""Carriage Trade" reverses the usual relationship," Scott MacDonald pointed out. "The montage "is" the film ... Instead of embedding a montage within a narrative, Sonbert embeds shots that have at most minimal narrative elements within montage." Reviewing the 1976 "Rude Awakening", Fred Camper asked: "Disconnected but rich, open and non-assertive: what kind of editing has Sonbert discovered? ... The particular result of Sonbert's form and shooting—the images he uses are fully as important as his editing—is an extraordinary kind of heightened seeing. While his photography is for the most part realistic, I never feel as if I am looking at 'real' objects, or 'real' colors. Instead, shape and color exist in a state of disassociated intensity. Colors, turning in on themselves, glow with an inner light. Often, the image becomes a kind of design in which subject and background are seen as parts of a whole "decor," one whose elements seem to change each other by being held within that design."