photobooks of 2021 — kit patella

I think everyone should give reading photobooks a try. They are so much more than coffee table readers - there’s a poetic cadence and storytelling that can only be expressed in the medium. It’s ok to skim them until you find one you really connect with. Many of these titles you’ll recognize from charcoal book club, and many others from alec soth’s youtube video essays.

photobooks made in 2021

Black Diamonds

Black Diamonds by Rich-Joseph Facun impacted my photographic work more than any other book, series, or still.

Roast me for this, but: this book didn’t click for me on the first read. It took me a second read, after several foundational texts, to get why several portraits are presented as they are. It took time to fully connect the dots to my experience as a trans woman who benefits from her whiteness while simultaneously being isolated for her transness.

Much of Black Diamonds is about the white gaze. It’s a living narrative of how class interests enforce systemic racism and the ways that an Appalachian community deconstructs racism through limitless intersectional ties. Emphatically: read this book. (For further viewing, check out A Choice of Weapons)

Räuber

How do you meet someone you’re supposed to be close to, but never knew? Share a bit of yourself. Räuber celebrates overcoming the messy rough edges of family through soft surrealist enlargements of 35mm film. The photos taken by the younger brother are especially touching. A strong recommendation for both the expressive visual language and deeply moving narrative.

Haddon Hall

All these people are dead now; they lived. Their post-retiree escapades: beautifully rendered in ektachrome. 10/10

Hafiz

Çimen presents a close, compassionate, and intricate story of young women taking on a tremendous burden to support their culture and community. Hafiz is executed with absolute clarity of vision - do not miss it.

Joyrider

Joyrider frames what most of us reading this post would consider inhumane conditions with the excitement and spectacle the community performs for itself. I don’t hold this criticism too firmly, but I felt while reading that Mcdonnell’s cinematic style makes the people in the photographs feel like distant performers. Even so, we get some glimpses of intimacy and family between the superheroic crime-drama bravado. Even shot by someone near to the community, I have a difficult time judging whether this serves to exploit or dignify the lived experiences of this community in deep poverty. I don’t think my opinion makes a difference — those pictured get the final say.

Dust

Photography is an honest medium. When we go places and make photos, we can only ever photograph the distance between ourselves and our subjects. Dust is about a western photographer documenting the treatment of a religious and ethnic minority in China.

There’s a long tradition of photojournalism as an extension of the views of a state. As a person, I look at the information from the International Community I have on the genocide of Uyghurs and say: yes it’s bad. Suffering and displacement are bad. As a work, all I see is a Westerner with a camera walking around.

There are sincere and personal photos in Dust: the interior shots of several Uyghur men in the first half have a sense of earnest dignity and intimacy. However, when we get to the latter half of Dust, the focus shifts towards Chinese nationalism. We’re shown festival red, Chinese flags, construction vehicles, cold looks from women in expensive-looking clothing. The last photo of the book is of women relaxing in traditional outfits, their cellphones hidden. I’m not sure this is your story to tell, Wack.

photobooks made before 2021

Night Calls

“I look like you
Like you I learned to listen to the ache between words.”

There’s a poetic language that only sequences of photographs can have. Like Räuber, there are some stories only one person can tell. This deeply personal narrative is what I crave when reading monographs. Norris Webb composes visual poetry with handwritten words transcribed between her and her doctor father, family heirlooms, and archival research. Night Calls is a triumph of the form. A heartfelt expression of love between a woman and her father, her community, and the generations that came before. My favorite photobook.

Nicaragua

True journalism of a dying kind, Meiselas’ Nicaragua changed my whole view on what a person could feel turning one page of a photobook to another. Still overlaid on still, the prior image latent in the mind’s eye, felt if not vividly remembered. I got about a quarter of the way through, one particular image become another… I had to stop.

War is war - what else is there is to say? One day I’ll return and reckon with what this monograph holds. I can recommend it but only with the most emphatic content warnings.

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Utatane

うたたね(utatane) · ごろね(gorone) 【転寝 ·転た寝 ·うたた寝 ·ごろ寝】

(n, vs) dozing; napping (e.g. on the floor in one's clothes, in the train)

A book for both the old and young photographer in me. Beautiful pastel colors and the kinds of slice of life details that I focused on with “macro mode” on my first cameras. Having a camera alongside you in life gives you an excuse to bring your eye up close like a child again. To see the world for its details, patterns, and earnest simplicity. A perfect reminder that photos can be of the simple aspects of life, both of the everyday and rare occurrences. Yet another book I will return to many times.

Sleeping by the Mississippi

I mean - this is the book, right? It’s just a damned good book. Still learning from the poetry within. I don’t often stick around to read the text surrounding photographic sections too closely, but there’s a story framing the photos of an italian community on the banks of the river being swallowed up that resonated with me. I think I’ll have a hard time loaning this to friends because I never find myself far from picking it back up off the shelf to take another look.

I Know How Furiously Your Heart is Beating

I’ve sat down with this book a half-dozen times but it’s just never clicked for me as a whole. It’s strongly in dialog with Soth’s other work, and that makes it harder to appreciate as its own monograph. I’m sure I'll revisit it another half-dozen times and maybe I’ll appreciate it more with even more context.

No System

No System is well-regarded and I love explorations of non-western-traditional community and family environments - especially with kids! I keep loaning No System to friends so I’ve only really skimmed it. I’d like to revisit it soon so I can have Deep Thoughts on communalism in the face of american society’s farcical individualism.

William Eggleston’s Guide

Shot by Eggleston and edited by MOMA’s John Szarkowski. Eggleston’s guide presents an Americana world in which: what if you were a white man in a suit walking around in the South in the 60s? There’s a throughline of lost innocence and boyhood, with glimpses of anti-racist critique of isolationist white society. The thing is: we don’t know how much of these threads Eggleston actively pursued, and how much Szarkowski wove this into the editing and arrangement. Is it a work of solidarity? Maybe. Eggleston took a lot of photos.

Pictures from Home

Pictures from Home is historically significant - aging parents is a classical photographic exploration for a reason. But, there’s a lot of text and I’ve never connected to the work beyond the imagery. It remained high on my list of to-reads but somehow I always skim it after the first chapter.

I am now giving myself permission to, mentally, put the book aside and make room for other works. Ok, done.

Beach Therapy

Martin Parr has a lot of books and many are difficult (read: expensive) to get a hold of. This one was not. The best thing I can say about Beach Therapy is that it got me out to my local beach to shoot 35mm ektachrome as a technical exercise. Not every book has to be world-altering - I don’t expect to reread this soon.

The Last Resort

I preface my criticism by stating that I respect his work and his humanist leftist opinions. Comedy is important to me and I would like to incorporate more humor into my series. But Martin Parr’s “street” work feels both tepid and alien to me. His goofy surrealist self-effacing metacommentary lands more.

The Last Resort is historically significant as a documentary on the leisure pursuits of the working class. But, there is an unavoidable dynamic: a comedy photographer can’t be too critical of the establishment to have a broad audience. The king knows he is unclothed and is laughing along. The king loves his peasants. The king is commissioning Additional Comedic Works.