Contact sheets offer an incredible look at the back end of a photographer’s process. Often hidden, they also present a slight enigma in that they also show all manner of warts. Every photographer is aware of the personal nature of contact sheets, which are used as a work tool to decide which images may eventually […]
Daan Paan’s Floating Signifiers, published by The Eriskay Connection is a fascinating study of a type of aesthetic evolutionary morphology as evidenced through several case studies concerning image typology from trees, hinting at ecological questions through fantasy-driven tropes such as the Panta Rhei birthing figure, executed from popular culture, culled from Stephen Spielberg’s Indiana Jones […]
Notes for a Ritual of Photography Gone Extinct Victor Sira, in his exhibition catalog/new book Europass, published by his publishing house, bookdummypress, examines a common theme in travel photography. The book is based on a series of trips the Venezuelan artist took in Europe from 2001 to 2006, which coincided with the shift from the […]
The cyanotype is a very flexible process developed from water. One paints or layers ferric ammonium oxalate and potassium ferricyanide on a substrate, usually paper, but also fabric. One then exposes a negative or an object to direct sunlight. After a test has been made, the print is washed in water, revealing a beautiful Prussian […]
I have mentioned several projects in the past here that use the window as a mechanism for photographic discourse. There are quite a few mentions of the window as a source for inspiration; perhaps the most well-known is eminent curator John Szarkowski’s discourse about mirrors and windows, and the difference between how an artist […]
Julien Langendorff, Spell Rider The roots of cosmic occultism stretch back as far in time as humans have been able to communicate. There is a hermetic order to the universe that has bewildered and engaged the species, giving license to conjecture, theory, and spiritual whim that exceed what lies before our faces. It is a […]
In 1870-1871, during the siege of Paris, better known as the Paris Commune, several ingenious actions were carried out throughout the year to continue the communards’ defense first against the Prussians, then the Thiers government, which sought to suppress the resistance within the heart of Paris. Both of these actions were the result of harnessing […]
And then there was the night—archives from the edge of hell—chimerical dissonance—six cloven hoof Satyrs. Bachanalian. Excremental. Grain, dissolve. Pushing the sword of Damocles in until the hilt fractures on the bone of the pubic mound. A horsehair away from piercing the veil. Scrutinize, Labotomize. Forever roam. Necessarily hexed, vexed, encouraged by nebulous worlds […]
Batia Suter’s work has several substantial iterations at its heart. It stems from an understanding of volume and how images function, both in terms of their materiality and their historical context. This is most evident in her opuses Parallel Encyclopedia I and II, both published by Roma. The work that Suter makes can be […]
There is something undeniably attractive in small ideas executed with precision and clarity. In receiving Cintia Tortosa Santisteban’s new book Screenshots from a series of videos about a rice field and its surroundings (Chose Commune, 2025), I am reminded that it is often the Occam’s razor of production and concept that produces some of the […]
“The past is not dead. It’s not even past.”-Aby Warburg. Constellations, catalogues, and correlative image processing are at the fundament of Batia Suter’s efforts to respond to images that she deftly places in thick, long-running sequences, in which the associative power of images, in their constellation, invokes a response from the viewer based […]
Daido Moriyama I feel bad saying this, and you will have to read on to find more positive suggestions about this book, but I think Moriyama has become quite a pastiche of his earlier glory. I understand how he arrives at that conclusion, and frankly, most people will likely be inclined to argue with […]