“Not a terrible thing and an atmosphere pervades that favours this compunction towards dead ends-thus life living in the best and worst of times simultaneously. Living our sort of dreaded best life as it were” As I leaf through this book’s accompanying ephemera, press release etc., I start skimming the lines printed within […]
“One can use a camera to explore or utilise philosophy, politics, psychoanalysis and what not and this is wonderful as it broadens the scope of what is achievable with this tool. It tends to be forgotten that this is not, however, the be-all and end-all technique” When one thinks of photographic projects, which more […]
“The world itself defines humanity by an unceasing and unrelenting violence” Sybren Vanoverberghe‘s 1099: A Violent Compression Art Paper Editions. Text: Brad Feuerhelm The world itself defines humanity by unceasing and unrelenting violence. This violence can be seen in the material record of geology, but also in historical ruin. The violence that oversees the […]
“I have assumed this focus on the found vernacular to be American in nature. However, the details of national ownership is missing apart from the rise of American modernism or the focus on its anti-thesis, namely quaint small town America advertising often hand painted and rough” It is somehow impossible not to mention […]
“Lake Geneva is situated along the borders of France and Swtizerland and is surrounded by dauntingly beautiful Chablis Alps, which features Le Grammont,-the region’s highest summit” I had the pleasure of visiting the Swiss Biennale Festival Images Vevey last week. The festival, which occurs every two years in the small, but lush town of […]
“Obviously, the European annual of the 30s and 40s such as Das Deutsche Lichtbild catered to various image-makers and sensibilities that would end with the war” The tradition of the 20s, 30s, and 40’s photoannual provided for a number of great image-makers to exhibit some of their finest single images. Annuals such as […]
“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 […]
“Engman himself is absent from the work, and his interest in the figure of his mother most often seems like the distant one of the artist: she is a familiar material, repeatedly made strange by his methods.”
“In the case of Arnaud Montagard’s The Road Not Taken, the lens is focused on the remnants of a mid-century American dream as exemplified by gas stations and diners that bear all the vernacular hallmarks of the Atomic Age” The best way to describe human activity in a photograph is to remove […]
“The Transparencies book published by MACK is also significant in its design, the essay within and sequence of the work, which is chapterized by annual progressions through the 70’s American dream in banal (good word, word of goodness) detail” It is not often that a re-examination of the periphery of a significant […]
“The fridge was loud, but outside it was quiet, much quieter.” There is a literal wall of language separating the two halves of Michael Schmidt’s landmark photobook Waffenruhe (published in 1987 and reprinted in 2018), a visually sprawling text that spans seventeen pages at the center of the book. Despite the text’s […]