Xmas 2023 – Photo Book Selection

Dora, Yerkwood, Walker County, Alabama

by Fumi Nagasaka, Published by GOST

During the 2016 US Presidential elections Japanese photographer, Fumi Nagasaka, became intrigued by the rural and southern USA. She had lived in New York City for a decade but despite travelling the world, had yet to visit the rest of the US. All this changed when her friend, Tanya Rouse, invited her to her hometown of Dora, Alabama. Nagasaka continued to visit Dora over several years, gradually building a photographic archive of her visits. A selection of these photographs are included in her new book Dora, Yerkwood, Walker County, Alabama.
Buy the book here. 

From the Heads of the Hollers

by Shelby Lee Adams, Published by GOST

Every summer for over 40 years, Shelby Lee Adams travelled to the mountains of Eastern Kentucky to take photographs. Now in his 70s, Adams has returned to his archive of unpublished images taken between 1974 and 2010. His aim was to print those which may have been previously overlooked, concerned that if he did not print them in his lifetime, the photographs would never be made. Nearly 90 of these unpublished photographs are included in his new book From the Heads of the Hollers — portraying the culture and people of his native land.

A donation of 10% of proceeds from sale of the book (after pre-orders have finished) purchased directly from www.gostbooks.com will be donated to Team Kentucky Flood Relief Fund.
Buy the book here.

BRANTVILLE

by Melinda Blauvelt, Published by Stanley / Barker

In 1972, Melinda Blauvelt traveled to the small Acadian fishing village of Brantville, New Brunswick on Canada’s Eastern coast. She lived with a fisherman and his family, ran a day camp, and made a series of remarkable, compassionate portraits of the Acadian community that summer and on three subsequent visits from 1972 to 1974. Her photographs are now published as a series for the first time.

Melinda Blauvelt was in the first class of women at Yale and then the first woman in Yale’s MFA photography program where Walker Evans became her mentor. Blauvelt would later teach at Harvard and at the University of Virginia where she established the photography program. Her pictures are held by major museums throughout the United States. She lives today in a small village on the coast of Rhode Island.
Buy the book here.

 

TX | CA 17

by Jason Lee, Published by Stanley / Barker

 

The pictures in Jason Lee’s TX I CA 17 were made in the summer of 2017 on a drive from his then adopted home state of Texas to Los Angeles, where he’d lived prior and from where he set out to start photographing from the road in 2006.

TX | CA 17 is the first time Lee has published images from a single outing. They are presented in geographical and (rough) chronological order—North Texas, NM, AZ, the California desert, and finally DTLA, where we see the gentleman awaiting his bus. The exposures were made primarily along and surrounding Highways 287, 40/66, 62, and 10.
Buy the book here.

 

Niagara

by Alec Soth, Published by MACK

In the follow-up to his critically acclaimed debut monograph Sleeping by the Mississippi, Alec Soth turned his eye to another iconic body of water, Niagara Falls. As with his photographs of the Mississippi, Soth’s pictures of Niagara are less about natural wonder than human desire. “I went to Niagara for the same reason as the honeymooners and suicide jumpers,” says Soth, “the relentless thunder of the Falls just calls for big passion.” Working over the course of two years on both the American and Canadian sides of the Falls using a large-format 8×10 camera, the photographs are rigorously composed and richly detailed. Soth depicts newlyweds and naked lovers, motel parking lots and pawn shop wedding rings. Throughout the book, Soth has interspersed a number of love letters from the subjects he photographed. We read about teenage crushes, workplace affairs, heartbreak and suicide. Oscar Wilde wrote of the Falls, “The sight of the stupendous waterfall must be one of the earliest, if not the keenest, disappointments in American married life.” In Soth’s Niagara, we see both the passion and the disappointment. His pictures are a remarkable portrayal of modern love and its aftermath.
But the book here.

I can’t stand to see you cry

by Rahim Fortune, Published by Loose Joints

« A year and change into father’s diagnosis, his nightly calls began to become more frequent. My sister and I, his youngest children, spent countless hours in his room caring for him as his body gave up. Many nights we’d leave his room both knowing his condition was getting much worse, but we chose to say nothing of it. »

I can’t stand to see you cry is an exploration of Texas and the surrounding states, as well as the people who are fixed within its complex landscape. Fortune analyses relationships between family, friends and strangers, all caught in a flood of health and environmental issues while working to maintain grace. The artist uses his own personal experiences to explore the friction between public and private life, and the unspoken tensions in daily life through an approach rooted in the landscape. Moreover, Fortune’s biographical approach to photography attempts to unpack his own identity and experience in the midst of a pandemic, civil unrest, a cross-country move, a career, and the loss of a parent, thinking about both the future and past.
Buy the book here.

 

Haiti

by Bruce Gilden, Published by EXB/GOST

 

Bruce Gilden first journeyed to Haiti in 1984 to document the famous Mardi Gras festivities in Port au Prince. Fascinated by the country, he returned many times and his landmark monograph Haiti, a culmination of these photographs made during this period was first published in 1996. Gilden has continued to return to Haiti, and this new expanded edition of his book includes over thirty additional photographs made up until 2010, completing Gilden’s vision of the county.
Buy the book here.

 

Into the Silence

by Yasuhiro Ogawa, Published by Blue Lotus Edition / Photo Editions

Yasuhiro Ogawa’s new photobook Into the Silence captures the rugged yet timeless beauty of Japan’s northern region as he follows in the footsteps of the 17th Century poet Matsuo Bashō. Ogawa set out on a journey through the Tōhoku region, unlike Bashō, who traveled on foot with pen in hand, Ogawa preferred to move by train with camera in hand.  His photographs capture the rugged beauty of the landscape, from snow-covered mountains to misty forests and along deserted roads with glimpses of wild oceans, often shot through foggy windows on a train in motion. Through his lens, Ogawa reveals a world that is both remote and timeless, a world in stillness and motion.
Buy the book here.

 

TA-RA

by Sebastian Bruno, published by Ediciones Anómalas

 

From the bar I watch a man in his sixties who has just walked in. He is wearing a shabby suit and sunglasses that are too small for his face. Without saying a word, he makes his way to the makeshift stage. He picks up the microphone. The few people in the bar remain oblivious to the scene, their eyes fixed on their half-finished pints. The music starts. These photographs were made between 2013 and 2022 in the following cities and towns in South Wales: Porthcawl, Merthyr Tydfil, Swansea, Barry Island, Nantyglo, Merthyr Vale, Cardiff, Newport, Abertillery, Caerleon, Pontypool, Brynmawr and Swffryd. In the working class communities of South Wales, ta-ra is another way of saying goodbye.
Buy the book here.

 

A Country Kind of Silence

by Ian Howorth, Published by Setanta

 

A Country Kind of Silence continues my internal exploration of feelings surrounding my sense of identity. A sense that belonging isn’t as unattainable as it is hard to grasp.
Buy the book here.

Thanks for you support and do not forget to support artists buying books, prints or just a nice message.
We believe in photography and we put our heart and passion to promote works that we love.
Photobook for us is the ultimate way to dive into a photographic work.
Support publishers also it’s important to make the photography alive and creative as ever!

Remember be curious and open a fucking photo book !
Happy holidays to all of you, from all the team.

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