Though change is metered through the concept of progress in urban space, oftentimes there is an arrestation of form as its transitions from one set of facades to its new progressive and updated counterpart. This arrestation sees the hybridity of new and old caught in a transitional moment in which both are vying for […]
In 79 a.d, Mount Vesuvius erupted with a volcanic activity that completely destroyed the Bay of Naples region including the small, but thriving community of Pompei. Pompei was a Roman enclave like most at the time. It had markets, homes, and open-air theatres that featured beautiful mosaics, Roman sculptures and was situated close to the […]
“Ractliffe’s work, whether consciously or not, emerges at a time when the impossibility of representing experience started to gain purchase in discussions around the medium’s shortfalls.”
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 […]
Glancing at Steel Town by Stephen Shore (MACK, 2021) gives the reader the impression that what they are looking at has a point of fixity in the past. The images, produced in 1977 for Fortune Magazine, and have a quality that suggests a bygone era. Whether it is the kitsch interior of Eddie’s […]
Anne Immelé’s Oublie Oublie is a book about a transitional time and place. Between 2019 and early 2020, the French artist surveyed municipal works and changes in the neighborhood of Le Nouveau Drouot in Mulhouse, France where she lives and teaches photography. The urban environment of her images suggests the 1950s’ and 60’s city planning […]
An Interview between Zak R. Dimitrov, Beata Bartecka, and Łukasz Rusznica regarding their book How to Look Natural in Photos Palm* Studios and OPT. How to Look Natural in Photos is a functional, yet very aesthetically pleasing book. It examines the way photography operates as a mechanism and a tool for […]
Thana Faroq’s I Don’t Recognize Me in the Shadows is a book of complicated subjects. First, there is the subject at the heart of it all, namely Thana and her experience as a Yemeni Refugee who found her way to the Netherlands through the gruelling and heart-wrenching ordeal of leaving her family in Yemen where […]
Keld Helmer-Petersen is predominantly associated with the early use of color photography as an art form. His book 122 Color Photographs self-published in 1948 is considered a pioneering photobook for its use of color though it makes up a very marginal amount of the artist’s entire body of work. Keld Helmer-Petersen’s concerns in […]
“In avoiding the self-imposed restrictions of the Bechers and their countless imitators, López Luz spares us from the tediousness of some of those series, dissecting singular aspects of the urban environment with great insight.”
Eiko Grimberg is concerned with two pivotal subject matters within his work. The first is the way in which we interpret the historical. The second is the way in which we interpret architecture. In his work, these two aspects overlap and produce an air of uncertainty in which dogmatic and ideological thinking is critiqued […]
What looks benign or without consequence can be illusory. What lies below the surface can provide a catalog of answers. The distant past as a concept is very hard to photograph. In thicket and open clearing, in water and desert, it is difficult to unlock the image of ancient history. We can only […]