Book Review Weegee: Society of the Spectacle Photographs by Weegee Reviewed by Brian Arnold "Currently on view at the ICP in New York is Weegee: Society of the Spectacle (Jan. 23-May 05, 2025). Incredibly, this is the 6th exhibition dedicated to gruff tabloid photographer; this is in part due to a recent donation to the museum of Weegee’s work by his partner Wilma Wilcox. I haven’t seen the show, but the catalog, published by Thames & Hudson, offers an interesting survey of the curiously unique vision of Weegee..."

Weegee: Society of the Spectacle.

Weegee: Society of the Spectacle
Photographs by Weegee

Thames & Hudson, London, United Kingdom, 2025. 208 pp., 130 black-and-white illustrations, 8¼x10½x1".

"I was stuck, you see, because I didn’t want to do sort of a normal English broken German accent thing, so on the set was a little photographer from New York, a very cute little fellow called Weegee. You must have heard of him. And he had a little voice…And I got an idea…I put a German accent on top of that, and I suddenly got…him into Dr. Strangelove. So really, it’s Weegee."

— Peter Sellers

Currently on view at the ICP in New York is Weegee: Society of the Spectacle (Jan. 23-May 05, 2025). Incredibly, this is the 6th exhibition dedicated to gruff tabloid photographer; this is in part due to a recent donation to the museum of Weegee’s work by his partner Wilma Wilcox. I haven’t seen the show, but the catalog, published by Thames & Hudson, offers an interesting survey of the curiously unique vision of Weegee.

Born in 1899 in the Austro-Hungarian city of Lemberg (today part of Ukraine), Usher Fellig emigrated to the United States in 1913. Upon entry, his name was changed to Arthur Fellig. After teaching himself the basics of photography on his own, Fellig started his professional career as a photographer in 1918, working as both a darkroom technician and a reporter. The work he became most known for began around 1935, when he was a full-time freelance photojournalist. It was around this time he changed his name to Weegee, a homonym for Ouija, because as a reporter he claimed to be clairvoyant, always knowing just where to be as the action started. Working primarily for a leftist-leaning tabloid called PM Weekly, the photographer created an entirely unique archive of crime and other activities in New York City from Prohibition and through World War II.

His news photography might best be described as proto-noir, reportage from the streets of America’s biggest city that looked like stills from the greatest film noir (is it just me, or did Weegee look a little like Edward G. Robinson?), made over a decade before Hollywood co-opted the style. Pioneering the use of flash, the photographer created a unique view of the streets with harsh lighting and deep blacks, making life in New York appear like an existential abyss. Never defining himself as political, Weegee nevertheless created a powerful vision about class in America by frequently giving voice to working-class life in the city. The PM Weekly did define itself as a progressive magazine, a label the photographer denied, but then again, he was also connected to Sid Grossman and the Photo League (where he had his first exhibition). All this work coalesced into his first monograph published in 1945, Naked City, a relentless and raw look at New York composed with over 230 pictures.

Not long after Naked City, Weegee moved to Los Angeles and started what is now referred to as his second period as a photographer. It’s easy to imagine that the work he did in New York took a huge toll — witnessing so much pain and tragedy can never be easy, combined with the demands of running all his own production and business must have been exhausting. In California, he took his pictures in an entirely different direction and focused more on using the darkroom to define his pictures. He photographed many famous people of the day — Ronald Reagan, Mao Tse Tung, and Jackie Kennedy among them — and printed them by projecting the negatives through warped or frosted pieces of glass, prisms, and even condensers from his enlargers, making them all appear as slightly surreal caricatures (apparently Szarkowski hated this work and saw it as a joke, a complete waste of the photographer’s talent).

Weegee: Society of the Spectacle is an accessible book that offers a clear, engaging introduction to Weegee’s work, not prioritizing the New York years over California. The pictures are divided into neat, thematic chapters, pointing to major trends and periods in the photographer’s career, each introduced by a quote by Weegee accompanied with a short passage explaining the selection. The contributors include Clement Cheroux, Cynthia Young, Isabelle Bonnet, and David Campany. Cheroux introduces the book and exhibition by presenting the idea that Weegee’s work anticipated Guy Debord and the Situationists International, the French artists that emerged in the 1960s. Like the SI, Weegee challenged our understanding of what cities represent, and, like Debord, understood the importance of the media in defining the urban condition (it’s likely Weegee and Debord never heard of one another). Bonet, a specialist in crime photography, offers insight into the emergence of crime scene photography, both regarding the tabloids and the development of forensic investigation techniques. Campany acknowledges the last major body of work Weegee developed while working on the set of Dr. Strangelove. Director Stanley Kubrick met Weegee early in his career; before he went to Hollywood, he worked as a news photographer in New York City. Kubrick loved Weegee’s work, even noted it as an essential influence, and felt it would be interesting to have him on set. He gave Weegee a unique role, he had already hired two other photographers to provide the studio production stills so the master was allowed to do as he pleased. Kubrick thought the harsh style Weegee developed would be refreshing compared to the more slick and polished pictures the studio wanted. And apparently the photographer really hit it off with Peter Sellers, even influencing the actor’s interpretation of the film’s main character, the Nazi scientist advising the Pentagon on nuclear strategy.

Weegee: Society of the Spectacle provides a great introduction to the legendary photographer’s work. If one is really into collecting photobooks, there are certainly better examples of Weegee’s to be had (primarily Naked City, there are multiple printings of this book), but Society of the Spectacle offers a comprehensive, approachable overview of the photographer’s work, and thus it seems it was really intended as a souvenir for the exhibition rather than as a unique expression of the photographer’s work.

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Brian Arnold is a photographer, writer, and translator based in Ithaca, NY. He has taught and exhibited his work around the world and published books, including A History of Photography in Indonesia, with Oxford University Press, Cornell University, Amsterdam University, and Afterhours Books. Brian is a two-time MacDowell Fellow and in 2014 received a grant from the Henry Luce Foundation/American Institute for Indonesian Studies.

Book Review I’ll let you be in my dreams if I can be in yours Photographs by Carolyn Drake & Andres Gonzalez Reviewed by George Slade "It’s as though Drake and Gonzalez looked to collaborative books by Alex and Rebecca Norris Webb or Mirta Gomez and Edwardo del Valle. The photographers simultaneously claim and refute authorship, strip it down to its pictorial essence, while leaving a breadcrumb trail of hints that they were in fact working side by side..."

I’ll let you be in my dreams if I can be in yours

By Carolyn Drake & Andres Gonzalez.

I’ll let you be in my dreams if I can be in yours
Photographs by Carolyn Drake & Andres Gonzalez
MACK, London, 2024. 144 pp., 9x11½".

[Spoiler alert: This review makes the claim that this is a fun book.]

“Carolyn Drake and Andres Gonzalez made photographs side by side along the US-Mexico border between 2018 and 2023.”

Unless you do a little Googling (no fair!) that’s all you get by way of backstory for this book. No captions, no essay, no bios, or curricula vitae. You have the rare opportunity to take a photobook on its merits as a self-contained object.

It’s as though Drake and Gonzalez looked to collaborative books by Alex and Rebecca Norris Webb or Mirta Gomez and Edwardo del Valle. The photographers simultaneously claim and refute authorship, strip it down to its pictorial essence, while leaving a breadcrumb trail of hints that they were in fact working side by side. Shot/reverse shot is so effective that one searches for traces of the other photographer. Two perspectives on the same street corner, the same woman’s hand, or on another’s shoulder. Nearly identical shadows implying no more than a few seconds between exposures. There is no attribution to these photographs, so who took which is a fruitless, probably pointless, game.

It’s a treat and a trick at once, like a constructed image by a conceptualist like Barbara Probst. Who’s zoomin’ who, Aretha Franklin might ask.

In plain fact, the US Mexico border areas are laden with significance. Befitting Drake’s membership in the collective, a Magnum-esque earnestness is signaled. It’s a serious subject, to be sure. The issue buzzes with concern. Yet this politically dense tidbit is left until the end of the book.

Well, almost the end. The last page features an image that doubles down on doubling. A twin floral portrait (two flowers side by side) with a multiple exposure feel to it. Almost as though two images were made at the same time then superimposed in post-production. Or that supplemental light was used in concert with or in opposition to natural light. Despite its reveal-all, post-script positioning, it’s a red herring, perhaps the least interesting image in the book. An anticlimax, to be sure.

One element of the puzzle is tipped off in a lovely, enigmatic image of a black-robed figure standing on an embankment, flanked by glowing studio lights that light up without cords (the miracle of batteries and high luminescence LED lights). Seen at a distance, the figure could be an actor in a Beckett drama, or in a Greek chorus. What we derive from this image is outright evidence that artificial light is employed in the project’s overall strategy, and indeed it — the light, not the lighting devices — appears in image after image, a bit of estrangement, a hint of commercialism, within a generalized context of direct sun and twilight.

The book/puzzle forces us to take images at face value with the “border” caveat. We also must extend ourselves to regard the people in the photographs at face value. The book doesn’t tell us anything about anyone. For those seeking elucidation turn to this 2020 magazine article, but to look at that feels a little like cheating, like side-stepping the work the photographers are offering us.

Is there something more profound happening here? Need there be? Can't “serious” photographers (Drake and Gonzalez both qualify) have a moment of play? Admittedly, this is sophisticated play. Subtle and subversive. Still, when was the last time you had fun flipping through a photobook?

Did the lacy white fabric framed and leaning on a chair in a “museum” context lend its pattern to the book’s wraps? Are those two pigeons perched on the blue awning a reference to the photographic duo, or to Drake’s earlier book about birds? Remember, lace is full of air.

The photographers each make cameo appearances in the layouts. But can we assume that the portraits were actually made by the partner, or was each a selfie? Serious fun for certain close viewers. We follow the couple on a meander from here to there — points unspecified. The lingering brilliance of the journey is the trip itself, not the end product.

One must write in elliptical fashion about this work. It is factual and obtuse at once. I’m enjoying the idea of the photographers presenting it to the publisher. It’s about the border! Sort of. Yes. And.

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George Slade, aka re:photographica, is a writer and photography historian based in Minnesota's Twin Cities. He is also the founder and director of the non-profit organization TC Photo. georgeslade.photo/

Image c/o Randall Slavin

Book Review Failing Photographs by Mike Brodie Reviewed by Blake Andrews “While browsing his latest book Failing, my imagination turns to Mike Brodie in the initial stages of editing. Approaching forty, he’s got a lot of miles under his belt, most of them documented in photos. As he sifts through decades of various prints, his editing task is monumental..."

Failing by Mike Brodie.

Failing
Photographs by Mike Brodie
Twin Palms Publishers, Santa Fe, NM, 2024. 412 pp., 193 four-color plates printed on uncoated paper, 8½x11".

While browsing his latest book Failing, my imagination turns to Mike Brodie in the initial stages of editing. Approaching forty, he’s got a lot of miles under his belt, most of them documented in photos. As he sifts through decades of various prints, his editing task is monumental. Luckily, he has some help in the form of an angel on one shoulder and a devil on the other. He picks up a print and contemplates. Hmm. The angel and the devil both whisper advice into his ear. He makes a judgment, puts the print into the Yes pile or the No pile, and then moves on to the next one.

I’m happy to report that Failing’s Yes pile was sizable. Almost 200 photos made the final cut, creating a book nearly two inches thick. As the title suggests, the devil on Brodie’s shoulder ultimately vanquished the angel. Perhaps that was an inevitable outcome for someone who approaches both photography and life as a sui generis outsider. Living a vagabond lifestyle, social conventions and niceties tend to feel less pressing. And after the somewhat genial mood of his recent publications Tones of Dirt and Bone and Polaroid Kid, perhaps Brodie felt the time had come to unleash his inner demons.

The result is his grimmest book to date. “Here is the flip side of the American dream, seen from within.” That’s how Twin Palms describes Failing, and they’re not wrong. Whereas A Period of Juvenile Prosperity merely hinted at darker currents, this one plunges headfirst into the deep end. The photos are by turns raunchy, crude, disheartening, passionate, filthy, and occasionally hilarious. I should add that they are also consistently interesting. If it’s any consolation to the angel, the book takes a while to claim its namesake (adapted from a photo of the George E. Failing drilling parts catalog which appears near the midpoint). For a short while in fact, the sequence seems headed away from failure. Then, like so many photographic truths, the effect is revealed as a mirage.

Brodie’s epic adventures are segmented into three chapters: The Beginning, The Middle, and The End, in rough order of declining fortune. Throw in a King James typeface and liturgical preface, and this dense tome assumes a near Biblical quality. Before Brodie’s fall from grace comes an image of innocence, in the form of two lambs nuzzling in a pen. What could be cuter? This initial photo is followed by more benign material, e.g. a McDonald’s meal with friends, a man jumping for joy under a rainbow, a baby snake, Brodie’s lovely wife Celeste, and their new home under construction in Nevada. Hitchhikers hop aboard smiling, while nature’s bounty is ripe for the picking. Even a potentially ominous array of shotguns shells is photographically defanged in soft amber twilight.

It seems life is good. But don’t get too comfy. The Middle chapter establishes a darker mood immediately with a photo descriptively captioned Makeup and Meth. There’s probably no quicker exile from the garden than that combo. The Middle soon spirals through even bleaker imagery by way of a burning truck, a dead dog in a box, Brodie’s divorce (represented by a discolored broccoli flower), and a previously intact moth, now photographed in pieces. An impressive double spread photo of a massive derailment offers a summary judgement of where this train is headed: belly up and busted. By the time Brodie shows us a bent heroin spoon and then his erect penis tucked into a steering wheel, we’re mostly past the shock stage. But still left wondering, who’s the dick driving this thing? And is anyone watching the road? Within a few photos comes an answer of sorts: a cloud of black diesel exhaust spewing into the sky. Any angels in the vicinity have long since scattered.

If the reader can’t imagine Failing getting more vulgar, the bottom falls out in the last (and longest) chapter. The End opens in explicit form with a bloody heart on a piece of cardboard. Has Brodie’s gone missing perhaps? How else would he present photos of a house fire, dead jackrabbit, staph infection, and used needles with such equanimity? Captured on a phone screen, the needles become a sharp verdict on Instagram, one suffocating addiction shared on another.

And then, well, it just gets worse. A dead chicken, anyone? How about a cat crawling with maggots, a pair of old dentures on the floor, or the filthiest toilet you’ve ever seen? A computer desk stacked with guns, white powder, and Monster cans? A used tampon on the ground? A quick trick in a dirty alley? A Playboy model covered in shit? The sequence passes through death and decay, with deceased roommate, dog, homeless man, and daughter in quick succession. All capped by — a true Biblical miracle — a pregnancy?! The growing belly in the photo belongs to Mia Justice Smith, Brodie’s former lover and travel companion. Tragically, she lost the baby and then her own life, in short order. The book is partially dedicated in her memory, with a considerate plug for Shatterproof addiction treatment.

The pregnant photo comes near the end. Perhaps it’s meant as a hopeful beacon, to signal salvation after a book of repeated failings. A nice thought, but it seems too little too late. It’s just a finger in the dike here, staunching a sea of depravities. Taken in sum, Failing is brutal. It rivals Joel-Peter Witkin for debauchery, and Dash Snow for hedonistic nihilism. But there’s good news: As with those two photo stalwarts, we cannot look away. If these various pictures hang on the verge of failing, they’re also damned good.

There are a few running motifs which help pace the book, and keep Failure moving forward. Every few dozen pages, the primary photo sequence pauses for a few full-bleed spreads of travelogue imagery. Many of these images are motion blurred, showing roads and fields in passing. Life moves fast. You have to grab it by the horns, or perhaps by the highway shoulder. Then it’s back into the main current.

Reiterated subjects create another layer of connective tissue. Brodie photographs the same subject over time, for example a baseball in progressively deteriorating circumstances, or his own grimy hand holding common objects. The Winnemuca Hotel is photographed intact, and then being torn apart. In another sequence, a childhood bedroom is rephotographed over the course of several months. As with the full-page spreads, the clock is ticking. Though this be madness, it seems to infer, yet there is method in’t.

That brings me to the great irony of Failing. The inside joke of this book, of course, is that Brodie is not failing. He’s seen more of backroads America than most other artists put together. He’s a prolific photographer, a former Instagram phenom, the author of four respected photobooks, a diesel mechanic, and one of the more sincere souls in the Machiavellian world of fine art. All while following his own muse. He’s an achiever, in other words. Based on initial word of mouth, Failing seems likely to enhance that reputation. Despite its coarse subject matter — or maybe because of it? — the book is a minor hit in certain art circles. If the critical reaction sustains, it should help cement Brodie as a success.

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Blake Andrews is a photographer based in Eugene, OR. He writes about photography at blakeandrews.blogspot.com.

Book Review Record 2 Photographs by Daido Moriyama Reviewed by Brian Arnold "The first book I got by Daido Moriyama was '71 New York, published by Andrew Roth and PPP Editions in 2002. This was a great introduction to the photographer’s work — the size and density of a brick, the book is a relentless barrage of photographic dissonance showing a life on the brink..."

Record 2 by Daido Moriyama.

Record 2
Photographs by Daido Moriyama

Thames & Hudson, London, United Kingdom, 2024. 352 pp., 270 illustrations, 8¼x11".

The first book I got by Daido Moriyama was '71 New York, published by Andrew Roth and PPP Editions in 2002. This was a great introduction to the photographer’s work — the size and density of a brick, the book is a relentless barrage of photographic dissonance showing a life on the brink. The rich, grainy black-and-white pictures describe a hunter on the prowl — not for game, but for an understanding of the phenomenology of being and day-to-day life in New York. The pictures also struck me as the work of an outlaw; the first time I paged through '71 New York, I felt I could smell the whiskey, cigarettes, and hypo. When Moriyama went to New York in 1971, he didn’t speak English, and spent his days just as you would imagine, making hundreds of pictures of life on the streets. He must have stayed up all night processing his pictures, because he also made a series of books of his daily musings, xeroxing his darkroom prints to make cheap and crude reproductions, bound collections of photographs (though I might prefer anti-photographs) that he gave away to people he met during his stay. PPP Editions revisited these pictures, making a beautifully produced book that epitomizes Moriyama’s vision.

The second Moriyama book I got was Memories of a Dog (Nazraeli Press, 2004), a collection of essays the photographer wrote in the 1980s for Asahi Camera, a series he conceived as a regular contributor to the magazine. Each issue Moriyama provided short text/image documents that portrayed his wanderings across Japan. The essays were largely written on his train rides before and after the shoots, juxtaposed with pictures made on location. Memories of a Dog shares just the essays, understanding that they are great pieces of photographic literature in and of themselves. Indeed, I was surprised the first time I read it because I was imaging something rough like his pictures, but instead found some deep, reflective thinking about the nature of photography, place, and memory.

I still consider both these books among my favorites today; from the beginning I’ve loved the raw, anti-photography sentiment in ’71 New York — really all his early work — and the surprisingly reflective, patient, and articulate voice found in Memories of a Dog. Together they show what I’ve learned most from Moriyama, to pursue photography in a way that is raw, relentless, and aggravated, like an assault but tempered by a reflective and emotional intelligence.

The new book from Thames & Hudson, Record 2, reproduces a series of self-published magazines called Record that Moriyama produced between 2016-2020, issues #31-50. Each issue starts with a short piece of writing and is then followed by pictures that represent the time between the publications. In many ways, Record 2 represents so much of what I’ve come to love about the photographer’s work — dark and gritty pictures made with insatiable hunger. This compendium is beautifully produced — bound with a slipcase, the pages are rich, glossy black-and-white images, each one offering another complex, passionate photograph. I remember seeing some of the original printings of Record at Dashwood, so feel confident in saying the Thames & Hudson edition provides a lovely interpretation of the work. It is made with the same glossy production values, bound in a way that makes it a substantial, definitive archive of the artist’s work, but still represents the quick and urgent feel that embodied the xeroxes in New York City. That feel, the sense of urgency, is a lovely characteristic of Moriyama’s work, and it is an achievement to make such a prestigious, highly-produced monograph that maintains that sensibility.

My favorite part of Record 2 is the writing. The pictures are superlative, no doubt, but there is something so rigid and stylistic about Moriyama’s approach. The short texts, however, have an informal, conversational appeal, like he’s talking to you on the train. In them we witness Moriyama reflecting on ideas developed during his friendship with Takuma Nakahira; things he learned from Bruce Davidson, Eikoh Hosoi, Nobuyoshi Araki, and Eraserhead; the COVID lockdown; and receiving the Hasselblad Award. These things clarify Moriyama’s achievement for me; he was a street photographer who made Winogrand look lazy, constantly making pictures in a dark gritty manner while watching life unfold on the streets of Japan from post-war reconstruction through the ambitious expansion of the 1970s, its emergence as a global economic force in the 1990s, and into the age of data. Throughout it all, he maintained a restless, independent voice, and created a photographic vision that feels as raw as The Ramones and as wise as Zen.

Thames & Hudson is creating a multivolume series chronicling Record. I’ve only seen this second installment, but I am eager for more. If you really want to explore Moriyama’s writing, I still recommend Memories of a Dog, and if you are new to his work, I’d really encourage you to find his earlier books. Nevertheless, Record 2 is another testament to the mastery and depth of the photographer’s work and accomplishments.

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Brian Arnold is a photographer, writer, and translator based in Ithaca, NY. He has taught and exhibited his work around the world and published books, including A History of Photography in Indonesia, with Oxford University Press, Cornell University, Amsterdam University, and Afterhours Books. Brian is a two-time MacDowell Fellow and in 2014 received a grant from the Henry Luce Foundation/American Institute for Indonesian Studies.

Book Review Soft Eyes Photographs by Henry Wessel, Austin Leong & Adrian Martinez Reviewed by Jacques Talbot "Soft Eyes presents a selection of photographs by the late Henry Wessel, alongside those by California-based photographers Austin Leong and Adrian Martinez, in an immaculately designed and thoughtfully curated volume that synthesizes rather than juxtaposes the unique sensibilities of these remarkable photographers..."

Soft Eyes by Henry Wessel, Austin Leong & Adrian Martinez.

Soft Eyes
Henry Wessel, Austin Leong & Adrian Martinez
Deadbeat Club, Los Angeles, CA, 2024. 84 pp., 11½x11½".

Soft Eyes presents a selection of photographs by the late Henry Wessel, alongside those by California-based photographers Austin Leong and Adrian Martinez, in an immaculately designed and thoughtfully curated volume that synthesizes rather than juxtaposes the unique sensibilities of these remarkable photographers.

In 1969, at the age of twenty-seven, Wessel arrived in California from Rochester, New York. He settled in Point Richmond and taught at the San Francisco Art Institute for the next forty years. Leong (b. 1990) and Martinez (b. 1990) grew up in Anaheim and Los Angeles respectively, both relocating to San Francisco in the five-year window between 2003 and 2008. What unifies these three photographers is their affinity for capturing California’s crisp, stark light on the textured surfaces of their surroundings. This carries through the selection of photographs, which are sequenced without accompanying dates or attributions. The photographs retrace the neighborhoods Wessel once frequented, and to which Leong and Martinez now turn their lenses.

Throughout Soft Eyes, there is a noticeable contrast between the photographs that convey the expanse of California’s car-friendly terrain and those that capture interpersonal encounters. This mirrors how Wessel frequently took photographs from his car but on occasion would emerge from his vehicle to make further frames on foot. Like Wessel, Leong’s work is occasionally framed by the passenger-side door or windscreen of his car. At other times, individual subjects fill the composition. In an interesting triangulation of images, Wessel depicts a woman resting upon a blanket spread in disarray upon the sand. Later, the shadow of Leong’s bicycled figure encroaches on a man splayed on the sidewalk, apparently sunbathing. In a subsequent frame, Martinez focuses upon a child lying awkwardly, and somewhat ominously, at the foot of a staircase leading to the beach. In each instance, the ambiguity invites us to draw our own conclusions.

Interstitial space, where the built environment abuts abundant natural growth, is another theme throughout Soft Eyes. To this end, Martinez depicts foliage perforating a geodesic dome containing the remainder of a tree, suggesting a glacial transference of power. Elsewhere, in a photograph by Leong, a large plant appears to explode through the breeze-block wall of a parking lot; the shadows of its fronds radiate outward, as if from the percussive force of the impact. Several frames later, in an image of a suburban homestead by Wessel, a shrub that has had one quadrant abruptly excised is made whole again by its own shadow. These slower images perhaps best exemplify Wessel’s conviction that the meaning of a photograph is elucidated from a combination of its appearance, the experiential knowledge of the viewer, and the viewer’s imagination.

Time and again, humor serves as the inter-connective tissue between the work of Leong, Martinez, and Wessel. In the yard of a bungalow, a small cat sits discreetly against a white picket fence. Nearby, a hanging sign reads “Little Honker’. Elsewhere, the outline of a leg, whose figure vanishes into the walled entrance of a property, is mimicked by the trailing arm of a plant that projects outward from the same property, casting a wide arc from above the street as if to avoid detection. A few frames later, the larger of two dogs peers into the dark interior of a structure through missing slats at the base of one of its doors. Meanwhile, a smaller canine peers down on it, apparently undetected, from the apex of its roof. These photographs exemplify each photographer’s acute receptivity to narrative within the infinite and forever evolving permutations of their surroundings.

Soft Eyes culminates in an insightful essay by curator Allie Haeusslein, which dives deeper into the actively receptive state of ‘soft eyes’, a phrase coined by Wessel. He spoke at length about the importance of making an image as soon as interest registers, without deliberation or further investigation. Multiple works by Leong and Martinez demonstrate their adherence to this approach, and this overarching connection serves as the progenitor of the connections that follow:

“You’re kind of like a free agent between your instinct, your anticipation, and your intelligence, and all of those things… keep continually moving back and forth in a fluid way while you’re photographing”.

Soft Eyes is Todd Hido’s choice for Favorite Photobook of 2024, appearing alongside three other titles from standout publisher Deadbeat Club. Soft Eyes, however, is unique for drawing together the work of three photographers within a volume that is undeniably greater than the sum of its parts. The images by Leong, Martinez, and Wessel are shaped in part by California’s sunlight, but more so by Wessel’s philosophy. For these reasons, Soft Eyes has also proven to be my favorite photobook of 2024.

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Jacques Talbot is a photographer and writer based in Kingston, Ontario. His writing can be found in Border Crossings, Sculpture magazine, and the American Review of Canadian Studies.