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 […]
What appears as fok or “primitive” in the handling of Magdalena Suarez Frimkess’s exceptional sculpture is illusory. Instead, what the work relies on is a consistent production of cultural comic and cartoon icons ad infinitum, their forms shaped not by Frimkess’s vision of a new form but by the replication (at volume) of these cultural […]
Robert Flick’s career is exciting. Born in Holland in 1939, the artist emigrated to North America by the 1960s and had work featured in publications as early as 1966. He has been exhibiting since the 1960s, and his work is featured in many institutions; yet, he is not easily placed in any respective movement, […]
I sometimes wonder how much room there is for careful debate and an effort to understand what happens around us – positions and outrage are usually quite fixed. Recently, I have been looking out for photographic work that attempts to complicate seemingly simplistic arguments or binary oppositions through approach and practice. This review is the […]
Archival projects rarely offer a great conceptual rigor, in my opinion. As a collector of vernacular photography for over thirty years, I am often at pains to parse through projects that employ archival material, as I frequently feel that they are unfamiliar with the tropes associated with the material. I frequently struggle similarly when those […]