This year we are celebrating the 25th anniversary of our renowned listing of the year's best photobooks. To mark this milestone, we've decided to do something a bit different. We've asked 88 internationally recognized luminaries from the photobook world to choose their favorite photobook of the year. Their favorite book could be unforgettable for any number of reasons but the chosen books affected our selectors on a very personal level. These books led each of our contributors to conclude, "If there's one book not to miss this year, it would be this!"
Subscribe to PhotoBookDaily to get our email announcements in advance!
Today we offer an 89th selection by Mark Steinmetz!
Mark Steinmetz's Favorite
Photographs by Mimi Plumb
“Landfall by Mimi Plumb begins with a brief text:
‘I remember having insomnia for a time when I was 9 years old. My mother told me there might be nuclear war.’
“Made in the mid to late 1980s in black and white, the central recurring character of Landfall is a young girl. There's also a woman who might be her mother, a man who could be the father (and another man — an uncle perhaps), a boy who is possibly a brother. There are images of missiles, toy tanks, and military equipment. There are photographs of the Western desert landscape, the shoreline, barren trees and the burnt interior of a house. Plumb's flash turns hair into silver, and strikes carousel horses with gaping mouths (literal night mares). Sources of comfort are absent (an exception: the girl lying in bed with (I guess) her mother, though the sleeping mother has turned away). There's a vague dread hovering over this child's world; something dark may be approaching.”
‘I remember having insomnia for a time when I was 9 years old. My mother told me there might be nuclear war.’
“Made in the mid to late 1980s in black and white, the central recurring character of Landfall is a young girl. There's also a woman who might be her mother, a man who could be the father (and another man — an uncle perhaps), a boy who is possibly a brother. There are images of missiles, toy tanks, and military equipment. There are photographs of the Western desert landscape, the shoreline, barren trees and the burnt interior of a house. Plumb's flash turns hair into silver, and strikes carousel horses with gaping mouths (literal night mares). Sources of comfort are absent (an exception: the girl lying in bed with (I guess) her mother, though the sleeping mother has turned away). There's a vague dread hovering over this child's world; something dark may be approaching.”