PHOTOBOOK REVIEWS, INTERVIEWS AND WRITE-UPS
ALONG WITH THE LATEST PHOTO-EYE NEWS

Social Media

2016 Best Books: Martin Parr


Books Martin Parr: 2016 Best Books Martin Parr Selects Badly Repaired Cars, Golden Days Before They End, and New York in Photobooks as the Best Books of 2016
Martin Parr
Martin Parr is a photographer, a curator and editor. His book about the history of Chinese photobooks was published last year.











Badly Repaired CarsBy Ronni Campana
Hoxton Mini Press, 2016.
Badly Repaired Cars
Photographs by Ronni Campana
Hoxton Mini Press are producing mainly books about East London where they are based, but recently they have also branched out to publish other small books around more generic subjects. My favourite is this gem, that shows assorted cars, held together with all manner of tapes, rubber bands and bits of plastic.

You can’t help but be charmed by the ingenuity of the supposed repairs, and also relish in the knowledge that cars this knackered are unlikely to fully recover with this botched manner of repairs. A great example of hope over adversity.

Purchase Book Here




Golden Days Before They End By Klaus Pichler 
Patrick Frey, 2016.
 
Golden Days Before They End
Photographs by Klaus Pichler
The ever ingenious Klaus Pichler has stumbled across this subject, the dive bars of Vienna, and has faithfully documented these , together with quotes and assorted interviews with some of the bar regulars. The world he has photographed is rapidly in decline, as the bars start to close, exacerbated by the upcoming final smoking ban. We witness riotous behaviour, tacky and beer stained carpets and décor, but somehow everyone does seem to be having fun, and it is a far cry from the anonymous bars that are now so prevalent.

Read the review by Karen Jenkins on photo-eye Blog 
Purchase Book Here

New York in Photobooks
Edited by Horacio Fernández. RM, 2017.
 
New York in Photobooks
Edited by Horacio Fernández
As the study and celebration of the photobook continues unabated, this last contribution to the genre really does strike a chord. New York is probably the most photographed city in the world and there are countless photobooks that have made the city their central subject. The great thing about this book, is that although we have many familiar names, from William Klein, through to Bruce Golden we also discover many books from foreign photographers, that I certainly had not encountered.

So this is what makes this volume so pleasing as you really get a sense of how international and cosmopolitan this city was, and still is. So many visions of the same city , each making it their own. I saw the show of this project in Granada in Spain, and hope the show can come to the city that it depicts.

Purchase Book Here

Back to The Best Books of 2016