F-Stop Magazine: Book Review: DIG: Notes on Field and Family by Sarah Wilson

September 5, 2023

Like many people, I’m tempted to skip to the end of books to see what lies ahead. Much of the time when I look through a photo book for the first time, I skip back and forth while skimming the pages. I want to get a feel for the pacing, the look of the images, the strength of the design, etc. When I sat down with Dig, I was immediately met by colorful printed front end-sheets that remind me of educational picture books from my childhood. There are bands of fantastic scenes chock full of dinosaurs and flowing volcanoes. Then three pages into the book the reader encounters a photo of a digging tool that looks like a pick axe, right before the title page. Right beneath the bold title ‘DIG’ is the subtitle; in pencil-written words, “Notes on field and family”, immediately followed by a dedication page, also written in pencil. Now I feel like I’m reading someone’s journal.

Feature Shoot: In the Footsteps of Her Grandfather, An Artist Digs for Fossils

August 22, 2023

The photographer Sarah Wilson’s grandfather, Dr. John A. Wilson, was a paleontologist whose work took him to some of the most remote and rugged landscapes of the West Texas desert. About a year before he died, he gifted her with three boxes, filled with the Kodachrome slides he’d made during digs throughout the 1960s, ’70s, and ’80s, and used during his time as a professor at the University of Texas at Austin.

“I believe he gave these slides to me because I had been traveling out to West Texas and photographing the landscape myself,” the artist tells me now. “He knew I was falling in love with it.” Incredibly, she recognized many of the locations where he had worked and made discoveries. As she writes in her new book, Dig (Yoffy Press), she’d stood exactly where he had, decades after he did. 

Membrane: The Warmest Color is Neon, Puberty by Laurence Philomene

August 3, 2023

Photobook Puberty is a very personal project that deals with personal growth, gender identity, creativity, friendship, the importance of empathy and the absolute necessity of introspection and charitable self-love. The beginnings of the project in the form of a diary and photo documentation date back to 2019, a period that marks the beginning of the author's hormone therapy (testosterone injections) and the first signs of an anatomical and psychological transition captured in his own lens. The autobiographical project contains intimate photos of the home interior and socializing with loved ones, and the main part is colorful, carefully curated self-portraits. One of the reasons for the creation of the book was the author's desire to contribute to a more appropriate and aesthetically reinforced set of trans and queer content in the field of photography and visual art.

F-Stop Magazine: Book Review: COUNTDOWN by Jeanine Michna-Bales and Adam Reynolds

July 16, 2023

In the remarkable book Countdown, Jeanine Michna-Bales and Adam Reynolds take us on a visual journey through the quiet and evocative landscapes of the Cold War era as seen through sites and structures associated with nuclear offensive and defensive infrastructure in the United States. Their two complimentary projects, ‘No Lone Zone’ and ‘Fallout’, jointly explore the oftentimes contradictory approach in America’s nuclear policy of mutually assured destruction in the context of a nuclear war.

This joint project beautifully encapsulates the sense of eerie and tense anticipation that pervaded the Cold War era. Through a meticulous selection of photographs, Michna-Bales and Reynolds transport us to iconic sites that silently witnessed the unfolding drama of this era. In an online interview, Jeanine Michna-Bales reflects on the book’s primary focus, stating, “We wanted to capture the architectural remnants of the Cold War, the spaces where these events took place. The buildings and landscapes are both witnesses to history and powerful symbols of an era marked by fear and uncertainty.” Adam Reynolds elaborates on the book’s approach, stating, “We wanted to capture the essence of these structures, to create a visual narrative that evokes the absence and fragility resulting from the decisions made during the Cold War.”

Countdown is an outstanding contribution to the category of documentary photography projects. Through a combination of historical research and visual storytelling, the book succeeds in immersing readers in the atmospheric landscapes of the Cold War era. Michna-Bales and Reynolds expertly employ architectural spaces as symbols, inviting us to reflect on the profound impact of this tumultuous period. They have masterfully crafted a work that demands our attention, provokes contemplation, and encourages us to ponder the complex interplay between architecture, history, and the human experience.

c4 Journal: Izabela Jurcewicz - Body as a Negative: Sensations of Return

July 7, 2023

When she was nineteen, Izabela Jurcewicz was admitted to hospital after several weeks of debilitating pain. Tests revealed an inter-organ tumour in her abdomen, and the complex surgery required to remove it took over nine hours. Jurcewicz remained in hospital for over a month. Years later, the impact of such necessary but invasive treatment is still felt. Her body holds onto the memory of being cut open on the operating table. ‘The impact of this surgery is a living archive in my body’, Jurcewicz writes in her introduction to Body as a Negative: Sensations of Return, ‘a photographic negative that produces images’. 

By suggesting that her post-surgical body is like a photographic negative, the original from which copies are made, Jurcewicz reveals the focus of her first photobook. Throughout Body as a Negative the idea of ‘returning’ is used to work through the significant bodily trauma Jurcewicz sustained. The photobook unfolds across different chapters, each with an accompanying essay, as she revists her experience of illness across different points in time. Returning to her hospitalisation, to the process of recovery, to experiences that triggered the memory of the original trauma, photography becomes a way for Jurcewicz to consider her own physicality from a distance, after it has been altered.

Fisheye: Izabela Jurcewicz: I need to examine the integrity of my body in order to regain the strength of my identity.

June 8, 2023

You approach in your series Body as a negative. Sensation of returning traumatic memories inscribed in the body – at the cellular level. What was your creative process and how did you translate that into images?

These medical experiences – the surgeries in particular – live like a photographic negative in my body and my life. Concretely, I replaced the invasive surgical instrument with my camera as a device that could record, merge and enable a healing ritual. To synchronize the level of knowledge of my body and my mind, I replayed the trauma and rewrote my memories, with the aim of modifying them at the cellular level. At the same time, this work gave me the perspective of seeing and supporting my father who, at the time, was undergoing intensive cancer treatment. The project highlights the process of emphatic engagement that restores dimension to the body and the self and develops an ability to associate with the suffering of others.

When I heard about the idea of ​​a traumatic cellular memory of the body, I thought of a negative. A negative is a physical material containing certain information about events, recording something that happened and preserving it. It resonated with my experience at the time: bringing the past back to the present, inside my body. I told myself that the body held this information unprocessed until one day it came to light (in my case, my father's illness) and brought up the past of my own medical trauma.

Texas Highways: Retracing a Grandfather’s Footsteps in Big Bend

May 30, 2023

For most lovers of Big Bend National Park, the landscape evokes tales of momentous adventures and jaw-dropping beauty: sweaty hikes to Emory Peak, vistas of rugged mountains extending into Mexico, and sleeping under starry skies. For Austin-based photographer Sarah Wilson, the stories contained within the park are also deeply personal. Her grandfather, the late paleontologist John A. “Jack” Wilson, founded the Austin Vertebrate Paleontology Lab at the University of Texas at Austin in 1949 and spent decades leading digs in West Texas. Wilson’s appreciation for Big Bend encompasses her love for her grandfather and the science behind the park’s seemingly boundless, mind-bending evolution over millions of years

Wilson’s new book, DIG: Notes on Field and Family, is a visually stunning meditation on those interweaving stories, presented through a skillful comingling of photography and paleontology. Wilson’s spare but poignant words guide readers through her striking imagery, bringing them in contact with some of life’s big questions. How do family connections endure over generations? And how does humanity fit into the big picture of time?

F-Stop Magazine: Book Review: This is Bliss by Jon Horvath

May 24, 2023

A mix of styles and varied tropes of photographic storytelling are paced throughout Jon Horvath’s first mass published/distributed book, This Is Bliss. Horvath crafts a story constructed from one-part archivist, one-part curator, one-part Beat poet, with a dash of independent filmmaker thrown in for good measure.

Horvath draws strength from a variety of styles without watering down the visual feel of the project. The multiple styles of photography and lens-based artwork within This Is Bliss fully supports the narrative of Horvath’s story. The book contains work which includes full contrast & stark black and white photos, studio-lit catalog shots, understated color photos (which remind me favorably of Stephen Shore’s work), and lightning-like photo flash in the middle of the night… illuminating signage or structure, or a pile of gritty, dirty snow.

Texas Monthly: Her Grandfather Dug For Fossils in Big Bend. Now Her Photos Celebrate His Spirit of Adventure.

March 24, 2023

Sarah Wilson visited Big Bend National Park for the first time in the 1980s, when she was fourteen. There, on a school field trip, she and her classmates pitched tents at the Cottonwood Campground—a quiet, shady oasis tucked away in the park’s western corner—and stayed up late to stargaze. “I remember walking down towards the Rio Grande with some friends one night, laying down near the banks, and looking up at the sky,” Wilson says. “I had never seen stars like that. I was in awe.”

Inspired by the photography of longtime Marathon resident and Big Bend denizen James Evans, Wilson returned a few years later during a summer break from college, at NYU. The following year she returned yet again, this time to work as an assistant for Evans. The setting couldn’t have been more different from that of New York City. “The open skies and the quiet were a needed break from the high energy. Being in the company of jackrabbits and snakes and ocotillos was good for my soul,” says Wilson, who, like Evans, appears on Texas Monthly’s masthead as a contributing photographer. “The landscape felt timeless and lawless. . . . Being there unlocked a vibrant, adventurous part of me,” a part that seems to be an inherited family trait.

Musée Magazine: Photo Journal Monday: Izabela Jurcewicz

March 6, 2023

In my performative and therapeutic process of dealing with memories and tensions written in the body, photography takes a crucial role. I was an inter-organ tumor patient, one of 300 cases worldwide, where science had few answers to the cause and how to proceed. This experience of a patient being ‘on view,’ researched and scanned, coined my relationship with the camera and ways of seeing a human.

Outrider: ‘Countdown,’ a new book and photo exhibit, offers a look inside nuclear command centers and bunkers

February 27, 2023

The images seem ghostly, like relics of a bygone era. But they are not. 

Countdown, a new photobook and art exhibit, combines the work of photographers Adam Reynolds and Jeanine Michna-Bales as they explore decommissioned nuclear missile silos and Cold War-era fallout shelters in the United States. The images are a stark reminder of the U.S. nuclear policy of Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD) in an arms race that is still very much alive.

The project seems even more relevant amid a new report of early blood cancer diagnosed in military officers who worked in nuclear silos in Montana. 

Below, photographer Reynolds talks about the project and why the specter of nuclear war remains with us. 

PhotoBook Journal: Izabela Jurcewicz – Body as a Negative: Sensations of Return

February 17, 2023

Those of us who have undergone operations know about the many forms of mental and physical anguish these entail, as well as about the stamina, fortitude, and patience we as patients are expected to muster during the whole process, before, during, and afterward. When it comes to very serious operations of many hours that remedy a very rare form of an inter-organ tumor, the stakes are all the greater and everything seems all the more overwhelming. Cellular changes leave their mark.

Izabela Jurcewicz experienced all this, came out of the process successfully, and now shares the whole journey with us in this gripping photobook; she also gained the strength to support her father in his newly diagnosed situation. All of this is presented in a very open manner: the cover has a window that lets us view a portion of the patient on an operating table contemplating her body and her fate, leading to a full-age image when you open the book. The binding is open as well; nothing is hidden, you can see the stitching, and the lay-flat approach made possible by the binding lets us see all the details of every image.

Feature Shoot: After Surviving a Rare Tumor, a Photographer Processes Trauma

February 15, 2023

In her studio, Izabela Jurcewicz set up a slab, covered it with a green medical sheet, and stretched out on top of it. She was reenacting a real event in her life: when she was nineteen years old, Jurcewicz experienced major internal bleeding. 

She was diagnosed with a rare inter-organ tumor—one of only 300 cases in the world. Following weeks in the hospital, she was put on a table and cut open. That first surgery was nine hours. She remembers being naked and feeling cold when she woke up. She remembers not being able to speak. She remembers her parents’ faces behind glass.

Float Magazine: Holding Time by Catherine Panebianco

February 14, 2023

Holding Time by Catherine Panebianco is a sentimental and deeply personal book that captures the essence of time, family, and our memories. Panebianco revisits her family's archived photographs, re-photographing them within their present-day surroundings, blurring the lines between past and present. With the addition of text by Irene Alison, these personal images transform into universal stories that become a powerful meditation on memory, the past, and the fleeting nature of time.

With each vignette, we are given a moment, an invitation to pause and reflect on our own lives, our own memories and histories. With the turn of each page, we are reminded of the power of family and the memories that shape our lives. Panebianco highlights the complexity and richness of time, and how it is the things we do that outlast our mortality.

Lenscratch: Jeanine Michna-Bales and Adam Reynolds - Countdown

February 9, 2023

For those of you who may remember the days when your elementary school teacher instructed you in the “Duck and Cover” air raid drill triggered by a lonely siren where you dove under your desk, covered your head with your arms and were instructed not to look out the windows of your classroom, the book, Countdown, should bring back some eerie memories.  The book consists of two projects, “Fallout” by Jeanine Michna-Bales and “No Lone Zone” by Adam Reynolds, that focus on two opposing perspectives of the Cold War in the United States:  the decidedly defensive posture of retreating to a fallout shelter in hopes one would survive a nuclear attack as depicted in “Fallout” and the coldly impersonal images of nuclear missiles, and the ghosts of crews that manned U.S. missile silos that are now nuclear tourist sites in South Dakota and Arizona as “No Lone Zone” illustrates.  Both projects are coldly impersonal with nary a human figure in sight other than their remnants such as an empty whiskey bottle in a fallout shelter and a group photo of the last crew of a missile silo over a red Coke machine in a crew lounge.

Tribeza: 6 Beautiful New Books from Texas Creatives (Dig)

February 2023

Released in December, this body of work represents a decade of paleontological research and family history at Big Bend from author, cinematographer and photographer Sarah Wilson. The series is a thoughtful tribute to Wilson’s grandfather, who organized the Texas Vertebrate Paleontology Collections at UT Austin, where he was also a professor of geology and paleontology. The idea for the memoir came to Wilson after she was given three boxes of 35-millimeter Kodachrome slides that her grandfather had captured on annual trips and used in his teaching. She discovered that many of the locations and imagery were the very same she had photographed herself years later.

Deep Red Press: Dig by Sarah Wilson on Best Book and Zine List, 2022

December 29, 2022

DIG

Sarah Wilson

Yoffy Press

Sarah Wilson has created conceptual self-portraits in the style of geology and anatomy charts, combining the personal and the scientific. For Sarah, these annual digs are a pilgrimage to an origin story that reaches beyond traceable generations.

PhotoBook Journal: Jon Horvath - This Is Bliss

December 26, 2022

Lynchian:  noted for juxtaposing surreal or sinister elements with mundane, everyday environments, and for using compelling visual images to emphasize a dreamlike quality of mystery or menace. – Oxford English Dictionary

Lynchian is a description that immediately came to mind on my first viewing of Jon Horvath’s 2022 monograph, This is Bliss.  It may be because I had spent much of the summer rewatching the entire Twin Peaks saga – the original television series (1990-91), the 1992 prequel movie Fire Walk With Me and the 2017 Showtime “special event” series taking place 25 years later.  So, I was well immersed in David Lynch’s eccentric world when I “visited” Bliss, Idaho, another quirky small town in the Northwest.  

Lucie Foundation: Puberty Shortlisted for Lucie First Book Award

December 9, 2022

ABOUT THE LUCIE PHOTO BOOK PRIZE

The Lucie Photo Book Prize is a juried competition open to a diversity of submissions – from published to prototype to hand-made books. The awards will be presented to photographers, editors, curators or publishers who have created such projects anywhere in the world within July 2020 – November 2022.

The Lucie Foundation is proud to offer two cash prizes to the top two finalists for their outstanding work – one Traditional $3,000 cash prize and one Independent $2,000 cash prize. The Traditional Prize will be awarded to a photographer, editor, curator or publisher whose book is commercially produced and distributed. The Independent Prize will be awarded to a photographer, editor, curator or publisher whose book is published and distributed independently.

ABOUT LUCIE FOUNDATION
Lucie Foundation is a 501(c)3 nonprofit charitable organization whose three-tiered mission is to honor master photographers, discover and cultivate emerging talent, and promote the appreciation of photography, worldwide. Lucie Foundation presents a variety of programs throughout the year, including its signature program, The Lucie Awards.

The Big Bend Sentinel: Photographer Sarah Wilson releases new book documenting her grandfather’s paleontology career, Big Bend landscapes 

November 16, 2022

DIG: Notes on Field and Family, a new book by Austin-based photographer Sarah Wilson, is the culmination of 10 years the artist has spent documenting the legacy of her grandfather, paleontologist Dr. John “Jack” Wilson, the lab at the University of Texas at Austin that he founded, and her relationship to the West Texas landscape. 

Wilson was among the presenters at last week’s annual Center for Big Bend Studies Conference at Sul Ross State University. She shared her personal family history, which collides with the history of Big Bend National Park, and stunning visuals plucked from the pages of her book — a thorough collection of modernized fossil portraits, enduring desert landscapes, vintage Kodachrome slides and lab ephemera. 

Later on in his life, Wilson and her grandfather connected over a love of the Big Bend region, she explained. Jack Wilson frequently visited the area on digs and is credited with several significant findings. In the fifties he was among the first paleontologists to discover mammal fossils from the early Cenozoic Era in the Big Bend; in the sixties he made the “find of a lifetime” in Presidio County by uncovering one of the most complete primate skulls ever found in North America, “Rooneyia viejaensis,” a surprisingly intact 30 million-year-old fossil. 

CNN Style: The small town of Bliss, Idaho, is 'disappearing' — a photographer has created a capsule of life there

November 8, 2022

Bliss, Idaho, is nestled in the curve of Interstate 84, which snakes around the small, rural town on its way north to the state capital, Boise, some 85 miles away. When Milwaukee-based photographer Jon Horvath first visited Bliss in the late summer of 2013, he was on a meandering road trip following the end of a relationship. At the time, around 300 people resided there, served by a small community church, K-12 public school, diner, post office, gas stations, motels and two bars.

"If you find yourself there... it's likely to be simply to fill up your gas tank, maybe catch a quick meal at the diner, but that's probably about it," Horvath explained in a phone call.

Buck Hall, a Bliss resident, told Horvath on his first visit that the town had once seen more regular visitors, but that construction of the Interstate decades ago had shifted traffic away, the photographer recalled. Once a place to pass through, Bliss became a place to pass by — a touch of irony on an exit sign.

F-Stop Magazine: Book Review: Puberty by Laurence Philomène

October 1, 2022

Puberty is a self-portrait project by Laurence Philomène which looks at the intimate and vital process of self-care as a non-binary transgender person undergoing hormonal replacement therapy (HRT). Shot over a period of two years, it combines surreal colors and mundane environments to document daily moments and slow, subtle physical changes occurring during Philomène’s transition. Looking at HRT as a process without a fixed end goal, Puberty sets out to challenge viewers to consider identity beyond binaries via self-portraits and as depicted ‘through the bodies of others’.

It seems like everything you learn growing up – whether from other kids, or books you read, or from your parents – everything feels like you’re doing it wrong. Viewers online are bombarded with ideal images of how everything is going just fine – especially in the current age of constant connection, selfie-culture and over sharing. But the truth is, lots of things are not okay, and that’s okay. Authors like Judy Blume or John Green, whose novels and stories throw back the proverbial covers of youth to reveal all the bedbugs, provide the counter-argument to thinking ‘everyone else’s world is fine’: Life is messy, and that’s life. The struggles are real, but it will all be okay.

Photobook Journal: Laurence Philomene - Puberty

September 23, 2022

Puberty and coming of age—a time to look inward as one reaches out to the world. We are not all the same, and in accepting and welcoming various different orientations, we may reach some levels of discomfort as we reexamine old stereotypes and preconceived categories into which we previously may have thought people would neatly fit. Some individuals just cannot easily be compartmentalized as belonging to a single category; if deep inside they feel diverse in their gender orientation, they encompass both maleness and femaleness, in various proportions, and therefore are non-binary.

So it is with this refreshingly direct and creatively presented new photobook by Laurence Philomène, also known as Larry, in which we share a special journey over a period of three years. Larry, who identifies as trans, queer, and non-binary, provides many details about various developments and moments that took place during that time. We are privileged find out about a myriad of personal feelings, the process of supplementary testosterone shots, some trips, and we also get to know a group of friends, who function as a very important support group.

Lenscratch: Jon Horvath: This Is Bliss

September 10, 2022

The intriguing monograph This Is Bliss, published by Yoffy Press, is a thorough and emotional exploration of the American dream. Focused on the small town of Bliss, Idaho, Jon Horvath gives viewers a full survey of the town, focusing on themes of desire, loss, legend, and serenity. Horvath’s images show his expertise in balancing the poetic narrative with the formal documentary exploration of place. The West is synonymous with masculine mythology of cowboys, freedom to start any life, and that if you just pull yourself up by your bootstraps, you can achieve any wish. Horvath shows the reality of these ideals through a familiarity with a sense of the culture and people of Bliss. The images reveal an appreciation, understanding, and trust, where we catch glimpses of every day life through intimate portraits, soft actions, and discovered objects. The truth of the contemporary West is one of the fading American dream, but This Is Bliss shows romantic contentment of the American West.

1854: Jon Horvath documents Bliss, a tiny city in Idaho, “to see what happiness looks like”

August 24, 2022

Once an important destination along the Oregon Trail, the city – which has a population of 300 – has fallen on hard times and is struggling to hold onto its history

On a hot day in the summer of 2013, Jon Horvath was driving through the desert in Idaho when he saw an exit sign for a city called Bliss. Intrigued by the name, and suspecting it would likely be hyperbole, he pulled off the highway and entered the one mile stretch of dusty road that makes up the small city. 

Upon parking his car, he immediately found himself face-to-face with one of the locals. The two struck up conversation and in a short space of time Horvath was given the history of the town, including its current population: 300 people. 

“After we parted ways, I walked the town with my camera for a bit, made some preliminary pictures, and left feeling like I needed to come back one day,” he recalls. “The following year, in 2014, I did just that, arriving with more earnest intentions and the self-assigned directive of ‘pursuing a deeper understanding of happiness’ – whatever that may look like – as influenced by the residents of Bliss.”

Art & Object: Preview Laurence Philomene’s Masterful Monograph: "Puberty"

August 19, 2022

Puberty by Laurence Philomene is a must-have, modern yet moody, book and work of art. Its pages are chockfull of intelligent art-historical references, handwritten personal divulgences, casually surreal still lifes, and nude self-portraiture. 

Measuring eight by ten inches, the monograph includes 188 photographic plates. Every aspect of the publication contributes to the work’s larger goal: To document the artist’s experience of hormonal replacement therapy (HRT) as a non-binary transgender person and highlight the “intimate and vital” role of self-care in this process.

What Will You Remember? Transcience

August 17, 2022

The bright red cover of Watermelons are not Strawberries by Sandra Bacchi with a mess of broken plates may at first seem to be chaotic. And the opening image of pots, pans and other utensils piled high on a kitchen counter cement that tumultuous tone, but as we leaf through the book a myriad of transformations are revealed in calmer, atmospheric or layered images that introduce more nuanced auras.

1854/BJP: In their debut book ‘Puberty’, Laurence Philomene journals two years of gender transition

July 26, 2022

Documenting a ‘second adolescence’, the Montreal artist’s immersive book is intimate and dynamic in equal measure

Leafing through the pages of Puberty by Laurence Philomene is like reading a teenage diary. Bound in a softcover debossed with yellow cursive and gold stars, its pages are filled with colour and scrawled with handwritten notes. The book follows two years of a transition in which Philomene, who is non-binary, undergoes hormonal replacement therapy (HRT). 

Anchored by a series of self-portraits organised chronologically, the project reveals intimate details about Philomene’s lived experience as a chronically ill transgender person. We meet their cat Vashti, and their best-friends Nina, Lucky and Rochelle; we learn about their nighttime rituals and their favourite neighbourhood willow tree. But reading this ‘journal’, as such, doesn’t feel voyeuristic or intrusive. Philomene has invited us into this space. On the first page of the book, decorated with multi-coloured sparkles, they write: “This story is my offering to you. I am so grateful for your love and energy while reading it. I hope it ignites a light of possibility in your heart.” And so it begins. 

Lenscratch: Laurence Philomene: Puberty

July 13, 2022

Laurence Philomene is a non-binary artist from Montreal who creates colourful photographs informed by their lived experiences as a chronically ill transgender person. Their practice celebrates trans existence and studies identity as a space in constant flux via highly-saturated, cinematic, and vulnerable images.

Gaining an interest in image-making in their teenage years, Laurence has since used photography as space to both experiment with, and document identity as it comes to be expressed through gender. Using photography as a process of mutual [and self] care, their work aims to humanize identities that have been historically marginalized, and act as a love letter to their community.

All About Photo: Holding Time by Catherine Panebianco

May 22, 2022

Holding Time is a love story about family. It might be my family's story, but it's really every family's story. Weddings, road trips, babies, vacations, game nights - these everyday snapshots provide a roadmap to a life. By using my dad's Kodak slides taken in the 1950s and 60s and physically holding them in my current landscape, the photographs in Holding Time literally meld my past with my present. I think that Holding Time gives a nostalgic nod to my family's past, but also creates a place where everyone can celebrate their own family memories and how those memories might affect their present day. I like to say that Holding Time is a gentle reminder that you are always carrying your past into your present and your loved ones will always remain close to you. Holding Time was published by Yoffy Press in March 2022, includes a lovely story by writer Irene Alison, and is available at www.yoffypress.com.

Them: Laurence Philomene Is Photographing the Beauty of Second Puberty

May 2, 2022

Puberty is a uniquely challenging time in the lives of many trans folks. For those of us who are already unsure if our physical form aligns with our deeper sense of self, the typical changes often add new questions to the mix. Taken in a positive light, the unwanted filling of the chest or the deepening of the voice can be clarifying; they can alert us to our need for blockers and other kinds of trans-affirming care. Too often, though, puberty is a time of chaos clothed in confusion, causing bodily transformations that reveal themselves as setbacks later in life.

Thankfully, there’s the option of second puberty, or the nostalgic spin transsexuals such as myself like to give to the more standard term, “transition.” This time, most of the changes aren’t surprising, but rather the deeply desired result of careful planning, intention, and practice. Yet even within the regimented framework of medical transition, there’s still the potential for experimentation, for subtler shifts we could hardly have seen coming. It is this process, full of beauty, mundanity, and exploration, that serves as the subject of an electrifying new self-portrait project from Canadian photographer Laurence Philomene.

1854: Catherine Panebianco reflects on the nature of personal memory

April 30, 2022

Panebianco photographs her father’s old slides against her current locations: “It is a literal meeting of past and present, but there is also the idea of continuation, and the past shaping the present”

Every Christmas growing up, Catherine Panebianco’s father would bring out a box of slides and gather the whole family to view them on an old projector. “He’d set up an ancient screen in our living room, making it an event with popcorn and pyjamas, and all visiting relatives would be required to tell stories about the slides,” she recalls. Images of family vacations and boat trips, feasts and beloved pets would flicker before them as they watched, reminiscing together. “It was an important part of my family’s history and a consistent memory from a childhood where we moved a lot. This annual tradition made every new place we landed into a home.”

Public Offerings: Behind the Lens: Laurence Philomene

April 19, 2022

Continuing our look behind the lens, up-and-coming artist Laurence Philomene speaks to writer Kate Neave about the stories behind 5 key images from their photographic practice.

Laurence Philomene and I first connected back in 2015, when their art collective The Coven captured my attention with its fearless and outspoken challenges to gender stereotypes. Since then, Laurence’s photography practice has reached new heights. Over the years they’ve built a loyal community of fans who sign up to their Patreon receiving regular snail mail, test prints and merch treats in return for their support. Laurence’s empowering imagery continues to define identity beyond binaries but now they’ve turned their lens inwards to capture their own personal journey.

What Will You Remember?: In the Mourning

April 2022

Catherine Panebianco’s “Holding Time” (Yoffy Press, 2022) is both a literal and figurative homage to a lost era. In tribute to her father, she appropriated his signature collection of Kodachrome slides from decades-past family holidays, celebrations, travelogs and mundane domestic scenes. Holding each aloft before a backdrop today, Panebianco unifies the two elements into a graphic and spiritual whole. Meticulous, colorful and engaging on multiple levels, Panebianco brings a tricky performance to fruition with creative flair.

Elle Italia: Non-binary artist Laurence Philomène shares (with us) the art of re-appropriating the body

March 27, 2022

The journey to discover the identity with which to feel at ease is like a vertiginous ride on a roller coaster that lasts a lifetime, but at the slow pace of the changes that affect everyday life. An oxymoron marvel for the flow of mutations that overwhelm the body and mind, not just during puberty . In the revolutionary transition phase that Laurence Philomène lives by embracing their feminine and masculine identity with the small daily transformations of his non-binary identity. A rich body of work and transition, which challenges millennial perceptions and expectations, exposing everything that tends to hide and sacrifice to habits and clichés, with a brilliant verve that blends the concepts of life, art and beauty, like the pre-Raphaelites.

The Post-Journal: Panebianco’s Photography Talents, Father’s Old Slides Pay Tribute To Family

March 25, 2022

With the table and chairs in place, seven football players from Jamestown High School and members of the coaching staff find their places at one end of McElrath Gymnasium for a photo shoot on a February afternoon.

Standing nearby, moms, dads, siblings and grandparents of the seniors who are announcing their college intentions, await their opportunity for their Kodak moment with their favorite Red Raider, too.

BuzzFeed News: A Photo Memoir That Looks At Two Years Of A Transition

March 21, 2022

For photographer Laurence Philomene, some time at home during the pandemic turned into a stunning book about their transition through self-portraits and landscapes. “I’d describe my work as colorful, intimate autobiographical images of my life as a chronically ill nonbinary trans artist looking for the beauty in every season of life,” they told BuzzFeed News.

Their work is instantly recognizable, and their orange hair has become a trademark that you’ll recognize on Instagram or on a gallery wall.

When they began documenting themselves and their hormone journey in 2018, Philomene noticed that the media coverage of trans people felt very black-and-white, with stories of binary men and women who transitioned fully from one gender to another seemingly overnight. Their experience was different.

F-Stop Magazine: Book Review: Our Strange New Land by Alex Harris

March 6, 2022

The High Museum in Atlanta commissioned Alex Harris as part of its Picturing the South series. While the brief was to photograph anything in the American South, Harris chose to examine the rapidly evolving world of independent fiction filmmaking while also exploring our increasingly visual culture. His photographs were made on over forty film sets throughout the region. In his project, and throughout the book, Harris’ images reveal a new generation of filmmakers coming to terms with matters of race, class, and sexuality that relate not just to the South but to the whole country. His photographs hint at more universal aspects of life – the ways in which we are all actors in our own lives, creating our sets, practicing our lines, refining our characters, playing ourselves. 

Alex Harris and editor Margaret Sartor have created this immersive photobook, using still photographs which blur the lines between documentary and fiction, and evoke their own cinematic-like narrative. Our Strange New Land is a portrait of the American South that is familiar to people who recognize themselves or their sense of place in these environs. Harris’ ability to tap into the familiar, and surprising, makes this book a complex cocktail of images and evocative settings which are delightful and frightening, sobering and beautiful.

Float Magazine: Alex Harris, Our Strange New Land

February 27, 2022

A glimpse of life in the American South with all its complexities. (Art Net News)

Commissioned by the High Museum in Atlanta as part of its Picturing the South series, photographer Alex Harris chose to examine the rapidly evolving world of independent fiction filmmaking while also exploring our increasingly visual culture. Made on over 40 film sets throughout the region, his photographs reveal a new generation of filmmakers coming to terms with matters of race, class, and sexuality that relate not just to the South but to the whole country. Harris’ photographs also hint at more universal aspects of life – the ways in which we are all actors in our own lives, creating our sets, practicing our lines, refining our characters, playing ourselves.

Blurring the lines between documentary and fiction, Alex Harris and Margaret Sartor have created this immersive photobook, using still photographs to evoke their own cinematic-like narrative. Our Strange New Land is a portrait of the American South that is at once familiar and surprising, delightful and frightening, sobering and beautiful.

Phroom: Sandy Carson: Passing Place

February 18, 2022

Artist Sandy Carson emigrated from a small industrial town near Glasgow named Newmains. In the US he established himself first as a successful international BMX rider and as a photographer later. From the late ‘90s onward he began regularly traveling back home to spend some time together with his single-parent mother. What first started as random documentation of those emotionally charged encounters soon evolved into an organized body of work about his mum’s aging and the growing detachment from his hometown.

PhotoBook Journal: Fred Mitchell: If You Go, All the Plants Will Die

February 16, 2022

I may not be a relationship expert, but I highly suspect that stating the reason for another person to stay in a relationship is that otherwise if they left all of the plants would die may not be the most enticing of rationales. The book’s title appears to be a retrospective statement about a relationship that Fred Mitchell was experiencing that establishes an underlying conceptual framework for this body of work. When things are not going right, everything is perceived to be in the same sad state of affairs.

The Duke Chronicle: Center for Documentary Studies founder Alex Harris's new project 'Our Strange New World' blurs the line between fact and fiction

February 14, 2022

The “South” is an evolving concept with a seeming dichotomy of histories. In 1874, Atlanta Constitution editor Henry Grady coined the term “The New South,” attempting to distinguish the region from its roots. But with a history embedded in racist institutions and shaped by an unequal sense of progress, many Southerners have struggled to understand the place they call home. 

In his most recent project, photographer Alex Harris captured film sets in the American South, exploring the role of storytelling and perspective in our perception of reality. Working alongside his wife, photographer and designer Margaret Sartor, he compiled the images into an exhibit for the High Museum (Nov. 27, 2019 - May 3, 2020) and a book entitled “Our Strange New Land.” The work was part of the museum’s “Picturing the South” project: commissioning “a current perspective on Southern subjects and themes while building the Museum’s collection of contemporary photography.”

Duke Today: Our Strange New Land: A Photographer Gazes at New Southern Narratives By Independent Filmmakers

February 3, 2022

Photographer Alex Harris’ new book, Our Strange New Land: Narrative Movie Sets in the American South, opens with a dream-like image of a young girl staring directly at the viewer from a darkened doorway, her arms reaching out to part a curtain of swinging beads. The photograph was made on the set of Roni Nicole Henderson-Day’s “And the People Could Fly,” a film, writes Henderson-Day in the essay she contributed to Harris’ book, “about the gravitas of life.”

“The scene was and remains, like certain scenes from movies I’ve watched over the years, as real in my imagination as my own true memories,” Harris writes in the book’s afterword.

Photobook Journal: Alex Harris - Our Strange New Land

January 30, 2022

Visual narration is an exciting endeavor in contemporary photobooks. Fact and fiction can reach some artful intermingling in this area. But while the creation of fiction in verbal narration/literature (short stories, novels, folk tales, to name just a few genres) has been widely accepted for centuries, and the creation of fiction in movies has also found universal acclaim for more than one hundred years, people still have a hard time when such a creative license is applied to individual photographs.

Now it is quite true that fact and fiction need to be clearly separated in the case of news reporting and photojournalism. But we are talking about fine art here, which also includes photography and painting (painting was, among other things, a forerunner of photography, and certainly is also a [re]created version of reality or fiction, and often a combination of the two). The inventing of situations and characters for making connections between past, present, and future can serve the purpose of making specific points and telling stories. Hence staged photographs are an artistic way of creating visual narration, and since we know we are traversing the field of fine art, we can accept them as outgrowths of the imagination, a visualization of what our creativity and dreams can generate.

The Courier: Laurence, a non-binary, has created a photo journal sharing their transition

January 18, 2022

Laurence Phylomène is 29 years old and was born in Montreal, Canada. Growing up, they felt different. They identify neither with the female nor with the male gender. Over the years they learned to accept themself and to realize that they were a non-binary human being.

To help with the gender change, they began testosterone injections in April 2018 to look more androgynous. Beginning in January of the following year, they began documenting the changes in his body (and mind) in a photographic diary.

Now the result has arrived, with “Puberty”, published by Yoffy Press, which can be ordered worldwide for around €48.30 (plus shipping). At the same time, a crowdfunding campaign is running until this Wednesday, January 19th, to raise money for the project (and a bunch of goodies in return).

Lenscratch: Alex Harris: Our Strange New Land

January 16, 2022

Alex Harris’ new book, Our Strange New Land (co-edited with Margaret Sartor), looks to reframe the question “How do you tell the story of the American South?” Based in Durham, North Carolina, Harris knows it’s a region with a complicated history; a legacy marred by hatefulness and prejudice. But it’s also the home of the Blues and folk and Country music. Of Eudora Welty and William Faulkner, Po’ Boys and hush puppies. In Harris’ work, there is a modern light cast on the historical shadow of the Southern story, one that shines through the people who live there. Photographing on the sets of forty-two independent films depicting the South, Harris used the “make-believe land” of a film set to reimagine how the American South might be rendered.

P3: The Intimate Diary of Laurence Philomène, Non-Binary Person in Gender Transition

January 14, 2022

In January 2019, Laurence Philomène, a non-binary person, began photographing the changes that testosterone injections produced in their body and mind. The  Puberty photobook contains intimate, colorful, emotional self-portraits that describe their (ongoing) journey to their true self.

Growing up, Laurence Philomène felt different from their peers. "I felt I didn't have access to a vocabulary that defined me", they said, in an interview with P3, alluding to terms like queer or trans. "I only realized later, during adolescence [how to define myself]." Laurence has assumed, for several years now, as a non-binary person – that is, they do not identify with either the masculine or the feminine gender;  their hormone treatment, which consists of testosterone injections that allow them to achieve an androgynous appearance, started in April 2018. "In January 2019, I started to document the changes that testosterone produces in my body and in my mind through creation of a photographic diary", they explain.

Art Daily: Yoffy Press releases 'Our Strange New Land: Photographs by Alex Harris'

January 9, 2022

Commissioned by the High Museum in Atlanta as part of its Picturing the South series, photographer Alex Harris chose to examine the rapidly evolving world of independent fiction filmmaking while also exploring our increasingly visual culture. Made on over 40 film sets throughout the region, his photographs reveal a new generation of filmmakers coming to terms with matters of race, class, and sexuality that relate not just to the South but to the whole country. Harris’ photographs also hint at more universal aspects of life – the ways in which we are all actors in our own lives, creating our sets, practicing our lines, refining our characters, playing ourselves.

PhotoBook Journal: Alex Harris - Our Strange New Land

January 7, 2022

Visual narration is an exciting endeavor in contemporary photobooks. Fact and fiction can reach some artful intermingling in this area. But while the creation of fiction in verbal narration/literature (short stories, novels, folk tales, to name just a few genres) has been widely accepted for centuries, and the creation of fiction in movies has also found universal acclaim for more than one hundred years, people still have a hard time when such a creative license is applied to individual photographs.

Lenscratch: Publisher’s Spotlight: Yoffy Press

December 11, 2021

You have a varied career from gallerist, to non-profit founder, to book publisher. What inspires your movements through the photo world, and what brought you to book publishing?

I think all of my ventures (or adventures) have been inspired by a desire to do things a different way – by looking at the current landscape, recognizing places or systems that seem unbalanced and are negatively impacting photographers, and trying to think through new solutions. I have a strong desire to level the playing field in ways that will allow artists at all levels of their career to succeed.

I came to publishing in the same way. Many photographers I had relationships with and whose work I really admired were interested in having a book published. They were being approached by publishers who were asking them to pay a lot of money to produce their photobooks, and I wanted to create a publishing model that was more rooted in partnership, even from a financial perspective.

Float Magazine: Sandy Carson’s Passing Place

November 2021

Passing Place by Sandy Carson is an intimate story of a family and their everyday life while being a part. In this work, Carson documents his family, who are located in West Scotland which he visits after moving the United States. His trips and visits are an opportunity to capture their lives and a document of their experience as they get together. This story is one that many can share and relate to, especially people who have immigrated and moved away from their families. Distance and geographical location does not have to define your relationship but it always has an impact on it – if you like it or not.

ATP Diary: New Photography | Conversazione con Leonardo Magrelli

November 15, 2021

"Una delle potenzialità che mi è parso di intravedere sin da subito in questo lavoro era proprio quella della messa in crisi del concetto di riconoscimento nella fotografia, e quindi della sua veridicità. Trovavo poi particolarmente indovinato che questo cortocircuito avvenisse attraverso immagini che, all’apparenza, rappresentavano Los Angeles: la città degli Studios, di Hollywood e dell'industria cinematografica, diventa essa stessa un set, una messa in scena, una replica virtuale del suo originale."

Nowhere Diary: Chase Barnes: Wilderness of Mirrors

November 2, 2021

Wilderness of Mirrors is a photographic survey of an emergent cybernetic landscape. Shot in a variety of locations– ranging from the political spectacle of Washington D.C. to the National Radio Quiet Zone in rural West Virginia - The series visualizes contemporary mechanisms of control that employ technology, anxiety, and images as a means to destabilize and restructure belief.

Through diverse modes of image-making, the sequence unveils discrete social and technological systems which are embedded into the fabric of everyday life, and serve to reinforce and advance dominant structures of capital and power.

Buffalo Spree: Holding Time

November 2021

Today our notion of family means innumerable cell phone pictures shared via social media or scrolling. In the 1950s and ‘60s, the preferred technology for photo documentation of family trips, special occasions, and home life was color slide transparencies (usually Kodak). These images were fewer, but sharing was considerably more complicated. It entailed carefully ordering and loading slides into trays, setting up the projector and screen, and gathering family and friends to view them replete with lively narration. Sharing family history was an event that committed to memory the people and places that made up your heritage.

The Heavy Collective: Chase Barnes - Wilderness of Mirrors

October 25, 2021

Wilderness of Mirrors is a photographic survey of an emergent cybernetic landscape. Shot in a variety of locations– ranging from the political spectacle of Washington D.C. to the National Radio Quiet Zone in rural West Virginia– the project visualizes contemporary mechanisms of control that employ technology, anxiety, and images as a means to destabilize and restructure belief.

Lenscratch: Fred Mitchell’s If You Go, All the Plants Will Die

October 16, 2021

When Fred Mitchell moved to Las Vegas, he noticed that all the plants around him seemed to be dead or dying. He was also working through the final stages of a failing relationship. The universe seemed to be playing an ironic trick, his relationship was ending and so was the life of the plants. It was this epiphany that birthed Mitchell’s monograph, If You Go, All the Plants Will Die. Released in June 2021 by Yoffy Press, the book combines Mitchell’s photography with poetry by Derrick C. Brown to create a meditative musing on the cyclical nature of human relationships.

The New Yorker: A Nonbinary Artist’s Chronicle of “Puberty”

September 30, 2021

While some may be driven by a more specific set of desires and expectations, I prefer to think of the process of taking hormones as an ongoing experiment: I watch my body change gradually, the way I might watch a plant move toward sunlight. I found a similar openness around the subject of medical gender transition in the forthcoming photo book “Puberty,” by Laurence Philomene, published by Yoffy Press. As the title suggests, the photographer is interested in toying with the notion of adolescence, and moments when new physical forms shift social roles. Philomene’s collection is not a clinical document of the kinds of discrete bodily changes that appear on medical forms but, rather, a holistic look at a way of relating to both the body and the surrounding world with which it inevitably interacts.

photo-eye: Book of the Week: West of Here, Selected by Blake Andrews

August 16, 2021

For his recent book of Snapmatic photographs, West of Here — curated from raw source material created by actual GTA players — Leonardo Magrelli has wisely decided to bypass salacious material. The emphasis is on vernacular mood and visual timbre, with scant action and few people. West Of Here’s pictures are monochrome and the vibe subdued, starting with the book’s design: modest-sized and grey. The title in Hollywood Sign font is the first clue to the subject matter. This is Los Santos, GTA’s version of Los Angeles. Pictures of the imaginary city begin on its west side with a shot of the faux Santa Monica pier and a beach fire under a lifeguard shack. The sequence then moves east to virtual versions of familiar So-Cal landmarks. We see the Hollywood sign, the downtown skyline, palm trees and ranch houses. Golfers lounge around a fairway. Tennis players enjoy an afternoon on a private court. Not a cloud in the sky, just another day in sunny paradise. Everything seems more or less ordinary. The only nagging peculiarity is that every vehicle is strangely jacked up and polished. But hey, it’s auto-friendly Los Santos. Car pampering can be expected.

Vanity Fair: 5 Photographic Books on the Non-Binary World

August 7, 2021

Laurence Philomene has been documenting their transition since January 2019. Colorful selfies, sure, but full of truth: mood swings and body transformation of a non-binary person undergoing hormone replacement therapy (HRT). Everything is shown in Puberty, the book currently only pre-orderable (available from November 2021 from the Yoffy Press publishing house) that wants to be a good omen for the generation of trans and queer people to follow, the one that still has to fight to get the same rights of heterosexuals.

Float Magazine: Tears Tears by Serrah Russell

July 29, 2021

I think a great aspect of the book is the use of the book format to enhance the collage aspect of the work. Having these gems across the book of pages that are half or layered create a collage in the physicality of the book. We, as the viewers, become part of the art making process and by flipping the pages we become active in the collage. I think this is not only a smart way to design the book but a creative one that really creates a dynamic and engaging experience with the book that you might not be able to experience with the images other ways as a 2D visual.

F-Stop Magazine: Book Review: Element by Yoffy Press

May 27, 2021

The works in Element pluck a string in my photographic memory that rings with nostalgia and yearning for the days of experimentation in a darkroom, playing with Polaroid cameras or pinhole photographs, and simply enjoying how the world gets recorded on photo emulsion. The results transcend mere experimentation, and evoke a sense of painting or printmaking with saturated hues spread over the surface, or satellite images printed as cyanotypes, or with intense dyes on cloth or canvas. When I consider these images are all photographic processes, and I imagine the process each artist took to create them, I enjoy them even more.

British Journal of Photography: Photobooks to take note of this month: Puberty by Laurence Philomene

April 28, 2021

Gender is a journey. It lasts a lifetime, leading your body through a path of self-discovery, experiences and, sometimes, restrictions. For some, the gender experience leads them beyond the binary. And this is the case for Laurence Philomène. 

Puberty documents Philomène as they undergo hormone replacement therapy (HRT), telling the story of self-care during this journey. By making the series over two years, Philomène captures subtle physical changes that come with transitioning. However, this is not the focus. For Philomène, HRT does not have a set end; there is no goal to achieve. Instead, their journey becomes less transformative and more meditative. Bright colours, domestic interiors and self-portraits, in turn, reflect their life, their body, and their world. The book celebrates the trans experience, functioning as both a diary and memoir. 

F-Stop Magazine: Book Review: You Are Eternity, You Are the Mirror by Marcy Palmer

March 23, 2021

You Are Eternity, You Are the Mirror is an elegant exploration of Beauty in a time when so much of the world is focused on anything but. Palmer presents an antidote to personal and political crisis. In times like what the world has experienced in the past twelve months, many people turn to beauty found in the natural world for solace and refuge. ‘You Are Eternity’ makes the choice to pair Palmer’s images with the writings of Kahlil Gibran; which highlights the significance and meaningfulness of the idea of beauty in our lives. To be still and look with wonder or appreciation at life’s beauty is a treasure. For better or worse, the past year has provided the opportunity to re-consider the world around us in this way.

Huffington Post: "Westofhere". In the city of angels nothing is really what it seems

March 10, 2021

The sunset in Pacific Park, in Santa Monica, and a detail of the Wilshire Golf Club in Century City; Sunset Boulevard and Marina Del Rey, San Bernardino and Gage Avenue, in Huntington Park, and the homes of Baldwin Village, to the south, which have nothing to do with those of Oakwood and Silver Lake, further north, much loved by hipsters, or with those unattainable by the most, iconic and all too recognizable, in Los Feliz. Black and white images that follow each other according to a logic or maybe not and it really is better this way, because it is as if we were traveling the City of Angels with Ansel Adams, one of the first to immortalize it in black and white.

Osso Magazine: PHOTOGRAPH: Los Santos from GTA | Leonardo Magrelli

Leonardo Magrelli is a photographer born in Rome in 1989, which we had already talked about in this article . After graduating in Design and Architecture at La Sapienza University, in 2010 he began to collaborate in the organization of the International Photography Festival in Rome and with the photography publishing house Punctum Press. From 2014 he began to focus more and more on his personal work. In recent years he has begun to focus more and more on personal photographic projects, which have seen publication in various printed and online photography magazines, as well as exposure in collective exhibitions and festivals. Since 2017 he has been part of the Vaste collective together with Giulia Vigna and Alessandro Tini.

CNN Style: A photographer shows the beauty of their transition through vivid self-portraits

February 24, 2021

Several months after photographer Laurence Philomène began testosterone hormone therapy as part of their transition, they began to take pictures of themselves at home. This was in 2018, and Philomène, was concerned about burnout, so they took two months off from work to focus on self-care.

Establishing a portrait practice became part of their daily routine: They photographed themselves making breakfast or brushing their teeth; they took nude self-portraits against their home's baby blue walls or while wearing a fairytale princess gown in bed. All these images are made more vibrant by the presence of Philomène's signature neon orange hair.

Artwork Magazine: West Of Here - Leonardo Magrelli's virtually real project

A Los Angeles reinvented as a parody of itself in images derived from wallpapers and screenshots of Grand Theft Auto V , the video game set in Los Santos, the fictional replicating city of Los Angeles, the mecca of cinema.

The West Of Here project by   Leonardo Magrelli - photographer with a degree in Design and Architecture at La Sapienza in Rome - follows the ranks of that world open to unlikely scenarios that become real and similar in photographs of a Los Angeles that seems likely similar to Los Angeles existing, immortalized by photographers who have made it known and desired, from Garry Winogrand and Lee Friedlander to Edward Ruscha.

Rfotofolio: Marcy Palmer

February 11, 2021

“This project is an exploration of beauty as an antidote for personal and political crisis. Writer and philosopher John O’Donohue states, “I think that beauty is not a luxury, but that it ennobles the heart and reminds us of the infinity that is within us.” That idea resonates with me and inspired this project. The images are made from plants and flowers gathered locally, which are photographed, printed on vellum, and hand applied gold leaf, varnish, and wax to the prints to create the final
images. The project takes reference from Anna Atkins’s botanical studies as well as surrealist photographers such as Florence Henri, who manipulated imagery and materials.” Marcy Palmer

F-Stop Magazine: Book Review: Passing Place by Sandy Carson

February 16, 2021

Passing Place is both a memoir and a portrait of a person, place, and time in Sandy Carson’s life. Themes of memory and loss also play a part in the story. Sandy moved from Scotland to America after pursuing and achieving a goal of being a pro BMX rider. This career gave rise to working as a photographer for magazines and freelance assignments. Photos taken on his annual trips home to visit his mother and family in Scotland began to take on more meaning during a decline in his mother’s health, and creating work was also a way to spend precious time with her before she passed away in 2016.

Collater.al: West of Here, the photographic project by Leonardo Magrelli

Is it possible to photograph a virtual place? And if so, could it be defined as landscape photography? If you are skeptical about the subject, Leonardo Magrelli's project will make you change your mind, if instead you were already convinced you will find further confirmation in the shots of West of Here . 

Born in 1989, Leonardo Magrelli was born in Rome where, while graduating in Design and Architecture, he took his first steps in the world of photography both by collaborating in the organization of the International Photography Festival in Rome, and by working with the publishing house Punctum Press. For more than five years he has focused on both commissioned and personal works. Among these, the latter completely overturns the traditional idea of ​​landscape photography.  

Lenscratch: Sandy Carson: Passing Place

January 9, 2021

Photographer Sandy Carson considers the legacy of memory, loss, and home in his new monograph, Passing Place, published by Yoffy Press.The physical book itself feels timeless, like a novel from the 1940’s with gilded edges and and an embossed ship in gold inviting us on a journey. Indeed, it is a journey, but instead of packing a suitcase, the book unpacks his memories and creates his own personal photo album as a way of not forgetting.

Passing Place is a beautifully crafted book which includes his own photography, family photos and vintage ephemera that coalesce into a an elevated scrapbook of two lives, one that has and one that continues.

Deep Red Press: 2020 Best Books

December 29, 2020

The last two titles on this list can be found though the Georgia based publisher Yoffy Press and give us fantastic work by two renowned and recognized Texas based artists, Sandy Carson and Marcy Palmer. Carson’s book Passing Place is a photographic memoir that acts to preserve a family history and bond that exists through thousands of miles. Combining archival family images and newly made photographs during revisits, Passing Place is a tribute to his mother and the village he grew up in in Western Scotland that makes room to continue the journey of relationships affected by migration and movements.

Lenscratch: Marcy Palmer: You Are Eternity, You Are the Mirror

December 20, 2020

Yoffy Press has recently released a jewel-box of a book, You Are Eternity, You Are the Mirror, that is intimate in stature, but filled with rare and golden botanical gems. Using vellum overlays, French fold binding, and gold-colored metallic ink, the book is the perfect way to remember that the is beauty in this world.

Internazionale: The Photography Books of the Year

December 15, 2020

Mélaina Cholé, Cristiano Volk, Yoffy Press
Cristiano Volk was born in Trieste in 1987 and lives in Staranzano, a town of seven thousand inhabitants and a little more, in the province of Gorizia. In February he published this book inspired by Hippocrates' humoral theory. According to the Greek physician and philosopher, the functioning of our body depends on the balance of four "humors": blood, yellow bile, black bile and phlegm. For his photographic research Volk focuses on the excess of black bile which, according to Hippocrates, is the cause of melancholy and, in a more serious form, of depression. Full-page, without interruptions, the book alternates bodies, landscapes, cells, clouds, seen as scientific phenomena that bind and interact in the universe. Mélaina Cholé proceeds by metaphors, building a personal vision of how melancholy spreads in our psyche. - Giovanna D'Ascenzi

The Eye of Photography: Yoffy Press : Marcy Palmer : You Are Eternity, You Are the Mirror

December 10, 2020

You Are Eternity, You Are the Mirror is an exploration of beauty as an antidote to personal and political crisis. In times of heartache, disaster, and impasse, many turn to beauty found in the natural world for solace and refuge. Pairing these images with the writings of Kahlil Gibran underscores the significance and multiplicity of the notion of beauty in our lives.

These images are made from plants and flowers, which are photographed, printed on vellum, and hand-applied with 24k gold leaf, varnish, and wax. The project is inspired by Anna Atkins’s botanical studies as well as surrealist photographers like Florence Henri and Maurice Tabard, who manipulated imagery and materials to create multi-faceted, imagined spaces that deepened the viewer’s experience.

Photobookstore Magazine: Photobooks of 2020: Blake Andrews

December 6, 2020

Passing Place by Sandy Carson, Yoffy

A handy little jack-knife of a book with all sorts of gadgets and doodads tucked inside. There are old family snapshots, interior booklets, facsimile covers, lace pages, leatherette binding, gilded edges, bookmark ribbon, a cleverly annotated hand-written index, and more. The contents threaten to spin out of control, but they’re ultimately held fast the central figure, Carson’s late mum Mary. She would be very proud of Passing Place.

Photobookstore Magazine: Photobooks of 2020: Robin Titchener

December 5, 2020

Mélaina Chole by Cristiano Volk, Yoffy Press

Volk’s second book, is a beguiling intellectual conundrum of a thing. An exploration through photography, of Hippocrates’ theory of humoral medicine. Printed without a word of explanation, save the title itself, this is most assuredly a book that requires a little time and investigation. However once that commitment has been made, Melaina Chole is definitely a book that worms it’s way into your brain.

photo-eye: Favorite Photobooks 2020

Jon Feinstein’s Favorite Photobook: You Are Eternity, You Are the Mirror by Marcy Palmer.   Published by Yoffy Press.

You Are Eternity, You Are The Mirror, Marcy Palmer's gilded flower series — and now photobook — is a shimmering, temporary bright light amidst the pain, uncertainty, and suffering in the world. Her work invigorates the often hard-to-reimagine botanical photography genre while gesturing to photo-historical forbearers like Anna Adkins. What’s most impressive is how Yoffy Press conveys the materiality of Palmer’s photographic prints (gold velum, etc) from the pages of a photobook. Using overlays and other tactile techniques, they maintain the hold-in-your-hands intimacy that makes Palmer's work so special.

The Luupe: Women*-Made Photobooks of 2020 That Will Shift Your Worldview

December 3, 2020

You Are Eternity, You Are the Mirror by Marcy Palmer
Publisher: Yoffy Press

You Are Eternity, You Are the Mirror uses beauty to counter personal and political crises. Inspired by Anna Atkins and other early botanical artists, Palmer photographs plants and flowers, then prints them on vellum. She hand-applies 24k gold leaf, varnish, and wax, creating magical images that transport viewers, momentarily to a safe and beautiful place. The book itself is smaller than most, which adds to its intimacy. At roughly 5×7,” it’s a gem of a publication to experience and hold in your hands.

BuzzFeed: Here Are The 20 Photo Books We Loved In The Very Exhausting Year Of 2020

December 1, 2020

Extinction Party by Jonathan Blaustein

As we start to reopen our society, the question everyone is asking is: "What will the future look like?" Some want a return to normal, and some want to use this crisis as an opportunity to rebuild as something better, kinder, greener. Jonathan Blaustein has been thinking about capitalism and consumption for over a decade, and he summarizes some of these thoughts in his new book of images called Extinction Party, which takes a sometimes absurd look at how we're spending our resources right now.

PhotoBook Journal: Interesting Artist and Photographic Books of 2020

December 2020

Cristiano Volk – Mélaina Cholé

A compelling visual presentation of a world that is out of sorts; Volk gives us much to contemplate by relating minute everyday details and symbols to our universal challenges.

One Twelve Magazine: Poignant Portfolio no. 17: Marcy Palmer

November 2020

In times of heartache, disaster, impasse, many turn to the idea of beauty in the natural world as a place of refuge. 

These images are made from plants and flowers, which are photographed, printed on vellum, and hand-applied with 24k gold leaf, varnish, and wax to create the final images.  The project is inspired by Anna Atkins’s botanical studies as well as surrealist photographers who manipulated imagery and materials such as Florence Henri, Dora Maar, and Maurice Tabard. 

A book of this work titled, “You Are Eternity, You Are the Mirror” is now available at Yoffy Press.  The images in the book are paired with the writings of Kahlil Gibran to underscore the significance and multiplicity of the notion of beauty in our lives. 

Huck Magazine: Coming of age in 70s rural Scotland

October 30, 2020

In a new book, photographer Sandy Carson captures landscapes and intimate scenes of daily life, combined with archive photos, in a moving visual ode to his mother.

Growing up in Newmains, a tiny village about 20 miles southeast of Glasgow, photographer Sandy Carson remembers the 1970s as a golden age. Heavy industry and steel were the backbone of the local economy and the working-class community was thriving, until Margaret Thatcher came to power and Ravenscraig steelworks was forced to shut its doors.

 “The whole village and surrounding towns went into a great depression and unemployment rocketed, which did nothing but bad stuff to the community,” Carson says.

C4 Journal: Cristiano Volk – Mélaina Cholé

October 4, 2020

The word ‘affect’ is derived from the Latin affectus, which is roughly translatable as passion or emotion. Often, the two are used interchangeably. But one of the most exciting (and profoundly difficult) works on affect – Brian Massumi’s Parables for the Virtual – insists on its difference from emotion. To speak of emotions, Massumi claims, is to reduce sensations that are too rich and complex to express in language. We can signify emotion in gestures, images and words, but affect, Massumi argues, is unrepresentable. It begins deep in the body, beyond the reach of consciousness, in visceral responses that follow a different logic.

Document Scotland: Passing Place - Sandy Carson’s New Book

September 17, 2020

Passing Place is an intimate portrait of both Sandy Carson’s mother and the ex-mining village he grew up in the West of Scotland after emigrating to America at a young age. This photographic memoir deals with separation, space, and the invisible family bonds that exist despite physical distance incurred by geographical displacement.

PhotoBook Journal: Elinor Carucci, David Hilliard, Mickalene Thomas – Caress

September 18, 2020

These days it is especially refreshing to see projects that honor caring for others. Yoffy Press has a program that persuades three photographers to contribute work to a concept, resulting in a trio of small books. In this case the topic is “caress” – an idea that can be widely interpreted. When done well, as it is here, the end result not only reflects a creative collaboration of three artists who bring their unique vision of the concept to the project, but it also allows the viewer/reader to apply their own interpretation to what is presented in the three contributions, presented in the form of a triptych of books. Keeping that in mind, I will describe and analyze what I see here, but I will be especially careful to leave room for your own interpretation of what you see as well.

RuletaRusa: Blaustein: Plastic Still Life

September 13, 2020

Jonathan Blaustein has an original work that makes an impact for its shameless aesthetic, a kind of kitsch narrative about our emotional emptiness.

Blaustein (United States) appropriates rampant modernity to rub emptiness, idiotic consumption, and that gregarious automation that generates countless piles of garbage and waste, a plastic still life.

" I wanted to create a parallel reality, based on the thing itself, which would later sit in popular culture as a counter-narrative, " said Blaustein about what underlies the character of his work.

Humble Arts Foundation: Gilded Photos of Flowers – an Antidote to Crisis

August 28, 2020

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

PROVOKR: Yoffy’s Reveal: The Odd, Offbeat Beauty of 3 Photographers

August 28, 2020

There is a notable balance between what a photographer allows the viewer to see and the aspects which remain concealed, held close to the photographer’s chest. Beyond the four walls of a framed image or just out of the bounds of focus lie shrouded details only privy to those present. The viewer sees and experiences what is revealed to them — at times only breadcrumbs, a hint of something more entirely whole. Occasionally it is a monsoon, a riptide of released sentiment and fervor. 

In an exploration of these dynamics, Yoffy Press presents the fourth publication in a series of triptychs. Reveal, brings together three female photographers, Debbie Fleming Caffery, Cig Harvey, and Andrea Modica. When in collaboration, the style of the three ripples and bounces off one another, each artist unveiling a unique faction of photographic art. 

Albuquerque Journal: Timely Commentary on the State of the Earth

August 23, 2020

Summer is winding down, yet Jonathan Blaustein is keeping things right. He’s spending time with his family in Taos and finding new ways to bide his time. In fact, he’s taken to Instagram to post photos of his family’s farm in the area. While he’s basking in some quality time with family, the Taos-based artist is also enjoying the feedback from his show at Obscura Gallery – his first gallery solo show in more than a decade.

The exhibit is called “Extinction Party” and comprises photo prints taken from his book of the same name, which was released in March. The exhibit is up through the end of August.

“The show is an extension of the book,” he says. “You make something and someone responds. Jennifer Schlesinger at Obscura supported the book from the start. The photos just went from page to the wall. It’s been a great process. To see how these photos have come together.”

Phroom Magazine: Cristiano Volk

August 16, 2020

Mélaina Cholé, from Ancient Greek μέλας (melas), and χολή (kholé), is a photographic exploration of humoral theory conceived by Hippocrates. This theory explained physical and psychological health or illness in terms of the state of balance or imbalance of various bodily fluids. According to Hippocrates (5th century bce), health was a function of the proper balance of four humors: blood, black bile, yellow bile, and phlegm. Volk, in particular, focuses on black bile, described as a cold and dry fluid, generated by the archetype of the earth.

The OD Review: Cristiano Volk - Mélaina Cholé

August 12, 2020

What makes us human beings? Not what makes us work, but what makes us the complex, unique individuals that we are?

The very concept of organic life is truly incredible, let alone the actual existence of something like Homo sapiens. How do elements like oxygen, carbon, hydrogen and nitrogen arrange themselves so that they can walk on the moon or write Hamlet?

Science explains much of it in its own language, but for most of us, these processes, and the hypotheses behind them, remain ephemeral, even magical, as if we were still looking at things the way the ancients looked at them. 

The complexities of life were once explained by way of four essential elements: earth, air, fire and water. And the human, in particular, had its own elemental explanations. 

20x200: Spotlight: Marcy Palmer

August 9, 2020

Weekend food for thought: Beauty isn’t frivolous. It’s not a luxury, but rather a restorative force, a way to reconnect with ourselves and the world around us. That’s the idea that inspired Marcy Palmer’s recent photographic project You Are Eternity, which she describes as “an antidote for personal and political crisis”. And if that sounds like the medicine you’re desperately in need of these days, a) we’re right there with you and b) we’ve got an art book rec you’ll wanna read on for.

Palmer’s award-winning work often touches on ideas of nature, beauty, and science. The pieces in her You Are Eternity series are made from plants and flowers that she forages locally, photographs, and prints on smooth, translucent vellum. After that, they’re hand-gilded in 24k gold leaf, and treated with layers of varnish and wax. The final images feel at once restrained and emotive, earthly and ethereal, gleaming and esoteric. Quite frankly, they’re gorgeous, and Palmer knows the power of natural beauty. Her project is driven by the idea that difficult times and tumultuous emotions lead a lot of us back to the beauty of nature, to the refuge of its aesthetics. If you’ve had a wild urge to go camping or fill your home with flowers recently, you might relate.

Lenscratch: Reveal: Cig Harvey, Andrea Modica and Debbie Fleming Caffery

July 30, 2020

Sometimes, it’s what is hidden that creates the magic in our photographs. Yoffy Press has just released a new Triptych book series titled Reveal, featuring  the work of Cig Harvey, Andrea Modica and Debbie Fleming Caffery. “Each artist considers what the photograph exposes and what it keeps secret, what the viewer is meant to know and what the artist wants to hold close. The reveal is intentional or accidental, transformative or suggestive. And sometimes, the veil shifts just enough to give us a glimpse of something truly real, raw, and exceptional.”

Reveal is the fourth set in Yoffy Press’ Triptych series. In each Triptych, three artists are given a word to inspire the creation of a small book of work. The three resulting books are sold as a set, inviting the viewer into the collaboration to make connections between the projects and the overarching theme.”

What Will You Remember?: Reveal: Three Monographs

July 27, 2020

Here at What Will You Remember?, we like to compose themed, comparative book reviews. Fortunately, we are not alone in seeking unifying threads between photobooks. For some time, Yoffy Press has been creating three-monograph sets based around a theme. Their most recent offering “REVEAL” includes volumes by Cig Harvey, Andrea Modica, and Debbie Fleming Caffery. The set “considers what the photograph exposes and what it keeps secret, what the viewer is meant to know and what the artist wants to hold close.”  Yoffy has assembled a splendid suite: Harvey, Modica and Caffery reveal three unique perspectives with beguiling allure.

Lensculture: Book Review: Extinction Party

July 22, 2020

Jonathan Blaustein’s book, Extinction Party, published by Yoffy Press in 2020, is a compilation of four bodies of work intersecting themes of American consumption and consumerism. A collection of still-life images with little decor and minimalist stylization, Blaustein’s blunt photographic style brings to the forefront a direct and unabashed confrontation with the aesthetics of his chosen subject matter.

Woven into the threads of this tapestry of photographs are deep concerns over American overconsumption, and what it means for our bodies, our lifestyles, the wastes we leave that tarnish our environments, and above all, the impoverishment of what American society has come to represent in the values of what we spend our money on. The book’s title, ‘Extinction Party’, acts as a tongue-in-cheek reflection of how mass-produced and consumerist lifestyles, and their environmental consequences, have placed the world on a path of unsustainability brought on by demand for convenience and novelty.

Photos and Stuff: Crit: Extinction Party by Jonathan Blaustein

June 27, 2020

This book crossed my radar a bunch of times. I think I was aware of the kickstarter campaign in November of 2019, and I've seen mentions of it here and there (not least because I read Blaustein on aPhotoEditor). Initially I was completely uninterested. Absolutely not my thing. But damn it, that drip marketing works, and so eventually I came around to thinking it might after all be my cup of tea. At some point in there I asked him for a favor, and he was very nice about it, which led me — primed to buy — to actually buy. Probably he popped into mind in part because of the book, so keep that in mind. Publish a book, and the mooks are gonna start crawling out of the woodwork with favors to ask.

F-Stop Magazine: Book Review: Extinction Party by Jonathan Blaustein

May 31, 2020

Photographer, conceptual artist, and writer Jonathan Blaustein has been steadfastly working over ten years on a related series of projects that explore overconsumption absurdity, environmental disregard, all the while peppered with satirical comments on extinction-level problems. His photos, whether it’s of a row of tomatillos, or a clump of turf, are photographed against a plain background – the repeated mask motif is especially powerful. Each item is photographed in a style akin to slick Madison Avenue pops of color, form and line, or either artfully-lit, detailed museum catalog quality photographs. But while many of the objects are bright or jovial, the undertow in Extinction Party evokes the feeling that something underneath the surface is wrong. “Sure the ocean looks pretty,” Blaustein writes in his introduction, “but we’re eating all its fish, and replacing them with plastic toys and toxic chemicals. C’est la vie.”

Float Photo Magazine: Jonathan Blaustein Interview

May 27, 2020

First, Jonathan can you tell us how you first started with photography? What made you originally interested in photography as your art form? How did it all start?

I've got one of those romantic origin stories, as an artist.

I was preparing to take a solo, five day, cross country drive, from New York City to New Mexico, back in 1996. Right before I left, I randomly decided to buy some black and white film for a little point and shoot camera I'd been given as a gift for my High School graduation.

I'd never been into photography, though my uncle was, so it was an out-of-character move.

I fell in love with taking pictures almost instantly, as soon as I hit the road, and by the end of the journey, I was ready to study photography and devote my life to it.

BuzzFeed: Jonathan Blaustein’s Extinction Party

May 23, 2020

As we start to reopen our society, the question everyone is asking is "What will the future look like?" Some want a return to normal, and some want to use this crisis as an opportunity to rebuild as something better, kinder, greener. We spoke with Jonathan Blaustein, who has been thinking about capitalism and consumption for over a decade, about his new book of images called Extinction Party.

Paper Journal: Cristiano Volk

May 20, 2020

Mélaina Cholé from Ancient Greek μέλας (melas), and χολή (kholé), is a photographic research on the study of humoral theory conceived by Hippocrates. Volk, in particular, focuses on black bile, described as a cold and dry fluid, generated by the archetype of the earth.

In fact, within the series, we find images of the planet earth seen from space, of human body cells, and of people’s faces following the theory of the physiognomy of the time. The ideas of Hippocrates continued to be dominant, being abandoned only almost in the mid-nineteenth century. Extensive traces of this hegemony survive in modern language: the heart was indicated as the seat of feelings and in particular of love which, poetically, is “breath of life”; Melancholia is a feeling of sadness but also a serious form of depression.

The same depression that, according to recent studies, will be the most widespread disease in the world in 2030.

Float Magazine: Greg Kahn, Havana Youth

May 19, 2020

In his description of ‘Havana Youth’, Greg Kahn said it best: “The once evolutionary process for cultural identity has jolted like the slip-strike of a tectonic plate”. If I had to describe this body of work in one word, I would begin with Greg Kahn’s understanding of ‘identity’ and his investigation of individuality, uniqueness and freedom. This latest book by documentary and fine art photographer Greg Kahn explores a radical change of Cuban identity and a somewhat coming of age from Cubans born after 1989.

Photograph Magazine: Focus On: Jonathan Blaustein

May 2020

Extinction Party, the title of Jonathan Blaustein’s book (published in March by Yoffy Press), might feel a little on the nose for this moment, but sometimes things are more prescient that we plan. The book – which represent a decade’s worth of photographs and was in the works well before the pandemic – features deadpan still lifes, simple in content and conceptual in approach, that skewer consumer culture with black humor but also no small sense of alarm.

Booooooom: “I’ve Always Been a Cowboy in My Heart” by Photographer Sandy Carson

April 30, 2020

Originally from Scotland, photographer Sandy Carson relocated to Texas in the 90’s and has now spent more than half of his life there. His 12-year project, “I’ve Always Been a Cowboy in My Heart”—recently published as a photo book by Yoffy Press— follows the theme of the “great American road trip”, seen through the eyes of a Scotsman.

As his statement describes, the series chronicles his “fascination with everyday occurrences in the social landscape and explores the spaces between clarity and imperfection, composing a personal slice of America.”

PhotoBook Journal: Jonathan Blaustein - Extinction Party

April 2020

Anyone who has put in time on the portfolio review circuit has probably encountered Jonathan Blaustein. He’s that rather intense reviewer with the moustache and goatee who is never at a loss for words, and always quick with a thumbs up or down on your work. He’s also the guy you see schmoozing his way around all the event venues. Somehow, he seems to remember everyone he has ever reviewed.

I’ve had first-hand experience sitting across from him. He’s liked some of my work, and promoted it in his weekly column at aphotoeditor.com. Other work has left him cold. But I always knew just where I stood with him, and I valued his opinions (even when I didn’t totally agree with them).

What does that have to do with his photobook? Not much, but it wouldn’t be a proper Jonathan Blaustein review without a personal digression to start with.

The Washington Post: ‘Human overconsumption of the planet’s animals and natural resources imperils life as we know it, leading to the potential extinction of nearly everything.’

April 17, 2020

A couple of weeks ago, I received an intriguing email. It was from the photographer Jonathan Blaustein, inviting me to take a look at his first book, “Extinction Party” (Yoffy Press, 2020).

I have been familiar with Blaustein’s work for many years, from his “The Value of a Dollar” (which ended up going viral after being published by the New York Times) to his writing about photography in the A Photo Editor blog as well as the New York Times’s Lens blog.

After taking a look at his book, I was interested in highlighting it here on In Sight . The book’s message about how we interact with the planet seems more pressing, especially now. But I was wary about writing about the book because Blaustein is a much better writer than I am. So I proposed that he take the reins and give us his own insight into the work. I’m thankful that he graciously obliged.

F-Stop Magazine: Book Review: Caress by Elinor Carucci, David Hilliard, and Mickalene Thomas

April 6, 2020

Caress is one in a series of books published in a Triptych Series by Yoffy Press. Three photographers, Elinor Carucci, David Hilliard, and Mickalene Thomas, contribute work that supports the common theme. Caress explores intimacy, emotion and connection between people as subjects, as well as the photographer and subjects.

It feels reassuring to see work focusing on the power, strength and attraction of human touch. In April of 2020, ‘social distancing’ is presented as one of our greatest weapons against the coronavirus pandemic. While the science of this tactic is sound, the approach feels counterintuitive on an instinctual level. We are taught to reach out to those in need, we are compelled to embrace loved ones who are hurt, we draw our loved ones closer whether it is out of a sense of nurturing, or out of desire. There is a palpable sense of worry, or even fear, surrounding the transmission of a disease that relies on person to person interaction. A caress is an aspiration in this moment, which makes the theme much stronger and pertinent now than when the triptych was first envisioned.

Santa Fe New Mexican: Keep your head up and your hands busy: Artists respond to the coronavirus

April 3, 2020

Midway through a two-week, self-imposed quarantine at his home in Taos, photographer, writer, and educator Jonathan Blaustein took a different tact in This Week in Photography, the normally good-humored weekly column on the blog aPhotoEditor. Instead of another lively piece about fine art photography, he delivered a plea for some sanity and calm in these troubling times. “Haven’t I seen enough in the last month to write ten articles about things on the wall right now?” he wrote. “Yes. Yes, I have.” But for the first time, Blaustein used the platform to give his readers a bit of advice. “First of all, remain calm. Secondly, remain calm. Just because other people are buying up everything in sight doesn’t mean you have to.” He went on, admonishing readers to wash their hands often but not to buy up all the soap at the local supermarket, and adding, “Or all the TP, tissues, paper towels or hand sanitizer.”

F-Stop Magazine: Book Review: Bedmounds by Noah Kalina

March 31, 2020

Noah Kalina’s sculpted bedding photos are a combination of obvious, albeit clever staging and the lucky happenstance combinations of pattern, texture, lighting, and sculptural gravitas. His witty placement of lights, mirrors, camera placement and bedding remind me of Christo’s wrapped Pont Neuf bridge in Paris, or the covered Reichstag in Berlin, or any of his draped landscapes: we are presented with something so very common or accepted to the point of dismissal, but after the artist styles the scene we are surprised at how fresh and completely new our perspective allows the object or setting to transcend the banal and become extraordinary.

Yogurt Magazine: Mélaina Cholé by Cristiano Volk

March 5, 2020

Mélaina Cholé from Ancient Greek μέλας (melas), and χολή (kholé), it is a photographic research on the study of humoral theory conceived by Hippocrates. Volk, in particular, focuses on black bile, described as a cold and dry fluid, generated by the archetype of the earth.

In fact, within the series, we find images of the planet earth seen from space, of human body cells, and of people’s faces following the theory of the physiognomy of the time. The ideas of Hippocrates continued to be dominant, being abandoned only almost in the mid-nineteenth century. Extensive traces of this hegemony survive in modern language: the heart was indicated as the seat of feelings and in particular of love which, poetically, is “breath of life”; Melancholia is a feeling of sadness but also a serious form of depression.

The same depression that, according to recent studies, will be the most widespread disease in the world in 2030.

PhotoBook Journal: Cristiano Volk - Mélaina Cholé

February 28, 2020

The appearance of this photobook is most timely, especially in view of yet another global virus outbreak already in progress, supposedly transmitted by miniscule droplets. The visual narrative of this book relates minute elements and other parts of the body to our environment and to the gigantic elements of the immense universe out there, and it establishes links between our inner constellations and the structure of vast outer space, as well as our immediate world around us.

phosmag: Bedmounds by Noah Kalina

January 20, 2020

When we think of beds, we usually think of them as neatly made, waiting to be used. Noah Kalina wanted to undo that, to pull back the covers and sculpt a monumental shape out of the fabric where our bodies would be, and where our bodies have been, as both a still-life (of the materials of sleep and a portrait (of someone’s presence).

Bedmounds is the culmination of Kalina’s long-term project creating and capturing sculptural forms in the middle of beds around the world. The mounds appear to take on anthropomorphic qualities, highlighting the relationship between presence and absence. Bedmounds takes a common scene and adds a twist – subverting what we are expecting to see by inserting something unanticipated.

Roads & Kingdoms: Havana Youth: Q&A with Greg Kahn

January 16, 2020

Photographer Greg Kahn’s new book explores youth culture in Cuba.

Greg Kahn was sitting at his fixer’s house in Cuba one night when he heard the thump of a bass beat echoing through the streets. He wandered outside, where he found a plaza with hundreds of kids dancing to electronic music. “It was current music that I had been listening to in the States,” Kahn said. “It just totally flipped that idea of everything that Cuba is.” Khan points to this moment as the foundation for his work over the next two years, and the subject of his new book “Havana Youth” (Yoffy Press).

“Havana Youth” is the DC-based freelancer’s first book, and its pages reveal the color and vibrancy of young Cuban society, brought to life by Khan’s meticulous attention to detail and intimate portraiture.

“This generation is changing that notion of what people think about Cuba,” Khan said. “That’s what I wanted to document.”

Huck Magazine: The Documentary Photography Issue VII: Home, reimagined

January 13, 2020

‘Home’ is both a physical and imagined space – a state and place of belonging. In our annual celebration of visual storytelling, join us as we spotlight the photographers capturing it in all of its wildly different guises.

For documentary photographers, the challenge is clear. How do you record something so fluid and subjective – so personal – in a way that resonates on a universal scale? 

The answers, of course, vary – depending on who you ask. But one thing remains clear. Home, in all of its wildly different guises, has never been a richer subject to explore. In the seventh edition of our Documentary Photography Special, we celebrate some of the storytellers doing just that. 

SANDY CARSON

After falling victim to a violent assault, BMX rider Sandy Carson left his native Scotland for the US. It was there, traveling the breadth of the country, that he found a home in photography – capturing American life with an outsider’s eye.

PhotoBook Journal: Interview with Louie Palu

January 8, 2020

Louie Palu: born Toronto, Canada and resides between Toronto & Washington DC

Introduction: I have been following Louie Palu’s photographic career for what seems ages as his break-out book project Cage Call, the riveting photographs he made in the Canadian mines, resulted in his Photolucida Critical Mass book publication which was reviewed here. We have shared back-to-back LensWork magazine features; he was in Issue #73 with his Cage Call portfolio and my portfolio was featured in Issue #74. His ability to visually distill a story has maintained my attention over the years, including my review of two of his subsequent books, most recently A Field Guide to Asbestos, another of his long-term projects. Realizing that he was one of the key-note speakers at the Medium Festival in San Diego this past October (2019), I knew that this would be the perfect opportunity to have a long overdue photobook discussion with this inspiring photographer.

Elizabeth Avedon Journal: Best Photography Books of 2019

December 27, 2019

Caress : Elinor Carucci, David Hilliard, Mickalene Thomas
A Yoffy Press Triptych

Elinor Carucci is featured in this impressive limited edition 3 book set along with David Hilliard and Mickalene Thomas in from Yoffy Press. All three photographers explore intimacy, emotion and connection between the people in front of their lens, the artist and subject.

A Field Guide to Asbestos: Louie Palu

Photographs by Louie Palu
Essay by Alison Nordstrom, PhD
Yoffy Press 

In A Field Guide to Asbestos, Louie Palu documents the effects of asbestos on people and the landscape in Canada, the US, India and the UK. In this 15-year-long award-winning investigative project, Palu also addresses the visual aspects of asbestos that are related to fatal diseases that can take up to 40 years after exposure before they appear.

Havana Youth : Greg Kahn
Photographs by Greg Kahn
Introduction by Ariana Hernandez-Reguant
Yoffy Press

In Havana Youth, Greg Kahn explores Cubans born after 1989, who have only known a time after the USSR dissolved and left the Caribbean nation with few resources and a growth-crippling, US-led economic embargo. Those kids, born during what is called “The Special Period”, are now in their twenties and developing a sense of individuality in a society that was historically focused on collectivism. This is their cultural counter-revolution, and they are redefining what it means to be Cuban.

Photobookstore Magazine: Awoiska Van Der Molen’s Best Photobooks of 2019

December 18, 2019

This world and others like it by Drew Nikonowicz
An instant crush on the many utterly sublime landscape scenes that would have been my ‘darlings to kill’ in my own work because solely beauty doesn’t last and isn’t interesting. But here digital modelling replaced the human photographer and Nikonowicz displays the outcome here combined with other sorts of mindf*cks. And oh, check out Nikonowicz’ 3D printed 4×5”camera company…

Lensculture: Favorite Photobooks of 2019

This World and Others Like It by Drew Nikonowicz. Published by Fw:Books and Yoffy Press.

An intriguing photographic meditation on how landscape and imaging technologies are fundamentally interwoven. Landscape (from the Dutch word “landschap”) is originally a genre in painting, after in early-modern painting it had been “foregrounded” from being merely a background to (usually Biblical or mythical) stories. It was also quickly established as a photographic genre after this medium entered history’s stage. Nikonowicz taps into a long tradition of the sublime, yet also demonstrates how much looking at landscape depends on the “techniques of the observer”, to borrow a phrase from Jonathan Crary. New lens and screen technologies intersect and overlay earlier technologies, with consequences for maker and viewer alike.

—Taco Hidde Bakker, Independent Writer

Photobookstore Magazine: Jeffrey Ladd’s Best Photobooks of 2019

December 13, 2019

This World and Others Like It by Drew Nikonwicz
I suspect when artificial intelligence starts to use photography to inform us of our world, the early results will look a bit similar to This World and Others Like It, as no other book I have held has felt less human. This might seem like a negative critique but it is meant as high praise. Look at the work. Marvel at the design. Don’t let the essay influence you. Use your brain. First book? Fucking hell.

PhotoBook Journal: Interesting Photobooks of 2019, A Field Guide to Asbestos by Louie Palu

December 11, 2019

It’s time to look back at 2019, a very productive year for photobook publishing and for the PhotoBook Journal as well. By the end of the year, having enhanced our format to a full-scale magazine, we will have published some eighty photobook reviews, along with numerous articles, interviews, show reports, and announcements. As is our custom, our editorial staff subgroup — this year consisting of Douglas Stockdale, Gerhard Clausing, Wayne Swanson, Melanie Chapman, Steve Harp, Madhu John, and Alaina Dall — has chosen a very select list of fourteen noteworthy photobooks that we wish to call to your attention, chosen from among all the other excellent work reviewed or about to be reviewed this year.

Lenscratch: Serrah Russell: tears tears

December 9, 2019

When in 2017 Washington States Project Editor, Jon Feinstein featured the work of Serrah Russell, she expressed the idea that photographs change and morph according to context: “I believe that photography is inherently and absolutely embedded with meaning. Photographs are constantly changing, with their meaning malleable, always based on surrounding context, shifting cultures, and each individual’s personal association. My work is an ongoing investigation of this belief.“

Yoffy Press has just released a new monograph of Serrah’s work titled tears tears, where she uses collage as a ritual, a meditation, and an act of protest. The work also speaks to our splinted selves, to anxiety, and feeling like so much of reality is too much to take in all at once. “Using art as the ground floor, she creates a foundation to process her surroundings and experiences, a process which began during a political turn that rattled her and became a life raft to sanity. To tear and to be torn. To mourn and to act. To listen and to be heard. tears tears is an extension of Russell’s 100 Days of Collage project, which was developed as a response to the first one hundred days of the 45th presidency.”

The book includes essays by Frances Jakubek and CL Young.

photo-eye: 2019 Favorite Photobooks
Douglas Stockdale’s Favorite Book from 2019: A Field Guide to Asbestos by Louie Palu

December 4, 2019

Rarely does a long-term photo-documentary project result in a photo book that has an immediate impact on its ability to clearly illustrate an on-going health risk to our global society. Many social documentaries have either a direct or implied call-to-action, whose impact is hard to discern. Palu’s book has a visual immediacy that combines science, medicine, and personal situations to clearly illustrate the personal safety and risks prevalent today. The pervasive use of Asbestos in manufacturing for many years has placed each of us is in peril and we need to understand the long-term implications of this dangerous material, and Palu’s book is one of the most effective books that I have witnesses to bring this message home.

PDN Photo of the Day: Collage as a Radical Act of Healing

December 4, 2019

Serrah Russell’s collages are deceptively simple. Most are made from just two images, cut from the pages of fashion magazines or National Geographic, then fused together. Yet a powerful narrative emerges from the layers and juxtapositions, one that feels overwhelmingly about drowning, but with flickers of hope and clarity.

There’s water, yes, but the sense of going under comes from the fragments of women’s bodies colliding with other matter. A slender arm reaches from the depths of ruby colored cloth; bright red lips face a black abyss; a different set of lips –– slightly parted and larger than life –– meet a soaring bird carrying a small branch. Full faces are rarely seen. A single eye cut in the shape of a diamond floats above a cloudy blue sky; in another image the outer edge of an eye circled in black makeup is dissected by a mass of green branches; a woman wearing a black turtleneck lacks a head, it’s been dislodged by a bouquet of tall blooming flowers.

Tortoise Media: Encounters with the absurd

November 23, 2019

For more than a decade, Scottish photographer Sandy Carson documented the great American road trip. The resulting essay, I’ve Always Been a Cowboy in My Heart, chronicles his fascination with the everyday.

“When I first moved here, I was always collecting and archiving pictures as memories,” Carson said. There was a common thread running through them, the photographer said.

“It is kind of my view of the States and travel. Even after 20-odd years, I still have wide eyes traveling around the States. There are so many uncanny juxtapositions that catch my eye.”

Conscientious: Making Sense of the World with Pictures

November 25, 2019

We largely comprehend this world through pictures, whether we’re taking selfies or photographing a very distant celestial body with a satellite that’s rushing past it with a speed of 16.26 km/s (10.10 mi/s). Every photograph is an attempt to make sense of the world, even if only a few are acknowledged as that — those that we all could easily agree as being documents more than anything.

Regardless of whether a photograph is viewed as a document or not, in all likelihood it is the result of some form of extrapolation, of some form or processing. Astronomical images are heavily processed, with the colours seen in them being often added artificially (based on clearly defined astronomical conventions).

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

November 19, 2019

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 balloons, 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.

photo-eye: Book of the Week: Selected by Blake Andrews - I’ve Always Been a Cowboy in My Heart

November 11, 2019

“I’ve Always Been A Cowboy In My Heart,” declares the title of Sandy Carson’s new monograph. Looking at the photos inside it’s hard to argue. They take the viewer on a visual rodeo ride. But along the way to being a cowboy (in his heart), Sandy Carson has been a bunch of other things: Ex-pat, cinematographer, touring musician, and fifteen years as a professional bike rider.

F-Stop Magazine: Book Review: I’ve Always Been a Cowboy in My Heart by Sandy Carson

November 2, 2019

Photo books that make me smile are rare. Sandy Carson’s I’ve Always Been a Cowboy in My Heart is one of them for this Scotsman has an eye for the absurdities of daily American life. He sees what most Americans probably do not really see – that the things they surround themselves with have often a distinct (and very American) weirdness to them. A Texas-shaped waffle on a plate, for instance, or a stranded thrift store named Possibilities.

Bird in Flight: From Texas with Irony: Atypical America Project

October 22, 2019

America is different - especially if you look at it through the eyes of Scottish photographer Sandy Carson. Having settled in the States in the early nineties, Sandy began to notice the irony and absurdity of the surrounding Texas landscapes. The Photo Project I've Always Been A Cowboy In My Heart is a satirical look at the backstage of the American dream.

Lenscratch: Sandy Carson: I’ve Always Been a Cowboy In My Heart

October 15, 2019

I don’t know why, but certain things seem more absurd in The West. Perhaps it’s because the Route 66 aesthetic was one with a sense of whimsy and humor–colossal cowboy boots and tee pee hotel rooms. Photographer Sandy Carson, a transplant from Scotland, has spent over a decade-long road trip chronicling his fascination “with everyday occurrences in the social landscape and explores the spaces between clarity and imperfection, composing a personal slice of America” in his new book, I’ve Always Been a Cowboy in my Heart, published by Yoffy Press. The book includes an essay by Dr.Katherine Parhar.

The work is deliciously reflects the absurd  parts of the American culture and landscape and in an era when politics overshadow our country, it is a pleasure to laugh at ourselves through a new perspective.

Musee: Photographic Alphabet: N is for Drew Nikonowicz

October 8, 2019

This World and Others Like It investigates the role of the 21st century explorer by combining computer modeling with analogue photographic processes. Drawing upon the language of 19th Century survey images, I question their relationship with current methods of record making.

Thousands of explorable realities exist through rover and probe based imagery, virtual role-playing, and video game software. Within the contemporary wilderness, robots have replaced photographers as mediators producing images completely dislocated from human experience. This suggests that now the sublime landscape is only accessible through the boundaries of technology.

Small Camera Big Picture: Fine Art Book Publishing for Photographers - with Sandy Carson

September 27, 2019

When some of us think of BMX photography we think of youth-based visuals and often write off it’s credibility. As a living legend in the world of BMX, Sandy Carson elevated the genre into fine art early in his career. Today, his photography practice is a balance of commercial editorial reportage and long-term personal projects.

"I just loved the idea of any image being drawn or captured from a pencil of a camera lens. My whole family were all artists, and my grandfather was the hub and we all fed off him."

What’s fascinating about this interview is how Sandy creates his personal photography projects, turns them into world-class fine art books then leverages his fans to fund the projects.

Sandy is living proof that we live in a world where we don’t need publishers like we once did and that if you follow your passion to the max, good things happen.

The Austin Chronicle: Photographer Sandy Carson Shoots Up the Weird, Weird West

September 27, 2019

In the foreground, the portable roadside marquee is tipped over on its side, its sign absent of any message, its spindly black legs sticking stiffly in the air, giving the appearance of a dead insect taken out by some vehicle on the ribbon of asphalt behind it. Beyond the road, desert scrub stretches to low-slung mountains on the horizon, with monumental white clouds migrating through the ice-blue sky, and it's like all that nature is looking on and saying, "You puny human creations aren't made for this big country."

That's the first image in I've Always Been a Cowboy in My Heart, the new book by photographer and veteran Chronicle contributor Sandy Carson, and it's a pretty good indicator of the kind of work you'll see throughout its pages: firmly rooted in place – unquestionably the U.S., and most of the time pretty obviously the western half; marked by the unexpected or surprising; keenly observed; artfully composed; wry. In 72 photos drawn chiefly from his road trips across the American West from 2008 to 2018, Carson chronicles this land at its quirkiest and most curious: a dude astride a camel, yakking on his cell; a nun on a TV screen picking her teeth; an upright chair in the middle of a stream; a pair of two-story-high white-and-orange boots; a pink balloon tethered to a parking meter; a pig chilling on a magenta mattress cooled by a drum fan; a Star Wars Stormtrooper lounging on a deck chair beside a swimming pool.

KUT/NPR: Photographer Sandy Carson Travels The American Southwest In 'I've Always Been A Cowboy In My Heart'

September 26, 2019

“How long do you need to be here before you’re actually Texan, right?” asks photographer Sandy Carson. He was born in Scotland but moved to Texas in the '90s, so he’s now lived roughly half his life in the Lone Star State. “I suppose I’m a Scottish Texan by now, right? If you’re half and half?”

When Carson first moved to the U.S., he was a professional BMX rider and spent a lot of time traveling the country. “I was shooting photographs for various BMX magazines in a documentary kind of style and that’s what got me into the kind of art photography I’m doing now,” Carson says. “So I was already on the road collecting images.”

A lot of the photos in his new book I’ve Always Been a Cowboy in My Heart were taken during Carson’s BMX years, and some were shot during  other road trips he took to explore his new country.

F-Stop Magazine: Book Review: Continuum by Abelardo Morell, Alyssa McDonald and Irina Rozovsky

September 22, 2019

Continuum is the second Yoffy Press Triptych after TRACE was published in late 2018 (reviewed in F-Stop Magazine here), and features the work of Abelardo Morell, Alyssa McDonald and Irina Rozovsky. In each Triptych, three artists are given a word to inspire the creation of a small book of work. The three resulting books are sold as a set, inviting the viewer into the collaboration to make connections between the projects and the overarching theme.

I recently heard a photographer speaking with his former professor/mentor in a podcast interview (check out United Nations of Photography from Grant Scott), and the photographer specifically mentioned the impact made on him by the way lectures were structured and the influences introduced throughout the course. He also made a point to mention that work by certain photographers was included in the lectures, and unless otherwise he may have never learned about them; which made a big impact. The decisions made by the professor were lasting and altering for this student in the decades to follow. Personally, I can trace back many of my photo influences through my former professors and mentors.   

Lenscratch: Greg Kahn: Havana Youth

September 18, 2019

Sometime ago I attended a lecture by Greg Kahn at the Annenberg Space for Photography in Los Angeles. His artist’s talk was one of many about Cuba during the Annenberg exhibition, Cuba Is. That evening I came away with a whole new perspective on the next generation of Cuban Youth. I’ve always thought of Cuba as a culture of waiting, but Greg shifted the way I see the future of the island. His project and new book by Yoffy Press, Havana Youth, “explores Cubans born after 1989, who have only known a time after the USSR dissolved and left the Caribbean nation with few resources and a growth-crippling, US-led economic embargo. Those kids, born during what is called “The Special Period”, are now in their twenties and developing a sense of individuality in a society that was historically focused on collectivism. This is their cultural counter-revolution, and they are redefining what it means to be Cuban.”

British Journal of Photography: I’ve Always Been a Cowboy in My Heart

August 23, 2019

Scotsman Sandy Carson was a professional BMX rider; now he works as a photographer. His latest book presents a series of humorous observations made over 12 years on the road

Originally from Scotland, Carson emigrated to the US in 1993, aged 21, to pursue a career as a professional BMX rider. He spent 15 years traveling the world on sponsorships, and, during these long journeys, Carson began making photographs. “I was shooting whatever, wherever I was on the road,” he says. Carson originally wrote and shot photographs for BMX titles, before gradually turning his attention to documentary photography.

The images in Carson’s latest book, I’ve Always Been a Cowboy in My Heart, were made on the road over the last 12 years. “I didn’t set out to start this project. When I first moved here, I was always collecting and archiving pictures as memories,” he explains. “There was a common thread running through them.”

PhotoBook Journal: Louie Palu - A Field Guide to Asbestos

August 20, 2019

Working in a very technical area for my day-job I have become very familiar with on-the-job training, educational manuals, and health & safety bulletins that stress environmental awareness. I will admit that it was not until reading Louie Palu’s A Field Guide to Asbestos did the immense danger of asbestos really sink in. His book transcends most industrial training programs in that he brings into his narrative the very personal aspects and consequences of the dangers being discussed.

This book is a cumulation of a fifteen-year on-going project that Palu is working on that documents the effects of asbestos on people and the landscape in Canada, United States, United Kingdom and India. He addresses the visual aspects of asbestos that are related to the fatal disease that can take up to 40 years after exposure before they appear. After years and years of commercial usage asbestos continues to lurk as a huge potential health danger and is still an on-going major health concern.

DeMorgen.: A Scottish cowboy sees humor in Texas and the surrounding area

August 18, 2019

The most famous Statue of Liberty is on Ellis Island, New York. But the most fascinating Statue of Liberty stands (or stood) in a driveway, somewhere along a god-forgotten road in the southern state of Texas. It is even a living image, with a smartphone to offer some distraction during a round of freedom promotion. Fortunately, there is the unmistakable placard that urges passers-by to horn when they love freedom. And which Texan doesn't like freedom - or a waffle in the shape of his state?

It is just one of the countless images Sandy Carson shot in Texas over the past twelve years. Carson is the photographer behind the book I've Always Been a Cowboy in My Heart and the living proof that you don't have to be born on the vast plains of America to declare yourself a Western hero. Because Carson saw the light of day in rainy Scotland and was successively mountain biker, musician and photographer - but deep down he was a cowboy.

Lenscratch: Photographers on Photographers: Shawn Bush on Drew Nikonowicz

August 5, 2019

Drew Nikonowicz’s stunning body of work and recent book by Yoffy Press & FW:Books This World and Others Like It plays off the ideation of exploration within the 21st century landscape. As an artist that has lived their entire life with access to worlds outside of his own via the internet and subsequent media, Nikonowicz carefully navigates the relationship between 19th century survey photographs created by photographers like Timothy H. O’Sullivan and Bierstadt Brothers, along with current methods of constructing realities though two-dimensional imagery. In This World and Others Like It, Drew employs multiple methods of image making, juxtaposing digital constructions and large format black and white photographs as a means of questioning how humans interact with images, along with the process of creating and interpreting a photographic image as some form of reality. The images that make up the work and book place viewers into a world that feels both familiar and foreign, forcing one to question truth and its relationship to actuality.

PDN Photo of the Day: Fun on the Range

July 30, 2019

With his new monograph, I’ve Always Been a Cowboy in My Heart (Yoffy Press, 2019), Sandy Carson joins the shortlist of photographers whose work reveals a way of looking at the world that is both funny and empathetic. Though there are plenty of photographers who possess a sense of humor, it’s a rare talent that can consistently translate it into humorous and witty photographs. For example, Elliott Erwitt, Martin Parr, and Ian Weldon.

F-Stop Magazine: Book Review: Havana Youth by Greg Kahn

July 30, 2019

Greg Kahn says he wants Havana Youth to break the stereotype of what it means to be Cuban. The country’s current identity by and large was formed on a sense of collectivism: the idea of the benefit of a large group of people versus the individual. The youth of Cuba today are striving to break that stereotype and form new ideas based on how their counterculture reflects their own identity. This is somewhat challenging due to the lack of pop culture influences they allowed in Cuba for most of their lives. They’ve not been inundated with tons of commercials, tons of magazine advertisements, etc. due to the lack of these sources in Cuba. Their fashion sense and the zeitgeist of the youth Kahn photographed in Cuba are born from their own unbound expression of how they wish to be seen as a generation, and a culture.

American Suburb X: Drew Nikonowicz: This World and Others Like It

July 29, 2019

“I was raised alongside the internet, so there was never an othering effect from the introduction to newer technologies, especially the internet.”

Photography’s technological and sociological evolution has always gone hand-in-hand. One informing the other in a ‘what came first?’ kinda way. As I see it, Drew Nikonowicz’s work sits right in amongst this conversation. His photographs are produced across technologies and raise some interesting thoughts about our relationship to images, image making and image interpretation. This World and Others Like It was released earlier this year on Yoffy Press / FW: Books and came to my attention just as I was deliberating over the relationship between old photographic prints and the online image economy.

It’s Nice That: “Omnivorous image-maker” Drew Nikonowicz uses photography and computer simulation to explore the world

July 25, 2019

Saint Louis-based visual artist Drew Nikonowicz employs analogue photographic techniques and computer simulation technology to create works which examine the ways in which images and technology mediate our perceptions of the world we inhabit. His practice involves a great deal of research across different media and disciplines to cultivate what he refers to as “image ideas”. As he states: “I always try to be an omnivorous image-maker.” Drew’s publication This World and Others Like It is, in his words, “an investigation of what it means to be an explorer in the 21st Century”.

Defgrip Magazine: Q&A: Sandy Carson / “I’ve Always Been a Cowboy in My Heart” Book

July 20, 2019

Give us a quick breakdown of the concept/theme behind this new book. 

The book is basically a collection of photographs and observations I’ve accumulated from the last 12 years on the road whether it be by car, bike or foot around the states. Kinda a psychedelic visual diary of the absurd happenstances if you like, mostly of the southwest on my travels through the eyes of an outsider. It was originally inspired by the Bill Callaghan song ‘I’m New Here’ which was the old project title actually. After my publisher (Yoffy Press) took me under her wing, she recommended I change the name based on one of the photos I shot on the Fairdale Montana trip of a man looking onto the mountains wearing an I’VE ALWAYS BEEN A COWBOY IN MY HEART shirt. It’s a pretty apt title after spending over half my life in Texas. Plus country music and cowboy hats are pretty ace and I cannot believe I’ve been in denial of them this whole time Hahah.

P3: Asbestos: the invisible threat that no one is (still) safe

July 15, 2019

Since 1991 Louie Palu has portrayed the dangers of asbestos to human health. In that year, the lives of the ore explorers - notably gold, copper, nickel, zinc, silver, uranium and rare metals - began to follow in Ontario and Quebec. "Near the end of the project in 2003, I began to focus on the consequences of contact with toxic products on the health of industrial workers," he explains. The project was then widely publicized in Canadian national newspapers and drew the attention of a clinic technician who knew someone suffering from mesothelioma, a disease closely linked to contact with asbestos. "This person proposed to develop a project on the subject and I agreed. So I started visiting sick people, listening to their stories. "The Photo Book, A Field Guide to Asbestos, edited by Yoffy Press , is the result of a long 15-year voyage "for the devastation caused by industrial poisoning" in the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada and India.

Nighthawk NYC: Louie Palu’s Tools of Remembrance

July 15, 2019

Though Louie Palu spent five grueling years in Afghanistan covering the war from 2006-10, which resulted in thousands of photographs and the award-winning documentary, Kandahar Journals, he’s also created important work on a number of subjects away from war. That may be why Mr. Palu refers to himself simply as a “photographer”.

Still, I was unfamiliar with Mr. Palu until photobook guru Jackson Charles pulled my coat to the Yoffy Press table in the photobook publishers’ area at AIPAD in April, telling me “I HAD to see” Louie Palu’s latest two books, which Yoffy Press had just published. As usual, he was right. I was immediately engrossed in his Front Towards Enemy and A Field Guide to Asbestos.

Collector Daily: Drew Nikonowicz, This World and Others Like It

July 5, 2019

For a first photobook, This World and Others Like It is a remarkably sophisticated artistic statement. It operates on several conceptual levels, understands the photographic history that sits underneath it, integrates a handful of different technical and aesthetic approaches into one whole, and offers a variety of photographs that only reveal their complexity with sustained looking and consideration. It’s a brainy photobook that forces its viewers into twists and turns of discoveries, and one that seems to get even better the more we unpack its ideas.

F-Stop Magazine: Book Review: TRACE – Kota Ezawa, Tabitha Soren, Penelope Umbrico

June 9, 2019

TRACE is the first of a triptych series published by Yoffy Press. Since the Spanish word for ‘Three’ is Tres, I enjoyed the ironic play on words and double meaning for this publication of three separate books by artists Kota Ezawa, Tabitha Soren and Penelope Umbrico. Each book could stand on its own for the artist’s chosen inspiration, or the reader/viewer can make connections between the three collaborative parts of the series and perhaps see parallels in the overarching theme. The TRACE artists each experiment with appropriation in their practices to explore how we all interact with images in the contemporary world.

Elizabeth Avedon Journal: Greg Kahn: Havana Youth

May 30, 2019

"In Havana Youth, Greg Kahn explores Cubans born after 1989, who have only known a time after the USSR dissolved and left the Caribbean nation with few resources and a growth-crippling, US-led economic embargo. Those kids, born during what is called “The Special Period”, are now in their twenties and developing a sense of individuality in a society that was historically focused on collectivism. This is their cultural counter-revolution, and they are redefining what it means to be Cuban." 

The Observer: Tragic images strike a chord

May 3, 2019

An art book connected to Sarnia’s deadly legacy of asbestos disease sold out a small first-press run this spring before the publisher could even officially announce its launch.

Atlanta-based Yoffy Press said it’s already planning a second edition of A Field Guide to Asbestos by Louie Palu, a Canadian photojournalist who began a 15-year investigation into the impact of asbestos after travelling to Sarnia in 2003 to meet the late Blayne Kinart.

The Sarnia millwright was one of many in the city who has died from mesothelioma, a fatal cancer caused by breathing in asbestos fibres once widely used in construction and by the industries of what’s known as Chemical Valley.

Palu’s black and white photos of Kinart were published by the Globe and Mail in 2004 with a story about Sarnia’s experience as an asbestos disease hot spot, under the headline “Dying for a living.”

Kinart died later that year.

Palu’s photos “shook it up,” said Sandy Kinart, Blayne’s widow and a member of Victims of Chemical Valley – a group formed to push for a ban on asbestos and better medical care for those with workplace disease.

aPhotoEditor: This Week in Photography Books: Trace

May 3, 2019

“Trace” is a compilation of 3 small books, as I said, and it’s not hard to keep them in order, once they come out of the slip, because the title spells itself out across the collection.

Kota Ezawa’s book is first, and it’s a head trip for sure. The truth is, they all are. This book is a literal embodiment of how I feel as a human being right now, and for that, I love it.

For his book, Kota Ezawa presents an image that builds piece by piece, and is clearly not photographic. Only at the end, or nearly the end, do we realize that it’s built upon one of the most iconic images ever made: JFK’s family by his graveside.

The image grows, section by section, and then you know what it is. Of course that last picture, adding in John Jr, tugs at your heart in a surprising way.

Sirius XM Radio Interview: Louie Palu Talks About His New Book A Field Guide To Asbestos

April 8, 2019

Award-winning photographer and filmmaker Louie Palu Talks About His New Book A Field Guide To Asbestos on P.O.T.U.S. on Sirius XM Channel 124 - Press Pool with Julie Mason.

The Globe and Mail: Asbestos: the never-ending story

March 30, 2019

Review of A Field Guide to Asbestos by Louie Palu in The Globe and Mail as a double page spread. Online version for subscribers only.

Od Review: Too Tired for Sunshine

Sometimes I feel sunshine on my face. Sometimes no one argues or raises their voices. Sometimes the fruit is sweet and the bread not yet stale. Sometimes life is good and I forget what worry means.

But sooner or later that distant cloud rolls in . . . and I have to open my eyes. Out you come, from that sometimes-life . . . oh and grab your coat. It’s cold out here.

The subject of mental illness is still an uncomfortable topic of conversation in our modern world. It is not like a broken leg . . . or a spot on an x-ray. It is not a rash or a fever that can be assuaged with hot soup and a mother’s kiss.

It is gas in the air. It is that shadow in the corner of the bedroom when you are bleary with sleep. It is the ominous silence before it all goes wrong. It is chaos . . . a chaos we cannot see . . . and we do not like what we cannot see. It makes us nervous . . . it frightens us.

We close the door on it and turn our backs.

Wysokie obcasy.pl: The awareness that others are also struggling with depression with similar suffering brings relief to people.

March 9, 2019

After the publication of melancholic photos, I began to receive personal emails from people who described their own struggles with depression. It's another thing to know that many other people in the world suffer from the same thing, and what else to have real contact with them, listen to them. I do not think I've ever had such a strong conviction that I'm not alone - talking with Tara Wray, a photographer and initiator of the project "Too Tired Project."

Photo-Emphasis: Drew Nikonowicz

March 4, 2019

Drew Nikonowicz (born in St. Louis Missouri, 1993) earned a BFA degree from the University of Missouri - Columbia in 2016. His work employs analog photographic processes as well as computer simulations to deal with exploration and experience in contemporary culture. He has exhibited both nationally and internationally. In 2015 he received the Aperture Portfolio Prize and the Lenscratch Student Prize. In 2017 Nikonowicz completed a one-year residency at Fabrica Research Centre. He now lives and works in the United States in Saint Louis, Missouri as an artist and owner of the company Standard Cameras. His first photobook, This World and Others Like It, will be available through Yoffy Press and FW:Books in early 2019.

Photo District News: PDN 30 - Drew Nikonowicz

March Issue

When Joe Johnson, an artist and the director of the art program at the University of Missouri-Columbia, encouraged Drew Nikonowicz, then a junior, to apply for the 2015 Aperture Portfolio Prize, he warned: “You’re not going to win.” Johnson happily ate his words when Nikonowicz did win the prize for “This World and Others Like It,” a series of real and computer-generated black-and-white landscapes. The images question reality, and play into a distrust of images. “Drew’s many strategies for arriving at pictures reflect his time—he was born the year the Internet became ubiquitous,” Johnson explains. “Before he’d ever laid eyes on a mountain, Drew had seen more pictures of mountains than might actually exist in the world.”

PHOTONEWS: Young Talent on the Upswing

March Issue

In the PHOTONEWS March 2019 young talents meet old hands. A report on the portfolio meeting Platform in Winterthur is followed by a report on the photographer Umbo (1902-1980), whose estate can currently be seen in the Sprengel Museum. Newly developed pictorial forms and classic photographic materials are now being collected institutionally - a report on a symposium at the Munich City Museum shows the challenges of "photographic collections in transition". In interviews, the photographers Hubertus Hamm and Erwin Olaf have their say, the latter dedicated to several exhibitions in the Netherlands this year. We introduce the dedicated work of Gisela Kayser, Curator Freundeskreis Willy-Brandt-Haus. For contemplation provides the portfolio of Arno Schidlowski. He is followed by portfolios to Barbara Wolff, Volker Döhne and Tara Wray. 

Mother Jones: Beyond Cigars and Vintage Cars: A New Photobook Shows You What Havana Really Looks Like Now

February 3, 2019

Havana Youth, the debut photobook by Washington, DC–based photographer Greg Kahn, shines a light on the new Havana—feisty, sexy, alive, and evolving. It’s a stark contrast to the place stuck in time, as so many Americans have come to know Cuba. Kahn reveals a vibrant city living in and for the moment.

Needless to say, with Kahn’s book, you’re not getting the same well-trodden images of vintage American cars, women hanging out of colorful windows, and old men rolling cigars. His luscious images dismiss those stereotypes and instead put a new, young Cuba on full display. Kahn’s Havana Youth, published by Yoffy Press, focuses on a generation whose world has been infused with American and European culture seeping through technological cracks—like MP3s of the latest American music sold on thumb drives.

Miami New Times: Havana Youth Is a Tribute to the Millennials Redefining What It Means to Be Cuban

January 31, 2019

Shortly after photojournalist Greg Kahn left his newspaper job in 2012 to become a freelancer, he traveled to Cuba for the first time to begin working on a project about the island's changing economy. The country had recently begun to allow citizens to buy and sell property, and Kahn was curious about what that would mean for the people who lived there.

Although the photo project started out as a traditional news story, a chance encounter his final night on the island — at the house of a person he had hired to help with his travels — changed everything.

De Standaard: If even the sun is no longer fun

January 24, 2019

In her book Too Tired for Sunshine , photographer Tara Wray draws attention to the phenomenon of depression. Not in a learning, theoretical way, but with her strongest weapon: photos. Wray photographed scenes from daily life. Sometimes cheerful, sometimes less cheerful. There is one common denominator: loneliness. Tara Wray wants to inspire people to think about the photos themselves. Therefore also: no captions. You can decide what you think when you see the images.

Valley News: Art Notes: Photography Project Born of Depression Turns Into a Movement

January 24, 2019

Creative work tends to follow a slow progression, steadily accreting until the work is done, then steadily building an audience, or not, while the artist goes to work on the next project.

But sometimes a project expands in unexpected ways, which can be exciting and unsettling at the same time. Barnard photographer Tara Wray is seeing this firsthand.

Wray’s book, Too Tired for Sunshine, came out in July in a small print run through independent publisher Yoffy Press. The photographs were born of a bout of depression Wray endured; making them was a way for her to seek light. The camera became a tool for getting on her feet and the charming, gently surreal photographs describe Wray’s feeling at the time of looking at the world from a perspective slightly askew.

PDN: Youth Redefine Cuban Identity

January 22, 2019

“When Fidel Castro overthrew the Cuban government in 1959, it signaled a move to emphasize the collective state over the individual, “ writes photographer Greg Kahn, author of the forthcoming photo book Havana Youth (Yoffy Press). “Castro’s philosophy was to educate students to be an asset in society, not for uniqueness.”

In Havana Youth, Kahn explores Cubans born after 1989, who have only known a time after the USSR dissolved and left the Caribbean nation with few resources and a growth-crippling, US-led economic embargo. Those kids, born during what is called “The Special Period,” are now in their twenties and developing a sense of individuality in a society that was historically focused on collectivism. After Fidel ceded power to his brother in 2008, Havana’s youth began experiencing influences from across the globe; they are focused on the present, not burdened by the past.

Float Magazine: TRACE: Kota Ezawa, Tabitha Soren, Penelope Umbrico

January 13, 2019

Yoffy press came out with a new collaborative effort featuring three artists: Kota Ezawa, Tabitha Soren and Penelope Umbrico. Each artist has one part of the collection, all tackling the word ‘Trace’ from their own viewpoint. I found this concept to be very interesting as a viewer. I found it to be interesting to not only think about the word myself or what in fact I would have done if asked, but to see how each artist brought their own world and artistic practice to the same, swimmingly simple, word.

The three books are individual yet they are still a collective effort, bounding from one another and from book to book. You view each one by itself but try and also see them as a group and the juxtapositions that are created by the three artists. This publication has a great way of creating a publication that is almost like a photographic essay that speaks with its visuals and it’s straightforward approach.

Lenscratch: TRACE: Kota Ezawa, Tabitha Soren, Penelope Umbrico

January 9, 2019

The approach to concepting, designing, and producing photography books has morphed into new worlds of creative expression, by both the artist and the publisher. One publisher who is continually rethinking traditional approaches to bookmaking is Yoffy Press. As founder Jennifer Yoffy states, “we are dedicated to pushing the boundaries of photobook publishing. Working in true partnership with the artists, we look beyond the book as a container of images, integrating physical and conceptual design to create distinct art objects“. A perfect example is Yoffy Press’ release, Louie Palu’s Front Towards Enemy, a deconstructed photobook, presented as a cardboard slipcase with four components: accordion fold image set, soldier portrait cards, newsprint publication, and staple-bound zine – and amazingly, the entire publication can also exist as a pop-up exhibition.

NPR: Channeling The Pain Of Depression Into Photography, And Finding You Are Not Alone

December 31, 2018

In a particularly difficult season of depression, photography was one of the tools Tara Wray used to cope.

"Just forcing myself to get out of my head and using the camera to do that is, in a way, a therapeutic tool," says Wray, a photographer and filmmaker based in central Vermont. "It's like exercise: You don't want to do it, you have to make yourself do it, and you feel better after you do."

In July, she published Too Tired for Sunshine, a book of her photos from that period, taken between 2011 and 2018. Some of the images show a stark beauty, others a raw loneliness, and some capture hints that the world may be slightly off-kilter.

Huffington Post: Powerful Photos Show What Life With Depression Is Really Like

December 20, 2018

Depression takes on many forms. Just ask Tara Wray.

“It’s not just the stereotypical photo of a person with their head in their hands looking depressed,” Wray, a Vermont-based photographer and creator of The Too Tired Project, a creativity-based mental health initiative, told HuffPost.

After publishing a photo book, Too Tired for Sunshine, featuring pictures that subtly showcased her thoughts and feelings as a person living with depression, Wray received an outpouring of support from the artistic community. “People wrote and were sharing their own stories and some of their work with me.”

Hundred Heroines: Too Tired Project

December 10, 2018

From the publisher’s description: “Drawn from daily life and wanderings, the photos explore loneliness and isolation, as seen through a lens of absurdist dark humor. Too Tired for Sunshine puts a fine point on channelling pain into creative expression. We are both witnessing the process and experiencing the result. Tara Wray takes us on a visual and emotional journey with disarming humor that lets us lean in to the sadness.”

In response to the positive outpouring of support for my book, I started the Too Tired Project, an Instagram offering a place for collective creative expression around the topic of depression and photography. Photographers are encouraged to share their stories related to mental health by tagging #tootiredproject on the Too Tired Project  Instagram.

AYE MAG: Fotomonday: Too Tired for Sunshine by Tara Wray

November 26, 2018

Too Tired For Sunshine is a collection of photographs made in Vermont between 2011–2016. Though centered largely on animals and rural landscapes, these deeply personal images reflect my state of mind during a period spent battling depression and intense anxiety.

Drawn from daily life, the photographs explore loneliness and mortality as seen through a lens of absurdist dark humor. I am drawn to subjects that unsettle me–backyard slaughterhouses, roadkill, decay in various forms–as well as depictions of isolation in people, animals, and even inanimate objects. Often I find myself photographing subjects that appear to me drastically out of place, seemingly devoid of context–an oven left in an abandoned field, a man dressed as a medieval peasant walking his dog on a country road, a woman sweeping the outside of a church.

Humble Arts Foundation: 32 Photobooks that Dropped Our Jaws in 2018

November 20, 2018

As we declared last year, just as our open calls aren’t “photo contests,” this is not a “Best Photobooks" list. It’s not a competition, and with just a few editors running the Humble show, feels disingenuous and unrealistic to declare it as such. Instead, this is simply a collection of photobooks that made an impact on us in 2018.

As editors and curators with a broad spectrum of tastes, we responded to critical socio-political discussions, adventurous technical or conceptual potential, new takes on photo historical icons, or just damn beautiful image collections. As you move through this list, we encourage you to dig deeper into these photographers’ work and show your support for their careers and practice by buying a few, preferably directly from the publishers or photographers themselves. Without further ado…

Velvet Eyes: Too Tired for Sunshine by Tara Wray

November 5, 2018

Knowing that you are both photographer and filmmaker, instead of asking you about your first steps in visual arts, I would prefer to ask how do you decide each time which medium will you use to tell a story?
I think it’s safe to say I’m officially a retired filmmaker. I’ve done two documentary features -and I’m immensely proud of each-but unless I fall ass backwards into a swimming pool of money, I think I’m done with the expensive marathon that is filmmaking. But I love still photography! I carry my camera with me everywhere I go and I’m always trying to see photographically. I don’t make work everyday but at the very least I think about making work every day, and I read about photography and art everyday.

Lenscratch: Tara Wray: Too Tired for Sunshine

November 3, 2018

Tara Wray may be too tired for sunshine, but that’s because she has been busy. Earlier this year, Yoffy Press published her book under the same title. After the release of the book, which “documented the beauty, darkness, and absurdity of everyday life, as seen through the lens of my own struggles with depression”, Tara received an outpouring of support and she has used that platform to help those with depression by offering a place for collective creative expression. She hopes to reduce the stigma of mental illness and open a dialogue about depression and art with her site, Too Tired Project. Photographers are encouraged to share their stories related to mental health by tagging #tootiredproject on the Too Tired Project Instagram.

Drool: Front Towards Enemy - Louie Palu

October 7, 2018

What draws a photographer to harsh environments?

Here Louie Palu talks about his trip from photographing hard rock mines in Canada to the front lines in the war in Afghanistan. The reasons he does it might surprise you. He also talks a bit about the how’s and the why’s of his book, Front Towards Enemy, which is a box that holds a newsprint, an accordion book, a ‘zine and 10 loose portraits. All these aspects can be looked at individually, or they can be pulled apart and mounted on a wall.

VICE: Six Photographers Using the Camera as Therapy

October 3, 201

While the stereotype of the "crazy artist" can be as richly inaccurate as the trope of the "starving artist," struggles with depression have surfaced in the work of many artists and photographers throughout history. Vincent Van Gogh, Diane Arbus, and Francesca Woodman are just three examples of artists whose work soaked in reflections of their inner demons.

For Tara Wray, photography became a way to manage this, and her book Too Tired for Sunshine, published by Yoffy Press earlier this year, was a therapy blanket—a pastiche of the high and low notes in her life, a vehicle to keep her moving in her lowest possible points.

Hatje Cantz Fotoblog: Too Tired for Sunshine

September 26, 2018

Hello, This is Andrea Bell sharing another feature with you from This Ain’t Art School, our online photography platform and community on Instagram. At TAAS we foster our photographic community by hosting regular challenges and meet ups and by featuring both new and established photographers in our feed.

Saint Lucy: Book Report #3

September 21, 2018

Matthew Brandt’s approach to photography is both process and conceptually driven, an approach shared with a diverse group of photo artists such as Marco Breuer, Alison Rossiter, John Chiara, and Chris McCaw, all of whom were included in the exhibition Light, Paper, Process: Reinventing Photography at the Getty in 2015. Brandt’s book 1864, references the infamous Sherman’s March, a Civil War military campaign, in which the Union General, after capturing Atlanta, led his army across Georgia to Savannah, destroying homes, farms, and the Confederacy’s infrastructure along the way.

Cheese: The Too Tired Project, or how to free speech on depression through the photo

September 21, 2018

Tara Wray has long been Too Tired For Sunshine. A feeling of deep sadness that even a sunny day does not help to soothe. This is also the title of his book published last July by Yoffy Press. From 2011 to 2018, the American photographer immortalized her depression and her anxieties through melancholic captures of everyday life. During that time, she stopped drinking, had twins, and struggled with her new rural life in Vermont after years spent in the bustle of New York.

From this experience came the idea of ​​the Too Tired Project. To help free speech around depression through a platform of collective expression and images. To group all those for whom photography is also a therapy, as Tara Wray explains, “Through social networks, I think we present ourselves as we would like others to see us. The Too Tired Project gives us permission to show a version of ourselves that is less neat, more honest.”

Deutschlandfunk Kultur: Tara Wray in conversation with Shanli Anwar

September 12, 2018

Depression is not something you should hide. Photographer Tara Wray has dealt aesthetically with her own depression. Her Instragram project #tootiredproject sees her as a kind of online group therapy.

"I think that beauty is also in the dark." With this sentence, the American photographer and filmmaker Tara Wray alludes to the depiction and processing of depression. She suffered and suffers from it herself. Writing or making a film about her is difficult: to process her depression in writing is too painful to process cinematically much too expensive.

Jetzt: Photography Can Help Cope with Depression

September 6, 2018

Photographer Tara Wray wants to help with the Instagram account "Too Tired Project" to destigmatize mental illnesses.

"Photography is a way to get rid of depression for a moment. At this moment, really nice things can happen, "says Tara Wray. With her Instagram account "Too Tired Project" she wants to encourage mentally ill people to share their photos and experiences. The account shows wilting flowers, deserted streets, landscapes, portraits. All pictures convey a delicate, oppressive, very special mood. The colors are covered, laughing people are not visible.

Aint-Bad: Interview: Tara Wray

September 4, 2018

Could you tell us how you got started with photography? What made you realize photography was your medium?

I’ve always loved taking pictures. I loved disposable cameras when I was a kid. I always took lots of pictures of dogs, even back then (my collie Lassie was very photogenic). My background is in documentary filmmaking and writing. It wasn’t until about 2011 that I started focusing on still photography. It was a slow burn to get to the place where having my camera with me at all times is second nature.

photo-eye: Book of the Week: Too Tired For Sunshine by Tara Wray

September 3, 2018

Tara Wray’s recent monograph, Too Tired For Sunshine, is a collection of photographs with little context besides the title. Wray defines the title phrase as: “the experience of feeling so melancholy that not even a sunny day can raise your spirits. ‘Dorothea wanted to enjoy the crisp winter afternoon, but she was simply too tired for sunshine.’”

Melancholy exists in the unique mix of photographs that make up Too Tired For Sunshine: a stack of boxes labeled “disappointment,” a lonely oven left in the field, a deer butt mounted between two bathroom doors. These snapshots are heavy, but they also have a lightness about them— Wray’s pictures capture the beautiful, sad, and absurd elements of everyday life. Often simultaneously.

The Photobook Journal: Tara Wray - Too Tired for Sunshine

August 24, 2018

I am always amazed when an artist attempts to define an internal personal feeling, whether is it is a dazzling sense of excitement or a gloomy sense of dread, that they are able to convey those feeling with visual images that seem to connect for me in regard to those indirect expressed feelings. That is exactly what I experience while looking at Tara Wary’s photographs of her photobook Too Tired for Sunshine, that hints at the issue of depression in the context of the ups and down of life.

Float Magazine: Tara Wray, Too Tired for Sunshine

August 13, 2018

In her new monograph, Too Tired for Sunshine, Tara Wray documents delicate moments in her everyday life, family and surroundings in sometimes whimsical and humorous images and sometimes painful and intimate pictures. Tara has a way of capturing little moments that might be disregarded or overlooked by others, in such a way that makes you feel connected to the situation, the person or that moment.

In the book and in her edit of the images, Tara has created an interesting back and forth of inside and outside – that movement of in and out pulls you in to the story, creating a larger context and allowing the viewer to become a part of this visual world.

The Washington Post: Confronting depression with photos, this artist’s works are ‘keen emotional witnesses to this broken world of ours’

August 10, 2018

Tara Wray’s new book Too Tired for Sunshine (Yoffy Press, 2018)  is beautifully melancholic. Wray took most of the photos in the book in Vermont during a period when she was experiencing a bout of depression. The subjects of the photos are not very remarkable on their own. But they are drenched in the emotions Wray was feeling as she made them, transforming them from potentially banal observations about everyday life into poignant vignettes about what it means to be alive.

Aint-Bad: What We've Read! July Edition

July 31, 2018

In Too Tired for Sunshine, Tara Wray confronts depression by documenting the beauty, darkness, and absurdity of everyday life. Drawn from daily life and wanderings, the photos explore loneliness and isolation, as seen through a lens of absurdist dark humor. Too Tired for Sunshine puts a fine point on channeling the pain into creative expression. We are both witnessing the process and experiencing the result. Tara Wray takes us on a visual and emotional journey with disarming humor that lets us lean in to the sadness a bit.

aPhotoEditor: This Week in Photography Books: Tara Wray

July 27, 2018

I was intrigued to open “Too Tired for Sunshine,” a new book by Tara Wray, published by Yoffy Press in Atlanta. I never know when I’m going to go off on a little sub-theme in this column, but this is now two books in a row where I gave serious thought to a book’s innards, once I read the title.

Normally, titles are afterthoughts, if we’re being honest. But this one is so damn poetic, and visual. (The opening essay confirms Ms. Wray is also a writer.)

Too tired for sunshine.
Why?
Are you depressed?
Or just world-weary?

Photo-Emphasis: Tara Wray

July 13, 2018

Tara Wray is a photographer, writer, and filmmaker based in Vermont. She curates interviews with photographers at Vice and at BUST Magazine—where her focus is on giving voice to women in photography—and is photo editor of the literary journal Hobart. She created and curates Some Days Just Are, a collaborative series where two photographers capture a twelve hour day in parallel time. Wray's work is held in collections at major institutions including Yale University, University of Notre Dame, and Dartmouth College.

Born and raised in Kansas, Wray graduated from NYU with a degree in documentary film. She has directed two feature length documentaries: “Manhattan, Kansas” (Audience Award, SXSW 2006; Film Society of Lincoln Center) and “Cartoon College” (Vancouver International Film Festival 2012).

Her photobook, “Too Tired for Sunshine,” was recently published by Yoffy Press.

Seven Days: In a New Photo Book, Tara Wray Pictures Depression 

July 4, 2018

Anyone who has experienced depression — either in intermittent doses or as a long-term major disorder — knows that sometimes you just can't get out of bed. Even in the summer, when the sun is shining and loads of outdoor activities beckon, it can be difficult to shake bone-crushing blues.Tara Wray's second photography book, Too Tired for Sunshine, takes its title from that symptom. "I call them chemical days," the Barnard-based photographer says. "You can't think your way out of it."

C41 Magazine: Tara Wray channels pain through a creative solitude

June 29, 2018

In Too Tired for Sunshine, Tara Wray confronts depression by documenting the beauty, darkness, and absurdity of everyday life. Drawn from daily life and wanderings, the photos explore loneliness and isolation, as seen through a lens of absurdist dark humor. Too Tired for Sunshine puts a fine point on channeling pain into creative expression. We are both witnessing the process and experiencing the result. Tara Wray takes us on a visual and emotional journey with disarming humor that lets us lean in to the sadness.

Bust Magazine: This Photo Book Offers A Surrealist Window Into Mental Illness

June 25, 2018

Tara Wray, author of our photography interview series Lady Shooters, just released a new photo book called Too Tired for Sunshine (Yoffy Press). The book explores depression through photos representing life's daily moments in a way that is both whimsical and dark. Wray utilizes absurdism and dark humor to portray the realities of mental illness.

Float Magazine: Matthew Brandt Interview, 1864

June 18, 2018

Interview | Q's: Dana Stirling A's: Matthew Brandt

First can you tell us a little about how you came across photography originally? What inspired you to work in the lens based art form?

I helped my father work as a commercial photographer growing up. My chores consisted of sweeping the studio floors, packing equipment etc. To me it was just what my dad did for work and I didn’t have much interest in photography until moving away to college. When I took my first photo class, I quickly realized that I had a huge head start. There I began to explore photography in relationship to artistic practices and started to try to make my own photographic objects.

F-Stop Magazine: Book Review: 1864 by Matthew Brandt

June 18, 2018

In 1864, Matthew Brandt recreates George N. Barnard’s 19th century images of a devastated, post-Sherman Atlanta. Using source imagery housed at the Library of Congress, he makes new albumen photographs from Barnard’s images. Fortifying the foundational ingredients of the 19th-century albumen print — egg whites, silver nitrate, and salt — with peaches, sugar, flour, cinnamon, and butter, Brandt plays with external assumptions about the South, at the same time revealing a complex understanding of the complicated history his project explores.

GUP Magazine: Too Tired for Sunshine

June 15, 2018

There could be no better title for Tara Wray's work (b.1978, United States) than Too Tired for Sunshine. In a demoralized postmodern society, phenomena such as “the sunset” have become blatant, banal and romantic. We don’t find them exciting anymore, and often we can’t find the time or energy to even care about them. Wray manages to address this feeling by investigating the loneliness and decadence of everyday life, under a dark and comical gaze. When you feel a certain way, you can’t even stand something as simply enjoyable as sunshine.

Lenscratch: MATTHEW BRANDT: 1864

June 15, 2018

Los Angeles photographer, Matthew Brandt, is a bit of a rock star in the photography world, challenging our ideas about photographic materials. His methodologies where process and subject matter are stirred up into whole new ways of seeing and thinking about the image, open the door to possibility. In his well-celebrated series, Lakes and Reservoirs, Brandt immersed his negatives in the water of his subject matter, therefore allowing the actual subject to physically impact the final image. For the series, Pictures From Flint (Bridges Over Flint), he toned silver gelatin prints with Flint’s contaminated tap water to call attention to the impurities in the Flint, Michigan, water supply.

American Photo: Louie Palu Deconstructs the Chaos of the War in Afghanistan

May 21, 2018

Louie Palu  has captured the Afghanistan war as he experienced it:  In bits and pieces.

His new book, Front Towards Enemy, comes in a cardboard slipcase that encloses four separate components. There is a series of soldier portraits printed on stiff, oversized cards suitable for thumb-tacking to a wall. (The backs of the cards indicate where the tacks should There’s a staple-bound zine titled "The Fighting Season" featuring pictures Palu shot over five years covering the war, along with an essay by Rebecca Senf, chief curator at the Center for Creative Photography in Arizona, as well as a newsprint publication.

P3: Photographing the daily life with the depression filter

May 6, 2018

"Too Tired for Sunshine": this is how Tara Wray feels every day in Vermont, the most rural state in the United States. "The title of the book reflects the fact that I feel so melancholic that even sunlight is not capable of having a positive effect on my state of mind," he told P3 in an email interview. Tara's work, which seeks to "document the beauty, darkness and absurdity of everyday life right in the middle of Green Mountain State, " acts as a sort of antidote to the symptoms of depression. It is, therefore, full of humor and irony.

aPhotoEditor: This Week in Photography Books: Matthew Brandt

April 27, 2018

This morning, I spent some time looking at the excellent 1864, a new book by Matthew Brandt, published by Yoffy Press in Atlanta. (With a nice essay by High Museum curator Gregory Harris.)

1864 is a book that takes its pacing seriously, as it comes with a peach bow tied around it, (hinting at the contents within,) and then shows a couple of plates to whet the appetite, before explaining itself with the aforementioned essay.

By the second picture, I thought, “Man, this reminds me of those amazing George Barnard pictures I wrote about for APE a few years ago.”

Newsweek: Cuba's Millennials: Greg Kahn's Photographs Document a Generation Embracing Individuality and Reshaping Their Country

March 22, 2018

Tourists are lured to Havana by the ruin porn: the capital’s decaying, pastel colonial architecture, its 1950s-era cars and the fading faces of its founding revolutionaries, Che Guevara and Fidel Castro. But when photographer Greg Kahn was on assignment in the city in 2012, he stumbled on a scene that gave him a glimpse of a different Cuba: a plaza full of young Cubans partying as a DJ played contemporary electronic dance music.

“They told me they hate this attitude of ‘I want to go down there and see the crumbling buildings,’” Kahn said. “‘We live here. We want these buildings to be fixed. We're a generation that wants to turn this around. We want to stay here. We love Cuba. We love being Cuban. And we want that to be depicted as well.’”

Feature Shoot: New Photo Book Shows That Cats Are Art Worthy

March 19, 2018

It is no secret that photographs and videos of domestic cats make up some of the most viewed content on the internet; there was keyboard cat, grumpy cat and lest we forget the rescue “perma-kitten” lil Bub. Two years ago New York’s Museum of Moving Image (MoMi) hosted the exhibition How Cats Took Over the Internet — a history of cat memes, kitty cams and the celebrity status some of our feline friends eventually received.

Elizabeth Avedon Journal: Louie Palu's Front Towards Enemy

March 12, 2018

I usually don't like to view unbound books. They generally seem cooked up by the book designer trying to make a design statement, regardless of its effect on the photography. However, in the case of Front Towards Enemy, the mastery of documentary photographer and film maker Louie Palu's powerful images bring a cohesive message to this 'deconstucted' book – and I am appreciating each and every individual portion.

Burn Magazine: Tara Wray's Too Tired for Sunshine

February 20, 2018

Too Tired for Sunshine is a photobook that confronts my own struggles with depression by documenting the beauty, darkness, and absurdity of everyday life. The images were made largely in my adopted home of Vermont between 2011-now. They offer a deeply personal interpretation of the Green Mountain State, juxtaposing familiar and picturesque tropes with more surreal, sometimes disquieting, subjects.

Unseen: Unseen Impressions #3

February 8, 2018

Hans Gremmen (Graphic Designer and Founder of Fw:Books publishing house)

“The American landscape and its layered relationship with photography is an ever-growing personal interest of mine, so this year, I was immediately drawn to the work of Drew Nikonowicz at the Aperture booth at Unseen Amsterdam. His work seemed to provide visual answers to so many theoretical questions I’ve had on my mind over the past years. My only disappointment was to find out he hadn’t yet published a book.

“Two weeks later, I received an email from Jennifer Yoffy at Yoffy Press asking if I would be interested in designing a book. Both Jennifer and the photographer – neither of which I’d ever met in person – had thought of me when discussing the design. It turned out that Drew Nikonowicz was the photographer in question, and that the project I’d be designing was exactly the same work I’d seen at the fair. I instantly said yes, and I’m currently working on the book, which I will also co-publish. It might even be ready for the upcoming edition of Unseen Amsterdam!”

La Presse: REGARD INUSITÉ SUR LE VERMONT

February 6, 2018

Les images du Vermont que l’on voit habituellement sont pittoresques, lyriques… et clichées. Dans Too Tired for Sunshine, son livre qui doit être publié au printemps, la photographe américaine Tara Wray a réussi à saisir l’aspect étrange, isolé et aussi chaleureux de l’État voisin du Québec. La Presse lui a parlé.

Translation: The images of Vermont that we usually see are picturesque, lyrical ... and clichés. In Too Tired for Sunshine , her book to be published in the spring, the American photographer Tara Wray has managed to capture the strange, isolated and warm aspect of the neighboring state of Quebec. The Press spoke to him.

FlakPhoto: 5 Things I'm Reading This Week

February 3, 2018

A few years ago, curator George Slade invited me to join his “Prove Me Wrong! Cat Pictures are Cloying and Annoying” group on Facebook. It’s a fun group dedicated to, well, sharing cat pictures. I’m allergic to cats so don’t spend a lot of time around them IRL but the group has made me wonder: Why do we photograph these creatures? I don’t know what the answer to that question is but I thought about George’s group when I heard about HUMBLE CATS (Yoffy Press, 2017) which is entirely dedicated to the pursuit of feline photography. I finally got around to reading the book this week and it’s a trip. If you’re a cat person, you’ll love this—you can read about the book here.

In the In-Between: Humble Arts Unleashes a Horde of Cats to Descend Upon the Photography World

January 30, 2018

Of all the photobooks published in recent years, there’s none quite so unique, so charming, or so subversive as Humble Cats: an online exhibition turned museum-quality book — about cats — organized by Humble Arts Foundation directors Jon Feinstein and Amani Olu, and published by Yoffy Press. The project dares to scratch at our preconceptions of what fine art photography is and should be. It’s a collection of what happens when internet cat memes meet photography MFAs, and includes pictures from some of the most notable contemporary photographers working today.

Beyond the wide array of photographic styles and voices that are on display throughout the book, this cabinet of kitty curiosities points a finger at the photography world and asks: why so serious? I sent some questions to Jon Feinstein to learn more.

The PhotoBook Journal: Louie Palu – Front Towards Enemy

January 25, 2018

Notes: War. I don’t understand it and fortunately I have not had to experience it, although I live on an old WW2 bombing range, that’s another story. Louie Palu in his new multi-media publication (can we really call this a photobook?) Front Towards Enemy provides a version of a photo-documentary that resulted from a self-assignment investigation of the war conflict in Afghanistan. This is a very complex region; socially, economically, politically and environmentally that Palu has tried to emulate with an equally complex and layered print concept.

Archive Collective Magazine: Tara Wray – TOO TIRED FOR SUNSHINE

January 12, 2018

Too Tired For Sunshine is a collection of photographs made in Vermont between 2011–2016, and published as a photobook by Yoffy Press. Though centered largely on animals and rural landscapes, these deeply personal images reflect Wray’s state of mind during a period spent battling depression and intense anxiety.

Drawn from daily life, the photographs explore loneliness and mortality, with a touch of absurdity and dark humor. Tara Wray is drawn to unsettling subjects –backyard slaughterhouses, roadkill, decay in various forms–as well as depictions of isolation in people, animals, and even inanimate objects.

January 2018 Issue (print only)

HOW do we choose to see the world? Who controls what we see and don’t see? Louie Palu’s Front Towards Enemy is a deconstructed photo book that asks us to consider how we receive news and who controls the message. After much reflection on what happens to his images after he makes them, Palu decided to create this unique collection. Including 60 photographs that he took in Afghanistan from 2006 to 2010, the “kit” is comprised of an accordion-fold image set, soldier portrait cards, a newsprint publication and a staple-bound zine. Why such an atypical approach? Palu wants to invite the viewer to actively participate and engage with these images of war. By circumventing the traditional news platforms and giving the content directly to the viewer, the viewer is able to take on the role of editor and curator. There are even instructions on how to create your own pop-up exhibition!

VICE: Tara Wray's Weirdly Beautiful Photos of Rural Vermont

January 4, 2018

Growing up in Kansas, photographer Tara Wray developed an eye for finding the surreal in everyday life. "I'd go for long walks alone or with my neighbor Grace, who was in her 80s, and I'd explore old limestone farmhouses looking for treasure," Wray said. "I once saw a cat that was missing its lower jaw, and one time the sky went completely dark in the middle of the morning for no reason. I didn't always have a camera on me then. But I used to love to shoot disposable 35mm cameras. I’d send the film away through the mail and get back these little magical packages full of images."

Humble Arts Foundation: A Number of Really Good Photobooks Published in 2017

December 11, 2017

This is not a "best photobooks" list. We heard a rumor that the photo community is getting sick of them. Next year, perhaps. Jokes aside, we opted to move away from the aforementioned language we've used in the past. There's too many to count, and the notion that our small team would have the umbrella-eyes to survey enough photobooks and narrow down a truly democratic list of favorites is unrealistic, at best. In its place, we compiled some "really good" photography books we enjoyed this past year (excluding our own Humble Cats, which of course, it would be in bad taste to include, right?) Some we own, some not yet, but we've poured through them all enviously. We encourage you to check them out and support the artists by purchasing them.

(spoiler alert: Yoffy Press' title Front Towards Enemy by Louie Palu made the list)

Huffington Post: Too Tired for Kickstarter

December 6, 2017

Depression can be challenging to tackle through photographs in a way that is accessible to a wide audience, and few in the medium’s rich history have addressed the subject in transcendent ways. Enter Tara Wray, whose series Too Tired for Sunshine, which she’s currently fundraising to publish with Yoffy Press in 2018, addresses dark issues of loneliness and isolation through wry, often absurdist humor. Wray’s upcoming book is one of a few titles Yoffy plans to publish in the New Year, each with a unique bend and angle. With a little over 5 days to go in Wray’s Kickstarter, I reached out to Jennifer Yoffy about what drives her to work with artists, and what moved her to publish Too Tired for Sunshine. 

Don't Take Pictures: BOOKMARKS: Yoffy Press

December 4, 2017

Don’t Take Pictures: How would you describe Yoffy Press to someone who has never seen your books?

Jennifer Yoffy: Yoffy Press is an independent publisher dedicated to pushing the boundaries of photobook publishing. We look for artistic partners who inspire us and projects that amaze us and then leverage our individual strengths to create an elevated, dynamic work of art.

In other words, we make books that are rad.

Lenscratch: Tara Wray: Too Tired for Sunshine

November 30, 2017

Having spent many a summer in rural Vermont, Tara Wray’s new project and soon-to-be book, Too Tired For Sunshine, resonated with me on many levels. Vermont in the winter is not for the faint hearted–it’s bleak and unforgiving and it explains why animals go into hibernation. Layer an internal depression into those gray, cold days and one can understand never wanting to leave the house. Tara’s photographs are about unremarkable moments seen from the point of view of a life off kilter. In a way, Too Tired for Sunshine is a series of little wounds, small observations, and subliminal messages that add up to a David Lynchian realization that normal is a subjective state of mind and perhaps the universe is is more mysterious than we think.

The Heavy Collective: Tara Wray: Too Tired for Sunshine

November 30, 2017

Vermont based photographer Tara Wray has launched a crowdfunding campaign this month to help fund her newest title ‘Too Tired For Sunshine’, which is set to be published and released by Yoffy Press early next year. It’s closing in on the finish line but needs your help to carry it over. Head to her Kickstarter page (here) preorder a copy of the book, buy a print, even a sculpture and help this work onto paper.

Don't Smile: Tara Wray

November 28, 2017

Too Tired For Sunshine is a collection of photographs made largely in Vermont, beginning in 2011. Centered on rural landscapes, animals, and strangers, these deeply personal images reflect my state of mind during a period spent battling depression.

Valley News: Barnard Photographer Searches for Light

November 23, 2017

There’s a nice-sounding folk theory that assumes a relationship between creativity and mental illness — Van Gogh’s ear seems to be the favored paradigm — but the truth is, this claim is unproven from a medical standpoint, and probably dangerous from a social one.

Intercross: Behind the Lens: Witness to War in Afghanistan (Podcast)

November 7, 2017

In this episode of Intercross the Podcast, we are excited to add another iteration to our cultural series, where we explore the intersection of culture and conflict. In this episode, we sit down with war photographers Louie Palu and Finbarr O’Reilly. Palu’s works have been featured in the New York Times, BBC and Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery. He recently released Front Towards Enemy, a book which examines the five years he spent covering the war in Kandahar, Afghanistan. O’Reilly is currently London-based, having spent 12 years in Central and West Africa as a photographer for Reuters. His book, Shooting Ghosts, is a memoir co-written with retired USMC Sgt. Thomas James Brennan and reflects on the experiences of the war and the unlikely friendship they formed. In this podcast they discuss issues like: How do we consume and engage with images of war? What are the psychological and emotional costs of war for those who photograph conflict? How can photography change the perception that people have of war? Why is this visual documentation important? What is the role of journalists as independent witnesses to war? And how does rocker Henry Rollins represent--for at least one of our guests--how social media and connection has changed the playing field? 

Lenscratch: Louie Palu: Front Towards Enemy

November 7, 2017

One of the highlights at the Click Photography Festival was the opening keynote lecture by Canadian documentary photographer and filmmaker, Louie Palu. Louie is a rare combination of artist and war photographer, able to stand present for horrific human events and then synthesize those moments into something artful, poetic, and powerful. His Click Festival installation was set was  in the woods of Battle Park on the UNC campus, where he exhibited large scale banners of his portraits of Garmsir Marines. This unit, the 24th Marine Expeditionary Unit, was formed 100 years ago to fight in WW1, where they famously took part in the Battle of Belleau Woods. This unit is based in Jacksonville, NC.

Alexia Foundation: Louie Palu on War and Photography

November 1, 2017

Louie Palu began working in Afghanistan in 2006, and was awarded The Alexia Professional Grant in 2010 for Kandahar, a project examines the cultural, historical and contemporary significance of Kandahar and its people within the region and the current Afghan state. Since that time, he has exhibited the work he did in Afghanistan widely, was awarded a Guggenheim Foundation fellowship and has produced two major works on the conflict in Afghanistan.

Sirius XM POTUS: Photojournalist and Filmmaker Louie Palu Shares His New Book "Front Towards Enemy"

October 23, 2017

Podcast interview with Julie Mason, a veteran journalist and host of The Press Pool .

PDN Photo of the Day: New Cats in Art Photography

September 20, 2017

In 2014, Humble Arts Foundation produced an online exhibition of art photography featuring the internet’s favorite animal, the cat. The show set out to explore the “academically ‘legit’ role that cats have played in contemporary art photography’s recent past,” writes Jon Feinstein in the introduction to the long-awaited book that expands on the show. To that end, Humble Cats: New Cats in Art Photography, published today by Humble Arts Foundation and Yoffy Press, collects more than 70 images from contemporary photographers around the world who use cats as models and muses, as symbols, protagonists and props in images that might sometimes pass for click-bait if they didn’t have more serious aims. 

TWIN MAGAZINE: Photobooks to fall in love with, from the founder of Yoffy Press

August 25, 2017

“Selecting 10 favourite photo books is a nearly impossible task, so I limited the scope to photo books I own. Each of these books represent aspects of the type of book Yoffy Press strives to publish in terms of design, innovation, and quality.” Says Jennifer Yoffy Schwartz, who founded her Atlanta-based publisher Yoffy Press. The publisher specialises in transforming photographs into bodies of art, creating a visceral and lasting celebration of creativity. We asked Jennifer to curate a selection of her favourite photo books – see her list below.

AFTER NYNE MAGAZINE: Breaking Through the Boundaries: Nine Minutes with Publisher Jennifer Yoffy

August 9, 2017

Jennifer Yoffy is an Atlanta-based arts advocate who has authored books, founded a non-profit organization and for five years ran a gallery—all with the goal of supporting emerging and mid-career photographers.

Now, as the founder and owner of Yoffy Press, she is partnering with photographers to produce boundary-pushing photobooks. She is also challenging the photobook publishing industry’s dominant pay-to-play model, which she believes takes unfair advantage of photographers.