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Also, at long last, I have gotten my domain name to work. Hence - rephotographica.com

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Book(s) of the Week(s)

Good Reads - 2015

Before 2015 is as old as 1915 I have to get my photo-bibliophile two-cents off my mind.

I researched the lists. A lot of lists, to be honest. I thought there would be twenty or so, and that they would include, overall, maybe forty or fifty different books. Since I knew I wouldn’t have read or seen all fifty, I hoped to add titles I found that others had missed, vainly imagining that my “good reads” might occupy a different realm.

I was wrong. So wrong. And humbled as a result.

There was a lot of overlap, to be sure. Then again, there were at least twice as many lists as I’d imagined—an exhausting and possibly exhaustive 43 and counting, according to the blog Phot(o)lia, not to mention an accounting of 387 titles tallied at least once on nineteen lists presented here courtesy of Marc Feustel and Laurence Vecten.

Messrs. Feustel and Vecten found almost twenty books mentioned on five or more of the lists they read. This is some kind of distinction.

Most of the titles I consider “good reads” from last year appeared on at least one of the 33 lists I consulted. And I remind myself that, to my chagrin, I did not see an extraordinarily large number of the books that do appear.

I am mildly pleased to note that a few of “my” books did not appear elsewhere. I leave you to speculate on what this means, exactly.

I found it instructive to read the criteria of several list-makers; their articulated parameters shaped and substantiated their choices. Some writers mentioned how they came by the books on their list. Some books were purchased, others received as gifts, others from publishers as review copies.

The titles on my list entered my life in each of those ways. And I’ve tried to avoid favoring those that came as gifts, or justifying those I purchased. This is a subjective process—that much I learned, reading 33 other people’s (or publications’—the royal, collective, anonymous “we” that makes a panel) lists.

I was pleased to see that one book I wrote for, Kurt Simonson’s Northwoods Journals, made its way onto at least one list.

Anyways, I blather on. Here’s re:photographica's list.

Good Reads from 2015.

• Atomic America, James Crnkovich, with an accompanying portfolio, “On Nuclear Seeing,” compiled by Robert Del Tredici (Naciketas Press)
• Briefly Seen: New York Street Life, Harvey Stein (Schiffer)
• Dark City, Lynn Saville (Damiani)
• Glove, artists book self-published by Andy Mattern and Paul Shambroom in conjunction with the exhibition Paul Shambroom: Lost at Minnesota Museum of American Art
• Imaging Eden: Photographers Discover the Everglades, exhibition catalogue from the Norton Museum of Art (Daylight)
• Kolkata Calcutta, Patrick Faigenbaum (Lars Müller)
• Third Person, artists book self-published by Beth Dow
• This Is Where I Live, Wendy Ewald (MACK)
• Unseen, Jessica Lange (SilvanaEditoriale) [An able challenger to the title “Best photobook by a movie star” bestowed by Blake Andrews on Dennis Hopper’s Drugstore Camera, (Damiani)]

Good Reads from 2015 That Were Mentioned On Other Lists.

Arranged roughly in descending order by number of list mentions.

• Deadline, Will Steacy [Described by Blake Andrews as the “Best photobook to peruse in the morning with coffee and toast”]
• Songbook, Alec Soth [Andrews again: “Best photobook that actually lived up to its impossible hype”]
• Bottom of the Lake, Christian Patterson
• It’s What I Do: A Photographer’s Life of Love and War, Lynsey Addario
• Wild and Precious, Jesse Burke
• Hold Still, Sally Mann
• Belongs to Joe, Casper Sejersen
• I Went to the Worst of Bars Hoping to Get Killed. But All I Could Do Was to Get Drunk Again, Ciarán Óg Arnold
• The Meadow, Barbara Bosworth
• The Notion of Family, LaToya Ruby Frazer
• Inshallah, Dima Gavrysh
• Political Abstraction, Ralph Gibson
• Detroit, Unbroken Down, Dave Jordano
• Jason Langer: Twenty Years, Jason Langer
• Invisible City, Ken Schles
• The Evolution of Ivanpah Solar, Jamey Stillings
• Hide, Jason Vaughn
• The Moth Wing Diaries, Lori Vrba
• Northwoods Journals, Kurt Simonson

Two Notes to Self.

1. Looking at 2015’s releases got me thinking about clusters of books that ought to be written about in conjunction with each other. In the vein of female photographers’ autobiographical reflections I’d include the Mann and Addario titles alongside Kate Brooks’ In the Light of Darkness: A Photographer’s Journey After 9/11  (Schilt, 2011) and Deborah Kopaken’s Shutterbabe. And the well-executed Detroit: Unbroken Down should be evaluated alongside David G. Spielman's text and photographs in The Katrina Decade: Images of an Altered City (The Historic New Orleans Collection), Daniel Traub’s North Philadelphia, and Ken Schles’ two-book chronicle of New York City’s demimonde.

2. I resolve, in 2016, to keep better track of the year’s publications, so that the end-of-the-year summation doesn’t lapse too far into 2017.

Postscript. 

My Desiderata—titles I didn’t see but wish, as a result of reading all those lists, that I had. 

• The Epilogue, Laia Abril
• Stranger, Olivia Arthur
• Missing Buildings, Thom and Beth Atkinson
• Belanglo, Warwick Baker
• This Business of Living, Daniel Blaufuks
• A Short Story, Thomas Boivin
• Sunless, Tiane Doan na Champassak
• Fire in Cairo, Matthew Connors
• Nowhere People, Greg Constantine
• One’s Own Arena, José Pedro Cortes
• I Do Not Want to Disappear Silently Into the Night, Katrien de Blauwer
• Dzogchen, Vincent Delbrouck
• My Last Day at Seventeen, Doug Dubois
• Tout va bien, JH Engström
• Please send this book to my mother, Sara Entwistle
• Anecdotal, David Fathi
• Beastly/Tierisch, Duncan Forbes & Daniela Janser, eds.
• The Whiteness of the Whale, Paul Graham
• Norilsk, Alexander Gronsky
• Occupied Pleasures, Tanya Habjouqa
• The Middle of Somewhere, Sam Harris
• Can Art Change the World?, JR
• Lago, Ron Jude
• Timeless, Kamoinge
• Unfinished Father, Erik Kessels
• Sunny, Dagmar Kolatschny
• Presentiment, Yulia Krivich
• Southern Rites, Gillian Laub
• Day for Night, Richard Learoyd
• Life Is One Live It Well, Henrik Malmström
• Good 70s, Mike Mandel
• Foto Grafia, Luca Massaro
• Some Thing Means Everything for Somebody, Peter Mitchell
• Colors, Yoshinori Mizutani
• Dirt Meridian, Andrew Moore
• Land Ohne Mitte, Anne Morgenstern
• Going Home, Muge
• Naturally, Bertil Nilsson
• Lisboa, Cidade Triste e Alegre, Victor Palla and Costa Martins
• The Black Rose, Trent Parke
• Due To Lack Of Interest Tomorrow Has Been Cancelled, Sanne Peper
• Find a Fallen Star, Regine Petersen
• Archipelago, Matthew Porter
• The Lonely Ones, Gus Powell
• In the Vale of Cashmere, Thomas Roma
• Museum of Chance, Dayanita Singh
• Shrubs of Death, Mike Slack
• Self & Others: Portrait as Autobiography, Aline Smithson
• Dr Strand, Nina Strand
• H. Said He Loved Us, Tommaso Tanini
• Muse, Mickalene Thomas
• Disco Night September 11, Peter van Agtmael
• The Years Shall Run Like Rabbits, Hellen van Meene
• Peer 2 Peer, Hannah Whitaker
• My Life As A Man, Carmen Winant

Sources.

1.     LensCulture – Part One and Part Two
2.     PhotoEye – “The Best Books of 2015” (17 “Best” from selections by 24 reviewers; “over 150 titles” cited)
3.     TIME – “TIME Picks the Best Photobooks of 2015” (“Martin Parr, Alec Soth and many other experts, including TIME’s photo editors, select the best photobooks of the year”; 36 picked; “we interviewed more than 35 photo experts”; “Far from being a comprehensive list, these are personal choices made with the agonizing rule of selecting just one photobook to represent 2015 in its entirety.”
4.     Smithsonian – “The Best Photography Books of the Year” (November 27, 2015) on smithsonianmag.com, by Molly Roberts (10 books that “celebrate the talent of these photographers and give you another way of experiencing the world.”)
5.     Daily Beast – Robert Birnbaum, “The Best Photography Books of 2015”
6.     Times – Teju Cole, The New York Times Magazine, Dec 22, 2015, “The Best Photo Books of 2015” (“I didn’t acquire too many photo books this year—only about a hundred, all told—but I made an effort to seek out a wide variety. These are eight I particularly liked.” Cole’s whole statement is good and pertinent to the list-making process.)
7.     Slate – David Rosenberg and Jordan G. Teicher, “The 10 Best Photography Books of 2015” slate.com Behold: The Photo Blog December 15, 2015
8.     Conscientious – December 14, 2015 “My favourite photobooks in 2015 (and more)” (“Listmas”; “Given that few people can agree on something, there are dozens and dozens of photobooks on at least one ‘best of’ list…essentially every photobook is (short) listed somewhere.”)
9.     Guardian – Sean O’Hagan December 6, 2015 “The best photography books of 2015” (17 titles)
10.  Telegraph – “The best coffee table books out now” (24 photo titles)
11.  Telegraph (Cheryl Newman) – “The best art photography books of 2015” December 18, 2015 (12 titles)
12.  Mother Jones – Mark Murrmann, “We Keep Coming Back to the Unforgettable Images in These 2015 Photo Books” December 30, 2015 (10 titles; see statement via link)
13.  PDN – “Notable Photo Books of 2015” Part 1, December 07, 2015, 8 titles; Part 2, December 11, 2015, 8 titles; Part 3, December 15, 2015, 12 titles.
14.  Humble Arts – “The 16 Best Photobooks of 2015 According to Humble Arts Foundation’s Best of 2014” (16 titles)
15.  RRB Photobooks – “Best Photobooks of 2015 by Thomas Wiegand” (12 titles)
16.  The Logging Road – “13 Best Photobooks and 2 Worst Photobooks of the Year 2015: And There is the Cosmos, to Capture Her Soul…” November 10, 2015
17.  Fotografia – Martin Amis of Photobookstore’s selections; “Ten Best Photobooks of 2015”
18.  Crave – December 11, 2015 Miss Rosen “Best Photo Books of 2015” (6 titles)
19.  Medium – Vantage December 22, 2015 “The Best Six Photography Books of 2015” Pete Brook (“Six Books Pete Picked Up This Year and Liked: How four books mailed to the author and two other books he bought in crowdfunding campaigns made the grade. Ah, that’s better. Honesty pays. So they say. Or in this case, sending me a press copy of your photobook pays. No, no, let’s dismiss that myth right now. I am not bought. Sure, I see a photobook if it lands in my mail box, and I might not have otherwise have known it existed. But, I get sent a fair number of books and the ones I don’t like, I don’t mention. The ones I do, I yell about a lot.”)
20.  Walk Your Camera (Roger May) – “My Favorite Photobook Buys of 2015” December 24, 2015 (13 titles, not all released in 2015)
21.  The Innocent Curiosity (Marcin Grabowiecki) – “My favourite photobooks in 2015” December 23, 2015 (10 titles)
22.  David Fathi – TOP 10 Photobooks (alphabetically) ca. December 20, 2015
23.  Blake Andrews B “2015 Photobook Recap” December 19, 2015 (17 titles reviewed under individual categories inc. “Best site to view photobooks” (Josef Chladek), “Best photobook by a movie star” (Dennis Hopper – I might have to differ), “Best photobook list rejoinder” (Mirelle Thijsen’s reviews of books by Toledano and Kruitof), and “Six photobooks the lists missed” [maybe…])
24.  American Photo – The Editors of American Photo “Best Photobooks of the Year: 2015” December 11, 2015 (34 titles)
25.  CAPE – “CAPE’s FAVOURITE PHOTOBOOKS OF THE YEAR 2015” December 9, 2015 (10 titles)
26.  A-N (Tim Clark) – “Top ten: the best photo books of 2015” December 9, 2015
27.  Photobookstore featured many reviewers offering their lists on different dates, but all with the same title, “Photobooks of 2015”: Tiane Doan na Champassak – December 3, 2015 (10 titles); Mark Power – December 4, 2015 (12 titles); Sonia Berger – December 8, 2015 (8 titles); Photocaptionist – December 30, 2015 (16 titles; given the reviewer's proclivity for books about photos with texts, this one was especially rich in "good reads"). I did not manage to read all of the lists offered on Photobookstore, which is an outstanding reference for the future.  

28.  Gabrielacendoya – “Emotional list” (22 titles) and “More headache list” (15 titles), plus wish list December 7, 2015 

29.  De Volkskrant – “De beste fotoboeken” December 7, 2015 (12 titles)

Most if not all of these sources are compiled on Phot(o)lia’s List of Lists: PHOTOBOOKS 2015.

Warm-up laps completed on Fotoblog

It’s taken me longer than expected to get into the swing of things over there on the Hatje Cantz blog, but I feel like I’m finding my stride.

Remember, this is a thought in process; I hope to finish the race by month’s end.

Link to entry number 3. Feel free to track backwards from there if so inclined. Let me know what you think.

Revving up for a few laps on another track.

I was pleased and honored to receive an invitation from the German publisher Hatje Cantz to guest-host their “fotoblog” in February.

Here’s the list of others who have had this gig. Some pretty tough acts to follow:

Although they didn’t insist that I do this, I wanted to find a topic I could chew on for a month, with lots of examples to toss around and muse upon. I’ll be looking at some of their new books and backlist, and am free to include whatever references I’d like to cite during the month.

Looking quickly at their list of forthcoming titles and seeing a new monograph on Cindy Sherman, I stumbled on a topic. Sometimes, you think you know and understand a concept fully, only to realize that once you pause and unpack it, questions develop around what you thought you knew. I am curious about identity. What is identity, and how does it relate to photography?

Some photographs open to initial musing.

A quick Google of “photography and identity” plopped me down in fertile ground. A 2011 group exhibition catalogue from the Haggerty Museum at Marquette University - The Truth is Not in the Mirror: Photography and a Constructed Identity - should be a good jumping-off point. Here’s a link to the PDF. I’ll be continuing my explorations in the next day or two, once my German colleagues give me the keys to the car; I hope you will follow my ramblings there.

Good Reads - 2014

Tah Dah! A bunch of books.

I believe a year has to be fully over before any summary statements can be made about it. Look at what happened to Alec Soth; he had a set aside a favorite in fall, then got one last book that blew it away.

So that’s my justification today, in the waxing minutes of the third (used to be the waning minutes of the second) day of 2015, after having done approximately nothing on the blog of either a summary, summery, vernal, autumnal, or hibernal nature after Valentine's Day. Some writer I am.

I did receive a number of interesting books last year. And I had a lot of thoughts about several of them, but due to other obligations most of those thoughts will remain latent, tucked away in deep crevasses of my brain.

With all the usual caveats and disclaimers, I present...Tah Dah! A list of books. Most from last year, some older. The common factor in this list is that, regardless of publication date, the book came into my possession in 2014. And stood out, for various reasons, as a good read among others that arrived between January 1 and December 31.

Small Books with Big Ambitions

• War Porn, Christoph Bangert (Kehrer, 2nd edition, 2014)
• Pipeline: Human Trafficking in Italy, Elena Perlino (Schilt, 2014)
• Memory of Trees, Kathryn Cook (Kehrer, 2013)
• Bloody but Unbowed: Pictures of Britain Under Fire (Scribner’s, 1941), Ernestine Carter, ed., photographs by Lee Miller et al.

All four of these books could fit into the cubic space of any single title in the next section. But I found each to be a surprisingly broad, eye-opening journey into the insidious nature of conflict.

The smallest, Bangert's unprepossessing collection of what Ziya and I, working on adjacent light tables in the Magnum Photos picture library, used to call “gnarly” photographs--photographs, that is, that were so horrifyingly graphic we knew we had very limited opportunity to circulate them. These photographs should be fictional, but are not. They illustrate that old shibboleth, “man's inhumanity to man,” as so often found in the context of war.

Perlino’s expose tracks the Nigerian trade in humans, mostly for prostitution, that occurs across Europe but in this case outside Italian cities. For eight years Perlino immersed herself in the work, and the resulting images come fearfully close to dumping us into the maw of the machine.

Cook addresses a large scale atrocity that took place over a century ago. The inhumanity of the Armenian genocide can only be inferred from her images, which capture a dis-ease in the natural and built landscape that echoes the unconscionable wave of xenophobia that forced the displacement of nearly 1.5 million people.

Lee Miller, “Revenge on Culture” from Bloody but Unbowed

Finally, Bloody but Unbowed is a book I've been after since the 1980s, when I first discovered Lee Miller's amazing photographs made during the weeks of London’s fierce WWII bombing. Thanks to Christian Peterson I now own it, a slim book, about the dimensions of an iPad, but it contains some gems. “Revenge on Culture” is in my pantheon of all-time great photographs.

Big Books with Small Ambitions

• Antibodies, Antoine D’Agata (Prestel, 2014; first published in 2013 by Editions Xavier Barral as Anticorps)
• Eyemazing: The New Collectible Art Photography, Eyemazing Susan aka Susan Zadeh (Thames & Hudson, 2013)
• Photography Today, Mark Durden (Phaidon, 2014)
• Eden and After, Nan Goldin (Phaidon, 2014)

Small ambitions? Well, that may be hard to defend as a category. And I don't mean it in a pejorative sense. But these are inward-looking, self- and medium-reflexive topics given maximal published treatment (pages/pounds: D’Agata 559/4.9, Zadeh 544/8.8, Durden 463/7.0, Goldin 381/6.2). The results are successful for varying reasons; bigger isn’t always better, but these four are all really good.

I mentioned before that Elena Perlino had brought us to the brink of disappearance in the slave trade. D’Agata is already there, waiting for us in the shadows of deeply deviant exchanges. The journey we take with him is at turns deadpan blasé and excoriatingly detailed, and the result is a brutal book of unimaginable depth and inconceivable depravity.

For those of you who don't know Eyemazing, it is a Dutch photo magazine that has been published since 2003. I have never understood its guiding esthetic, but as this tome makes clear, the images it champions never fail to amaze. The range of artists published in the magazine is unparalleled in contemporary collections. Scanning the list of artists in the book, you may recognize some of the names, but I bet many, even half, will be unknown to you. And that is a good thing. To my way of thinking, a browse through these pages is armchair traveling at its best.

As an historian, I find contemporary photography to be so rife with publications and emerging visions that creating new histories of photography is at best a speculative venture. But someone has to stake those flags as time marches on. We are approaching the medium’s 175th anniversary, besides. Mark Durden has done his bit. This professor of photography at the University of South Wales has created a new history built on both old familiars (Arbus, Eggleston, Frank, Mann, Winogrand, etc. etc.) and new standard-bearers (Dijkstra, Graham, Neshat, Wolf, Woodman, and many others). Worth examining, debating, absorbing, and admiring.

Nan Goldin, Eden and After, cover

Three living photographers who released big retrospective volumes this year—Nan Goldin, Danny Lyon, and Stephen Shore—appear in Durden's history. My favorite of this trio was Goldin's essay about children and the paradise they briefly inhabit before they leave the garden. Some familiar images here, but mostly new work that parallels and underscores her lifelong engagement with la vie boheme, that life that has inevitably generated new life. I like that Goldin continues to examine the facets of her world, which she has charted with such acuity for so many decades.

Surprises and Delights

• Dolce Via: Italy in the 1980s, Charles H. Traub (Damiani, 2013)
• Peach, Susanne Hefti (Kehrer, 2014)
• Pikin Slee, Viviane Sassen (Prestel, 2014)
• Zusammenleben, Ute Mahler (Hatje Cantz, 2014)
• Touching Strangers, Richard Renaldi (Aperture, 2014)
• Taxonomy of a Landscape, Victoria Sambunaris (Radius, 2013)
• The Time of Dreaming the World Awake, Yvette Monahan (Self-published, 2014)
• Wild Pigeon, Carolyn Drake (Self-published, 2014)
• Primer, Karolina Karlic (Self-published, 2014)

There isn’t much I can do to tie these together, other than to say that each, in its way, engaged or touched me and reminded me that the book form is surprisingly limber and adaptable in diverse situations. Just a few words about each. (Please note, too, that the last three are indies, and were sent to me by the artists/publishers. This trio stood out among the crowd for both bibliographic excellence and as expressions of their makers’ generosity. Yvette, Carolyn, Karolina, and everyone else who sent me books in 2014, thank you so much. Note to all indie publishers: If you haven’t sent your work to Larissa Leclair’s Indie Photobook Library, please consider doing so.)

Charles H. Traub, “Rome, 1981” from Dolce Via

Traub’s Italy is a place I remember from my twenties, from some individual images I’d seen here and there. Aperture, I know, ran a couple in the magazine. Having never seen a fuller collection, I was happily reacquainted with the familiar images in the context of a book that is fun, sexy, curious like the best street photography, and not terribly self-absorbed.

Peach is one of two books on my list with accompanying foldouts featuring cars. Go figure. Hefti’s work is a garden of visual delights, using natural and man-made motifs that loop and weave in and around themselves. Working with designers so+ba, Hefti has constructed what might best be described as an artists book qua Moebius strip.

Pikin Slee! Pikin Slee! Pikin Slee! I feel like Zippy the Pinhead, parroting an inexplicably catchy non sequitur. Fortunately, Pikin Slee is more than a clever title—it’s a real place in Suriname, you can map it (though not via Wikipedia), and if the place has anything like the character Sassen captures in what is one of the most elegant, seamless meldings of duotone and color I’ve encountered, I want to go. Sassen lays the groundwork for a great tale of discovery. Perhaps we could call this lyrical anthropology.

Ute Mahler from Zusammenleben

Mahler’s visions of Germans living together—or simply coexisting in the frame, since many of the settings are hardly domestic—suggest the deceptive simplicity of Bill Owens’ Suburbia or Jim Goldberg’s Rich and Poor. And they cover a similar time period, 1972 to 1988, so there’s some apt correlation in subject, and entirely pre-cellular. Imagine that, and see it here. There’s so much material for speculation, and minimal guidance or editorial apparatus to intrude. Like casual ethnography, exquisitely non-specific and resistant to method and analysis.

I’d been eager to see Renaldi’s book since I first saw examples of this project, before a maquette existed. And the finished product, which I contributed to on Kickstarter, does not disappoint. This is a brilliant concept, executed with honesty and forthrightness. Renaldi captures the beautiful challenge of analog life in a digital era. A great, great book.

Taxonomy is one analytical mode in Sambunaris’ book. Typology is another, with its open-ended, expansive stance toward knowledge. I like this resistance to closure, as if the book—the portfolio, to be more accurate, designed with bound-in and loose pieces in a big pocket—is asserting itself as evidence of attempts to capture something about landscape, acknowledging that there are many ways to describe the elusive, subjective nature of any place.

Page spread from The time of dreaming the world awake by Yvette Monahan

Yvette Monahan was new to me. And the place she describes in her book seems like a landscape newly born into myth. Somehow, the sight of a man bearing water jugs and wearing a pair of horns seems entirely consistent with her evocation of a real place (42°51′49″N 02°22′45″E) that seems like a portal from the world we know into a world we can only imagine. Lovely, quixotic, intimate, and immense.

Carolyn Drake’s new volume expands on the promise of her first self-published book, Two Rivers. It accomplishes an effect diametrically opposed to Monahan’s; it takes a storied place, the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region in far western China, which most of us know only through news reports and rumor, and humanizes it with story, art, and image. Drake collaborates with residents in ways that seem like emotional or spiritual mergings. This is a volume full of surprising details and revelatory changes of perspective. Highly recommended.

Finally, the second iteration of a publication that is yet to be fully realized, and the harbinger of a singular vision of life in the post-industrial, pre-simultaneity age. Primer is the evolution of a book first Blurb-published as Elementarz, which remains the book’s subtitle. What have we learned? What do we know? What systems affect our lives? are among the questions Karolina Karlic asks in her evolving consideration of commerce, the auto industry, and American culture. (Yes, this is the second book on my list with a car poster.) Set against the counterpoint of her father’s terse letters to his daughter, Karlic opens up human lives in their errant progress from labor to management, from process to product, from grace to defilement.


Addenda

• 49 (and counting) lists of 2014 photobooks, compiled by phot(o)lia, in case you want to check out what others found intriguing last year.
• To purchase Monahan, Drake, or Karlic. The others you can find through the usual channels, though I don’t know if Christian Peterson has another copy of Bloody but Unbowed. You could ask.

Due diligence lacking: Clanet and Larsen on reindeer herders in Lappland

Don't you just hate it when you write something for publication, then just as the piece is hitting the stands you find something you wish you'd known about when you wrote the piece?

Dang. I do.

My short review of Erika Larsen's book on the Sami reindeer herders, published last year by emphas.is, is just coming out in Afterimage.

Yesterday, I was flipping through a magazine--the Winter 2013/2014 issue of Modern Farmer, of course--and discovered a portfolio titled "Reindeer Country." Covering five pages are very good photographs by Celine Clanet, with text by Andy Wright describing Clanet's experiences in Lappland, first as a tourist then as an "embedded" observer.

What my photo-bibliographic mind failed to recall while reviewing Larsen's intriguing book was that Photolucida published Maze, Clanet's collection of the Sami, three years earlier.

I would have mentioned this work, almost certainly, as prelude and complement to Larsen's efforts. Not in a competitive or preemptive way, just as a comparison worth considering. I could have used the excuse that Afterimage allotted me too few words to explore external connections. But my conscience would have troubled me, as it did today when I thought about what I'd seen, did a quick search on Clanet, and recalled one of the things I try to mention when I write about a set of photographs.

Spread from Maze by Celine Clanet via photo-eye

 So, there it is. Due diligence performed. Until I find the next precedent; anyone else got a pre-2010 book of Sami photographs I ought to consider?


P. S. This issue of Modern Farmer (the print component of a lifestyle site--FARM. FOOD. LIFE.--at modernfarmer.com. Check out their Culture Feature, "Celebrity Gentlemen Farmers: They're Just Like Us!" while you're there.) also includes work by Daniel Shea, Nicola Twilley's series on refrigeration, and a fashion spread--modern, indeed--by Aimee Brodeur. "Big up" to the art department there--director Sarah Gephart, photo director Luise Stauss, and photo editor Ayanna Quint.