Are we defined by our periods between tragedy or by the politics of the tragedy itself? During the course of the 21st Century, our lives feel constantly intertwined and defined by a sense of paralysis regarding global events. We are a media-manipulated species whose ability to read the political terrain is constantly undermined by […]
Perhaps it is because we live in a time where our affinity towards our natural environment has faced a grave and perilous threat that we are beginning to look inward towards the world around us, particularly to the natural world and the affirming images that it conjures on a micro-level. After centuries of technological […]
Paolo Gasparini’s lengthy career and intense scrutiny of the Latin American social and political landscape from the point of view of an outsider looking in has produced, by proxy of his many photobooks and serial investigations of place, an incredibly rich document of Latin America caught in-between disjointed moments of upheaval and the hope […]
PHOTOBOOK YEAR-LONG COURSE MAY 2022 – MAY 2023 The Intent I have been enthralled with the photobook medium since the late 90s. I do not see the photobook as a simple vessel for photography. I see it as a medium that can be understood as the final message. The book suits me as a […]
Cristóbal Hara is a name that I had not explored until late last year with the co-publication of his book España Color 1985-2020/Spain in Color 1985-2020. The Spanish and English versions were respectively handled by Editorial Rm and Matt Stuart‘s Plague Press. I had seen it advertised throughout the year, mostly from Matt’s Instagram page […]
I had the pleasure of talking to Alexis Fabry on the publication of the catalogue of Battered Latin America, the exhibition he co-curated earlier this year at the Fondation A Stichting in Brussels. The book compiles the work of twenty photographers, including lesser-known names (Jaime Villaseca, Agustín Martínez Castro) and many of the region’s luminaries (Paz […]
As per Donavan Smallwood’s admission in his new book Languor (Trespasser, 2021), I also wanted to be an archaeologist when I was a child. I spent at least a few summers basking in the glow of having seen the first two Indiana Jones films which had made an indelible impression upon my youthful, as […]
I have been thinking about Jet Swan’s book Material for the past week. This is a fortunate sign. It marks it as one of those books that float across my desk that at first glance I feel some sympathy with, not total, but then it, or the images inside of it, burrow into my […]
There isn’t much more that can be said regarding the importance of Friedlander’s work on the psyche of subsequent generations of photographic enthusiasts and artists alike. From his self-portraits to his Little Screens, Friedlander’s work is simultaneously charged with an inner and external pathos that presents both as a partial reflection of the artist’s psyche […]
I have just returned from Athens from our first Nearest Truth Workshop and have been considering at great length the duality of living and being in a city. Having lived a large portion of my life in a city, and have now removed myself and my family to the remoteness of the countryside, this trip, […]
It is perhaps unsurprising that humans cling to material relics that remind them, in their shallow wisdom, of former glories that they themselves may never have lived. Monuments, crumbling statues, cenotaphs, and national symbols are built in order to honor perceived historical moments that shutter the mind, present illusions of grandeur, and present failed […]
“It’s how I fill the time when nothing’s happening. Thinking too much, flirting with melancholy.” Tim Winton, Breath This land that surrounds us, this land that gives impregnable meaning to our terminal character and its capacity to acknowledge our decline never fails to remind us of our place on this spinning orb, […]