm light and penetrating portraits of both people and nature.
In Plain Air by Irina Rozovsky:
https://mackbooks.co.uk/collections/frontpage/products/in-plain-air-br-irina-rozovsky
Knit Club by Carolyn Drake:
https://tbwbooks.com/products/knit-club
Link to our review: https://www.whatwillyouremember.com/book-reviews-knit-club-by-carolyn-drake-and-in-plain-air-by-irina-rozovsky/
AMERICAN GEOGRAPHY (published 8.18.21)
Sandra S. Philips, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMoMA) Curator Emerita of Photography, along with Sally Martin Katz, Curatorial Assistant of Photography, have considered the American landscape through the eyes of contemporary photographers for a planned exhibition entitled American Geography: Photographs of Land Use from 1840 to the Present at SFMoMA which was cancelled due to Covid-19. Fortunately, the accompanying catalog, American Geography, was recently published by Radius Books (2021), and invites readers to consider compelling narratives of our cultural history through regional topography and looking at how natural resources or land have been carved up and exploited in building and sustaining this nation.
Order the exhibition catalog: https://www.radiusbooks.org/all-books/p/american-geography
Link to our review: https://www.whatwillyouremember.com/american-geography_published-by-radius-books/
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