Sébastien Cuvelier’s Paradise City (GOST, 2020) combines several rich storytelling elements into one photobook that considers Iran as a historic place pitted against the tumultuous change of the past fifty years as a backdrop for interrogation. Using his own photographs and images shot by his uncle in 1971 on his own odyssey, Cuvelier […]
I do not remember the majority of my dreams. I am told that I often erupt from the fugue state of sleep in panic, screaming, and moaning. The times that I do remember my dreams, something awful is occurring in them. They seem to be hinged on the anxiety associated with flight or fight responses. […]
Eiji Ohashi’s Roadside Lights Seasons: Winter is deceptively simple in its approach. The main theme of the book considers a constant in the Japanese landscape through the repeated photographic investigation of its roadside vending machines. Though beautifully photographed, the book details one type of subject matter across the beautiful backdrop of Japan at night. It […]
I missed this book first time around. The first edition sold out fairly quickly and has been republished in an affordable second edition by the original publisher Witty Kiwi. I will be honest in admitting that I am following contemporary photography from China at a distance. My knowledge of it is relative to Ren Hang, […]
The emphasis on performance or performing photography seems like a never-ending discussion. I have been looking backwards through the history of photography and can see without much difficulty that its Western beginnings are full of images that exemplify the tradition such as Hippolyte Bayard’s Self-Portrait as a Drowned Man from 1840 forward through […]
“The skyscrapers are vertical signatures that penetrate the evening sky all glass and reflective. Water pools on their surface creating an impermeable glare as one winces into the crow’s nest of their rapacious skyward capacity” I think of the term “Transitional Architecture” when I think of China. The skyscrapers are vertical signatures […]
“In contrast to the concrete metaphors in the urban architecture and the materiality of construction, the bodies and flesh of the workers on the beach refer to something humane: of the flesh, tactile and intimate, something that is deeply lacking in these isolated lives.”
“This ‘gendering’ includes everything from one’s awareness of their own individual body, to global political and social issues (the feminine pose, the masculine blue colour, the ‘masculinity’ of war)” Mayumi Hosokura’s New Skin begins with a single quote on its inside cover. It is a quote by Donna Haraway, from her 1988 […]
“Are classifications necessary? What are there limits? Who can photograph who and what? “ I am always curious by what we consider the exotic in photographs. I often find myself thinking of the vestigial media forms of the past- all the inconsistencies, problematic discourses, and general selling of anything “other” in photographs, magazines and […]
“This is a so much about family that the idea of the hotel and its function as the construction and as a dwelling for temporary accommodation, reflected through the blueprint cover and letterheaded endpapers is anything but the impersonal experience of temporary lodging.”
We confuse ourselves with our recognition of our portrait in a mirror. The hand that brushes away the hairs from the forehead, the sweet sticky perspiration that pins the lock to the crown is read in reverse and yet, this reversal is apathetic to the self that it stares back at. The eyes glare […]
“Many photographers will know that moment when they cross the path of the sun beaming down from a fifth story window-some will not even see it, they will feel the change of luminescence on their cheek, their hair will feel warmer as they pace” The is a debilitating moment for many photographers […]