As we look ahead to the coming year, we revisit five photobooks that stood out to us in 2022.
Tag Archives: 20th Century photography
New and Notable Photobooks: Speedway 1972 by Henry Horenstein
Centered around the sport of modified stock car racing, Horenstein’s new monograph comprises a fascinating look at a subculture as it existed half a century ago.
New and Notable Photobooks: Nudism in a Cold Climate by Annebella Pollen
Annebella Pollen writes with clarity and insight about a fascinating niche subject: the history of recreational nudism in 20th Century England. In the process, she takes an in-depth look at the idiosyncratic photographs that sprang up around this often misunderstood and rather idyllic subculture.
Book Review: Ruth Orkin – A Photo Spirit
Ruth Orkin: A Photo Spirit reproduces over 200 of Orkin’s photographs in honor of what would have been her 100th birthday. It’s the most definitive collection of her work to date.
Book Review: I See a City by Todd Webb
This collection of Todd Webb’s work is a compelling and elegant visual record of 1940s New York–a city on the verge of enormous change–as well as an opportunity to discover a great 20th Century photographer who’s been largely overlooked.
Book Review: Fotoclubismo by Sarah Hermanson Meister
A beautifully printed, densely informative catalog that accompanies the current MoMA exhibit (on view through September), Fotoclubismo highlights the visually innovative photography of a largely unknown mid-20th Century amateur photography club in Brazil.
Book Review: Diana & Nikon by Janet Malcolm
In her collected writings on photography, New Yorker staff writer Janet Malcolm accomplishes what many critics set out to do but few achieve, illuminating much that is true about the medium in a unique, eloquent voice that is piercingly intelligent and bluntly honest.
Book Review: Yamabito, the Mountain People by Osamu Sato
In the 1970s, an unassuming Tokyo salaryman used his one day off each week to journey into the mountains of Gunma Prefecture, an 8×10” view camera in tow. Leaving the city behind, he trekked—first by train, then by bus, and finally on foot—until he arrived at the remote villages there.
Book Review: Grim Street by Mark Cohen
Photographer Mark Cohen stalked the same small radius of Wilkes-Barre, where he lived and worked, for decades, taking groundbreaking and revealing photos of small-town life that revel in the details. A well-edited selection of his black-and-white work comprises Grim Street.
Book Review: Palante: Young Lords Party by Michael Abramson with the Young Lords Party
Inspired by the Black Panthers, the Young Lords Party was an organization of Puerto Rican activists and community organizers, many of whom were first-generation college students at the time. The movement’s heyday lasted a little under two years, from 1969 to 1971. During that time, its members were on the frontlines of the struggle for social, racial, and economic justice.
The Parallax Review 