The Crisis Tapes — Charlie Simokaitis. Published by TIS Books.
Through haunting and exquisite black & white photographs, Charlie Simokaitis’ The Crisis Tapes brings the reader in close to imagine the emotional gravity that he has exposed in response to his daughter’s gradual loss of sight.
This is a book of deep feeling. One doesn’t need the narrative to sense the anxiety, bewilderment and pain, but it does provide context for a deeper level of understanding and engagement.
Carl Wooley’s design sympathetically supports the somber beauty of Simokaitis’ photographs while Nelson Chan’s tritones deepen their raw weight.
As a photographer and a parent, I find The Crisis Tapes doubly impactful. Charlie Simokaitis has brought beautiful and unsettling visual introspections together and made public in book form his personal reckonings.
Cheryl Van Hooven is a photographer and writer based in New York and often working in the California Mojave Desert. Her work has been exhibited internationally and is in the collections of the Brooklyn Museum, the New York Public Library, Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Division of Art, Prints & Photographs, Imagery Estate Winery Permanent Collection at Sonoma State University, among others. She is currently working on a photo/text book.