Ricardo Tokugawa Utaki

  I have just returned from a workshop trip from São Paulo, Brazil, a vertiginous and bustling city. My experience in returning from the city has been marked by an extended rumination on my experiences there. I am still processing the city, its architecture, and its artists whom I was very fortunate to meet in […]

Yana Kononova Radiations of War

  I do not know much about the war in Ukraine, despite living in a country that borders it. I don’t know much about it as the fog of war hangs heavily, like a thick, void-like curtain over the whole mess. The principal idea is clear. Russia has invaded its neighbor and, in doing so, […]

Boris Wanders & Judith Lechner – On/t/schuld

The legacy of intergenerational trauma is complicated to untangle. What we pass onto others and try to shield them from is often at odds with the need to unburden the experiences and traumas that have been suffered. It sags in our heart like a loose sock sliding down an ankle, a rock in the shoe, […]

Kristian Krän – La Soufrière

  What we do not talk about, dare to concern ourselves with, or pay much attention to are the men who fall through the cracks toward the end. We are happy to discuss the problems associated with masculine behaviour. Yet, we can’t imagine a discussion about men left wandering by their own devices or by […]

Pieter Hugo – Californian Wildflowers

  I am incredibly biased as I write this. I share a close connection with the artist Pieter Hugo through our Nearest Truth workshop programming. Although it might seem counterintuitive to the points I will raise subsequently, I have had a chance to hear Pieter talk about his work in detail, with all the challenging […]

Gregory Halpern – Omaha Sketchbook

If you happened to attend the 2009 NY Art Book Fair, you might have come across Gregory Halpern’s Omaha Sketchbook on the table of J&L Books. This early version was rough and unassuming, printed on a laser printer and spiral-bound, its pages made from cheap white paper with small contact prints affixed throughout. The images […]

Mikael Gregorsky – Sun

  Observational photography. Intrepid photography. Itinerant Photography. How does one deal with and parse out the general economy of images when abroad, away from home? What is home for a photographer who has moved from place to place over the 21st Century? There is an argument regarding the intrepid photographer, one that covers the ground, […]

Debsuddha Crossroads

Othering, debated through the discourse of reading the camera as a difference machine, seems at the crux of much of photography’s woes. Challenged by the notion that the machine is neutral in its observational and technical ability, the authorship and cultural means of producing images are undergoing a fruitful re-assessment of its terms to represent, […]

Jochen Lempert – Natural Sources

I am relatively new to Jochen Lempert’s work, or at least his books. I was aware of his book Phenomena from 2013, which seems a favorite among his fans and commands a decent price at auction. I tend to note these things to argue with or argue against about a book’s “weight” amongst the bevy […]

Mike Brodie – Failing

When I received a copy of Michael Brodie’s new book Failing, I knew it would take me a while to organize my feelings towards it. Some thoughts take time to settle from a place of instinctive fondness and sentimentality, especially when you feel so strongly connected to someone’s previous work. As for many of us, my […]

Carmen Winant The Last Safe Abortion

  Access to medical attention should be a right, no matter religious qualification or moralizing over another adult person’s decision. In the case of abortion, this is complicated by how we judge human sentience in the form of an unborn child. It is complicated. To say otherwise would be a misstep that does not account […]

Tatu Gustafsson I on the Road

    These photographs were taken by weather cameras in Finland every twelve minutes. From that point, the Finnish weather authorities/authorities who observed the weather uploaded the images online to be viewed for 24 hours before they disappeared. This presented an opportunity for Finnish artist Tatu Gustafsson to perform for the weather camera and document […]