The aesthetic and sociological dimensions of nineteenth-century Japan are scrutinized in Hanauri: The Japan of Flower Sellers through the Eyes of Linda Fregni Nagler. This multimedia project investigates the specific iconography of the hanauri, the itinerant flower peddlers who occupied the urban landscapes of the Edo and Meiji periods. Fregni Nagler, an artist and collector noted for her rigorous archival interventions, compiles a diverse range of historical artifacts to trace how the identity of these vendors was constructed and consumed through visual media. The core of the survey consists of twenty-six albumen prints from the mid-nineteenth century, a period when photography began to supplant traditional woodblock prints as the primary method of documenting Japanese street life.
The exhibition and its accompanying documentation provide a comparative analysis of image-making techniques across the transition to modernity. Alongside the original albumen photographs, Fregni Nagler introduces six large silver salt prints that she has hand-colored, as well as four stereoscopic glass positives. These are positioned in direct dialogue with earlier Edo-period woodcuts, including significant works by Utagawa Kunisada, such as Toyokuni III from the series Six sellers on summer evenings. This juxtaposition reveals how the idealized, often poetic representation of flower sellers in ukiyo-e prints influenced the early photographic compositions designed for both domestic markets and the burgeoning Western tourist trade.
Beyond the two-dimensional image, the project incorporates material culture to provide a holistic view of the era’s decorative arts and social stratification. The inclusion of kesa textiles from the MAO (Museo d’Arte Orientale) collection, three period kimonos, fine lacquerware, and kakemono\ hanging scrolls allows for a deeper interrogation of the motifs and patterns associated with the hanauri. These objects serve as physical markers of a vanished vocation, illustrating the intersection of labor, commerce, and art. By synthesizing photography with traditional crafts and printmaking, Fregni Nagler creates a cold, analytical bridge between the pre-photographic past and the emergence of a modern Japanese visual identity, preserving the memory of a class of vendors who once defined the sensory experience of the Japanese city.
By tracing the history of manipulated photography from the earliest days of the medium to the release of Photoshop 1.0 in 1990, Mia Fineman offers a corrective to the dominant narrative of photography’s development, in which champions of photographic “purity,” such as Paul Strand, Edward Weston, and Henri Cartier-Bresson, get all the glory, while devotees of manipulation, including Henry Peach Robinson, Edward Steichen, and John Heartfield, are treated as conspicuous anomalies. Among the techniques discussed on these pages—abundantly illustrated with works from an international array of public and private collections—are multiple exposure, combination printing, photomontage, composite portraiture, over-painting, hand coloring, and retouching. The resulting images are as diverse in style and motivation as they are in technique. Taking her argument beyond fine art into the realms of politics, journalism, fashion, entertainment, and advertising, Fineman demonstrates that the old adage “the camera does not lie” is one of photography’s great fictions.
For some travelers, a hotel is simply a place to stay. For LEONE, it is an experience shaped by atmosphere, people, and a sense of belonging. His third book, *A Place We Like*, grew out of a years-long search for that elusive feeling. Published as the inaugural title under the Leisure imprint of C41 Magazine, the project serves as both a visual guide to some of Europe’s most remarkable hotels and a personal reflection on the meaning of hospitality.
Discover Crossing, Kaplan’s powerful documentary photography project capturing Roxham Road, the irregular Canada-US border crossing used by refugees from 2018 to 2023.
Spurred by Trump-era immigration policies, this tiny site between New York and Quebec became a safe, highly unusual microcosm of global migration. Over four years, Kaplan photographed the entire ecosystem—from local cab drivers and border police to the asylum-seekers themselves. Moving past traditional media tropes of victimhood, these photographs challenge stereotypes to highlight the immense courage and resilience required to step into an unknown future before the site's closure in 2023.
I have spent years looking at Lee Friedlander’s America. It has always been a country of sharp angles, cluttered street corners, and shadows that seem to swallow the photographer whole. So when I picked up his latest monograph, Life Still, I expected the familiar noise of his world. Instead, I found something stranger: a 91-year-old master holding his breath.
Part of a bigger journey of liberation through self-exploration, this new photobook by Jo Ann Chaus is above all a collection of self-portraits, complemented by landscapes, still lifes and domestic interiors observed and inhabited by the photographer-cum-model
Blending photography and poetry, Burnt Eyes explores nostalgia, memory, and identity, offering a profound reflection on the complexities of belonging and the stories that shape us.
Seasons of Time by Nathalie Rubens is an intimate and fearless photobook exploring the emotional distance and deep connection between mother and daughter, while confronting the beauty, vulnerability, and physical reality of a woman’s aging body with rare honesty.
1804 continues Rich-Joseph Facun’s exploration of life in the Appalachian foothills of Southeast Ohio, this time turning his lens toward the local university and its complex, symbiotic relationship with the surrounding community.
GOST Books presents Robin Bernstein’s debut photobook MAPALAKATA, a compelling visual investigation into landscape, memory, and the layered histories of Southern Africa. The project offers a nuanced reflection on how geography is not only inhabited, but continually rewritten through movement, extraction, and shifting narratives of belonging.
