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Public Orator: Paul Walters Rhodes University Graduation ceremony, Grahamstown, 7 April 2006 Mr. Chancellor, I have the honour to present to you Dr Peter Magubane for the award of the degree of Doctor of Laws, honoris causa. The distinguished novelist Joseph Conrad wrote in a famous preface: “My task which I am trying to achieve […]
Essay excerpt from Departure: Enough seen. The vision was encountered under all skies. Enough had. Noises of cities, in the evening, and in the sun- shine, and always. Enough known. The pauses of life – O Sounds and Visions! Departure into new affection and new noise! Arthur Rimbaud – Les Illuminations. My journeys have […]
The feeling among them was unanimous: this was not how America was to be shown. But what was at issue was a larger matter than patriotism. The challenge of Frank’s work in the late ’50s lay in his treatment of his subject matter and in his use of a photographic style well out of the […]
“The first series of pictures had caused varying reactions from people – inquisitiveness, disbelief and repulsion. People were fascinated by them, just as I had been by that first cellphone photograph.” The Dog’s Master By Pieter Hugo These photographs came about after a friend emailed me an image taken on a cellphone through a […]
“The ideology and apparatus of apartheid and the overwhelming power of the state to crush opposition became ever more present in our lives.” Some Afrikaners Photographed, 1975 – Some Afrikaners Revisited, 2006 By David Goldblatt, Johannesburg, South Africa, 2006 I was born and grew up in Randfontein, a gold-mining town 40 kilometres west of […]
Mississippi Freedom Marcher, Washington, DC, 1963 By Alan Thomas (Originally published as “Literary Snapshots of the Sho-Nuff Blues,” In These Times, March 27-April 2, 1985) “Who can dance to this bopping music? In the old days we used to like blues. And I still do. But now the kids don’t lean on the piano no […]
“Most people thought that I was glorifying that behavior,” says the 25-year-old. “But I also saw them as horror stories.” By Christopher Bollen Dash Snow (1981-2009) has been taking pictures since he was 11. But it was after a two-year stint in juvenile detention, at age 16, that he turned to the Polaroid camera […]
Parlourmaid and underparlourmaid ready to serve dinner, Mayfair, 1936 Bill Brandt enjoys darkroom work and likes to experiment, printing the same shot in several different ways. ‘It takes a long time to produce a good print.’ No mass production. Bill Brandt: A Personal View Creative Camera Owner Magazine, 1970s Bill Brandt’s landscapes are truly creative. […]
Gay Burke, Tuscaloosa, Alabama, October 28, 1973 As a collection, the Polaroids are remarkable in their consistent and determined attitude. They are bald presentations of individuals without mannerism or style and yet they are distinct, they are compelling, and their directness is palpable. By Jane Tormey, originally published in Afterimage, July 1, 2003 During […]
Photography in Düsseldorf By Douglas Eklund Bernd and Hilla Becher began their collaborative project in 1959 (and were married shortly thereafter), at a time when German photography was mired in the same collective paralysis as the culture at large. The most prominent photographer at that time was Otto Steinert, whose Subjective Photography movement attempted to […]
Stephen Shore. Merced River, Yosemite National Park, California, August 13, 1979 In 1982, a slender yet hugely impressive version of Uncommon Places was released. Its impact was felt almost immediately, forever changing the course of art photography, and securing Stephen Shore a place within the canon of photographic history. By Aaron Schuman, originally published […]
By Marianne Mueller, The Proper Ornaments, Edition Patrick Frey, Zurich, 2008 I am interested in fundamentals, in the conditions and constraints of being. Vulnerability, the everyday, banality and intimacy. Peripherals. Abstraction, energy. • What happens to things, to the shadows of trees on a wall, to pennants fluttering on a parking lot, to the sound […]