'Tis the season to be making listicles. Within a week, every major photo blog (despite lots of folks saying blogs are dead, to which we say 'pshhhh'), magazine, content marketing generator, and probably a bunch of Instagram feeds will deliver their lists, break some hearts and make new friends for life. We thought about making our own list, but are trying something different this year. Instead of waxing authoritatively on our favorite photobooks, we've handed the reins to the photographers and publishers of Humble's best photobooks of 2014 to let them do the heavy lifting...er, we mean, to keep the decision more open, more varied, and potentially less of what our dear readers might expect. With that said, we strongly encourage you to check out some of these books and support each of the artists' hard work. In most cases, you can purchase directly from the photographers/publishers, or support amazing photobook stores and distros like Photoeye, Spoonbill and Sugartown, Dashwood Books, and Printed Matter. So behold! Humble's best photobooks of 2015 (in no particular order) according to some of the best photobook-agraphers of 2014. hotobook-agraphers of 2014.
Tandem 2014 © Manon Wertenbroek
For the past 6 years, Foam has consistently showcased some of the most promising new photography. Like the PDN 30, and The Museum of Modern Art's annual New Photography exhibition (both of which show a range of strong work, but haters love to hate), Foam’s editors have an uncanny eye for new voices in photography, and their annual Talent issue has been known to predict these photographers' success year after year (read about last year's issue here.) While past "Talents" have included now-household names like Alex Prager, Jessica Eaton, Lucas Blalock and Sam Falls, this year’s survey continues its showcase of inventive work ranging from Aaron Blum's calm Appalachian narratives to Sara Cwynar's cathartic mingling of still life and collage. The exhibition Foam Talent 2015 will be open at l’Atelier Néerlandais in Paris through December 20th, 2015
We reached out to Foam’s Deputy Director of Artistic Affairs, Marcel Feil to learn more about his selection process, and what really constitutes “Talent.”
Latitude 47 is a new annual photography magazine published by Seattle’s Photographic Center Northwest. Conceived and directed by Minor Matters Books founder and PCNW Executive Director Michelle Dunn Marsh, and renowned photographer and PCNW Programs Chair Eirik Johnson, Latitude 47 aims to bring the refined work and tight community of Northwest photographers to the rest of the world. While online content marketing (i.e. your favorite photo blogs) has done a great job of democratizing work of many artists, this traditional method of getting work in front of influencers promises to give Northwest photographers a larger footprint on the map. We spoke with Eirik Johnson about the project and ideas behind its first issue, which includes work from Seattle photographers and photo-based artists Canh Nguyen, Susan Robb, Glenn Rudolph, and Serrah Russell.
© Elizabeth Renstrom
Since Ryan McGinley and Tim Barber shaped VICE Magazine's photographic vision in the early 2000's, the magazine has had a consistent reputation for showing exciting new photography. Its relentlessly defiant content, ranging from controversial editorial stories to the often coveted annual Photo Issue, has carved out a recognizable, heavily copied aesthetic, trickling into mainstream fashion, lifestyle and advertising campaigns. Aside from their proclaimed hard-edged journalism, it's likely that this vision helped make VICE the media giant it is today. In 2013, before things could get stale, Matthew Lefheit took the reins for a brief but impactful stint. Under his tenure, Leifheit opened VICE's scope to photographers like Michael Bühler Rose, Erin O' Keefe, Lucas Blalock, and Rachel Stern, who are as equally engaged with photography's academic history as they are in keeping it current.
As Leifheit recently headed to Yale to pursue his MFA, Elizabeth Renstrom has taken over, promising to keep VICE's photographic spirit courageous. Renstrom, a former Parsons' student of George Pitts is an accomplished photographer and photo producer, and regularly shoots for clients like Refinery 29, TIME, Nylon, and Bloomberg Business Week while still somehow managing to find the time to make her own work, including a hilariously poignant ongoing series about her early adolescence in the 1990's. Just as her first issue came out of production, we caught up with Renstrom to hear more about her plans for VICE, her own work, and what's changing in photography today.
Alexander Binder is a wizard creator of imaginary worlds. Growing up in Germany’s Black Forest in the 1980’s, his pre-internet (and pre-Kanye West) childhood and limited athletic abilities sparked a love for old fairytales, comic books and fantasy literature, as well as science fiction and horror movies. Over the years, these obsessions accumulated into a mental archive of psychedelic stories and imagery, which have had a major influence on his photographic practice for more than a decade. Binder’s upcoming book with Tangerine Press, Kristall ohne Liebe, meaning "The Crystal without Love,” uses various mystical symbols to draw an ongoing tension between competing forces of darkness and light. From a distance, this might sound like the perfect recipe for a late 1990’s mall-goth picture book, but it’s executed with a sensitivity that is smart, thoughtful and aesthetically riveting. And it's even stranger when viewed while listening to Black Sabbath’s N.I.B.