The List #2
The second installment in the new regular feature, The List, highlights my personal recommendations from the recent arrivals to the Photobookstore shelves. Over the course of the year, I hope these updates will be a welcome alternative complement to the both much anticipated (and sometimes dreaded) end of year book lists.
Red Flower, The Women of Okinawa by Mao Ishikawa
Featuring photographs from her first book, the near impossible to source, Hot Days in Camp Hansen as well as unpublished work from the same period, Mao Red Flower presents Ishikawa’s images of the women she met and befriended while working at military bars in Okinawa between 1975 and 1977. Printing, sequencing and source material combine with gusto to make Red Flower a near perfect representation of Ishikawa’s honest intimate images
Ending by Leif Sandberg
Ending is Leif Sandberg’s story of receiving news of a life-threatening disease. Diagnosed with pancreatic cancer at the age of 64, Leif began work on project where through the use of images he conveyed not only the emotional roller-coaster of dealing with the illness, but also coming to terms with the harsh reality of the ageing process. An impressive debut photobook.
Pictures from Home by Larry Sultan
A very welcome new edition of Larry Sultan’s critically acclaimed 1992 photobook. Highly influential, Pictures From Home saw Sultan returning home to document his ageing parent’s life in Southern California. A photobook collection essential.
A New Refutation of the Viking 4 Space Mission by Peter Mitchell
First exhibited in a groundbreaking show in 1979, Peter Mitchell’s project on the changing urban landscape is finally published in book form. Backstreet shops, building sites, factories and churches are photographed in Mitchell’s trademark formal style, remarkable not just for it’s use of colour but the attention to small detail.
The Yellow River by Zhang Kechun
Zhang Kechun’s The Yellow River was first published in 2014, and within just a few months rapidly went out of print, after the work won Rencontres d’Arles Discovery Award. The Yellow River features images of life along China’s great river. Through a sequence of beautiful yet surreal images, Zhang Kechun’s large format camera captures the majesty of the river as well as the dark side of the changes caused by China’s push to modernise. This second edition looks set to disappear just as quickly as the first.
Untitled by Shin Yanagisawa
Over the past few years, small Japanese publisher Roshin Books have produced some of the most beautiful photobooks to arrive from Japan. This collection of the evocative work of Japanese photographer Shin Yanagisawa is no exception.
Seeking Moksha by Nishant Shukla
Initiated by a journey to collect water for his grandfather, a Hindu priest, who was on his deathbed, Nishant Shukla’s Skeeking Moksha evolved through subsequent journeys into a search for transcendence. This suitably elegant and delicate photobook beautifully explores his personal story and those he encountered along the way.
Martin Amis founded Photobookstore in 2006, and is rarely more than 10 feet from a pile of photobooks.
Images: The Yellow River by Zhang Kechun, Untitled by Shin Yanagisawa, Seeking Moksha by Nishant Shukla
