Jamie Robertson uses her family history to reconcile wider narratives around the African Diaspora in her new book from Fifth Wheel Press, Charting the Afriscape of Leon County.

Robertson pairs images from her childhood and family archive with new landscape photographs and tableaux, and text, often from her family mythos and West African cosmologies, giving her images greater context.

A darkly lit yet highly saturated photograph of domino players, their faces obscured by shadow and a wide-brimmed straw hat on one page, a 1980s family reunion snapshot on the other. Dominos, a constant in her family history, symbolize generational ties, traditions, and holding fast to cultural and family evolutions.

In another pairing, Robertson re-photographs a landscape on her family’s property originally depicted in an image from her family's archive, the new image in conversation with the original on an opposite page. Instead of approaching the two photos as a “then and now” typology, the new photograph takes on a spiritual aspect. The pairing becomes a personal meditation on how we remember a place, and the potential for spirituality to soak into its memory.

Charting the Afriscape of Leon County, Texas highlights and centers the importance and continuity of Black life, spirituality, and its intersection with the land throughout Robertson’s lineage and creative practice.

We recently spoke about Robertson’s work, her family history, and the process of publishing a book during a pandemic. (Humble editor’s note: this book is being printed in a limited 1st edition of 50 copies - if you’re at all considering purchasing one, we highly recommend acting on that consideration soon.)

Jon Feinstein in conversation with Jamie Robertson

PostedFebruary 4, 2021

AuthorJon Feinstein

Categoriesinterviews, Artists, Art News, Photobooks, Publications, Vernacular Photography

TagsJamie Robertson, Fifth Wheel Press, Charting The Afriscape of Leon County Texas, African Diaspora, Diaspora Studies, West African Cosmology

Photo Editor Gabriel Sanchez and Photographer Steven Eichner at their Long Beach, NY studio, 2019

Humble speaks with Gabriel Sanchez about his inspiring career and the story behind editing legendary 1990s NYC nightlife photographer Steve Eichner's new book In The Limelight

Gabriel Sanchez is one of today’s most inspiring photo editors. After writing for Aperture and Artforum ( that’s is EARLY work!) he carved a following and niche developing thousands of stories as Buzzfeed’s Features photo editor. Sanchez recently took a job at the New York Times assigning a range of photo essays and stories, working closely with photographers he'd previously admired from afar.

Amidst a career change and the pandemic, Sanchez edited In the Limelight: The Visual Ecstasy of NYC Nightlife in the 90s, a new photobook published by Prestel that celebrates the work of Steve Eichner, one of few photographers with insider access to photograph the wild and crazy 90s club scene in NYC. Oh, and he also became a dad.

I spoke with Sanchez to learn more about the project, his advice for up and coming photographers, and what it’s like having hands in so many reaches of photography.

Jon Feinstein in conversation with Gabriel Sanchez

PostedOctober 22, 2020

AuthorJon Feinstein

CategoriesArtists, Photobooks, Publications

TagsGabriel Sanchez, Steve Eichner, Into The Limelight book, 1990s party photography, NYC nightlife photography, Prestel Publishers, photo editors, advice for emerging photographers

Marcy Palmer’s photographs remind us to pause and look for moments of beauty amid turmoil, heartache, and uncertainty.

Since 2018, Marcy Palmer has made lush gilded photographic prints of ferns, flowers and other botanicals – personal and delicate images that you want to hold them in your hands. These glimmering, gold-leafed prints are steeped in photo-historical references - an homage to Anna Atkins and surrealist photographic pioneer Florence Henri - yet feel contemporary and fresh.

Palmer's book You Are Eternity, You Are The Mirror, which will publish in September with Yoffy Press, continues this close and quiet encounter. While in no way a salve or encouragement to look away from a world in crisis, it’s a moment to draw breath and recharge.

We caught up to discuss the shimmer and the light.

Jon Feinstein in conversation with Marcy Palmer

PostedAugust 27, 2020

AuthorJon Feinstein

CategoriesArtists, Photobooks, Publications, Portfolio, writing on photography

Tags2020 photobooks, Anna Atkins, Gilded photographs, photographs of flowers, botanical photography, Marcy Palmer, Yoffy Press, Khalil Gibran

Humble editors recommend standouts in 2019 (online) photography writing

How often do you read – beyond a quick skim – the text accompanying a gut-heavy photo essay someone you respect shared on some social network? One that happened to algorithmically line up to your endless scroll? What was the last piece of writing on photography that truly made you stop, think, and maybe twitch for more than a few seconds or the “five minute read?” What writing sat with you for more than a glance?

As photography writers and quotationally proclaimed “critics,” we try to read as much as we can to keep us both pulsed and pleasantly distracted. But it’s more than that. Great photo writing, whether it’s an honest Q+A or a thoughtfully researched essay or even an inspired exhibition review, can help us wade deeper, can help clarify, and in many cases, can change how we see what we see.

The following list barely nicks the skin of all the inspiring photography writing in 2019, but we hope will help move, distract, change your view of the world. In some cases, they may even help you navigate your own process of shooting, editing, curating, or making a living from making pictures.

Silver Communion Balloon and Turquoise Tablecloth © Jonathan Blaustein

I first became familiar with Jonathan Blaustein’s work in 2009 when we met at Center Santa Fe’s portfolio review. While I was first excited by our comically similar names, his series The Value of a Dollar grabbed me for its direct stripping-down of food as a commodity, a source of nourishment and symbol of wealth, power, health, and inequality in the 21st century.

For more than a decade, and across multiple series, Blaustein has mixed this deadpan simplicity with bits of humor and earnestness to critique, poke fun at, and highlight the impact of consumerism and throwaway culture on the environment and society at large. His latest series Party City is the Devil continues this trajectory with garishly bright, poppy, typology-meets-Warhol inspired photographs. Red mime masks, cardboard crowns, shoddily-inflated ballons, and other useless party gags sit on disposable-tablecloths-turned-studio-backdrops. Using available light to mimic their no-frills essence, Blaustein’s photographs make bare the absurdity of the most disposable cultural items – the plastic crap we so readily buy and toss from stores like Party City.

I spoke with Blaustein, smack in the middle of his Kickstarter campaign to fund Extinction Party, a photobook culminating Blaustein's many projects, which Yoffy Press will (if you, dear readers, help fund it) publish in 2020.

Jon Feinstein in conversation with Jonathan Blaustein

PostedNovember 19, 2019

AuthorJon Feinstein

CategoriesArtists, Publications, Photobooks

TagsJonathan Blaustein, Jon Feinstein, Yoffy Press, Photography and Consumerism, photographic typologies, photography inspired by Andy Warhol, 2020 photobooks

An Autobiographical Photobook on Black Life in Leon County, Texas

In The Limelight: BuzzFeed's Former Photo Editor on How to Make it as an Emerging Photographer, His New Role at The New York Times and a New Book on '90s Club Kids

Gilded Photos of Flowers – an Antidote to Crisis

Reading (Still) Isn’t Dead. 22 Essays, Interviews, and Other Online Photography Writing You Should Have Read in 2019

Jonathan Blaustein's Soon to be Published Photobook "Extinction Party" Playfully Serializes Consumer Culture