There are still true eccentrics with exceptional ability out in this world, navigating the trenches of culture, unashamed to live life as art, and art as life. These characters are often characterized by a performative lifestyle that echoes the bohemian notions of 20th-century living. I revel when I stumble across their work, find innumerable reasons […]
The life of Sarah Schumann should be much better known to the world. As a proponent of the New Women’s Movement, a talented painter, collagist, designer, and all-around life of post-war intrigue suggests a profound tie to the German movements of the mid-century, and yet, like many artists, particularly female artists of the Twentieth Century, […]
First published in 1975, Paul Virilio’s Bunker Archaeology has become a classic between categories of production. First and foremost, it is an essential book of photographs that typologically investigates the remnants of Second World War bunker armaments mostly along France’s Western coastline. These heavy structures, though short and squat, are impressive concrete-and-rebar boulders that sit […]
I was never accustomed to the tall tales of muchroom pickling that pervade Europe. Mildly aware of the phenomenon back in Wisconsin around the spring movements of the morel mushroom picking season, born to a family of hunters, I did not grasp the essential nature of mushrooms and fungi until quite late in my lifetime. […]
Agony in the Garden. Parables. Metaphors. Incisive mythology within the realms of the contemporary political landscape of Europe in the 2020s. To reduce Lua Ribeira’s work to any single motif is an exercise in futility. Instead, the analysis must stem from the aggregate means of its parts. Of course, one cannot simply resign the work […]
Imago Mortis translates to “Image of Death.” It is a concept that has representations as far back as the Middle Ages, likely exploding across imagery as an extension of the mood following years of bubonic plague, which killed off nearly 1/3 to 2/3’s of Europe’s population over the course of a decade. Over the years […]
I was sent this lovely book about the choreography and performance art of Hermann Heisig by Spector Books, one of Germany’s finest publishers, at the suggestion of their team. I tend to value suggestions like these from a publisher known for a wide output, as they offer a thoughtful dialogue between parties. I get to […]
I first encountered the visceral photographs of Lucile Boiron a few years ago when I bought a copy of her book Mise en Pièces, also published by Belgian publisher Art Paper Editions (APE), like her new book Bouche. I remember being very excited about the book, as it reminded me of the visceral tendencies in […]
When you think you have seen the model-to-photographer genre wear itself thin, along comes Matilde SøesRasmussen to challenge, deepen, and extract gold from the topic by putting together her second intriguing photobook, which deals with modelling. Søes Rasmussen ’s first book, Unprofessional, published by Disko Bay, was a grand slam that, through her point-and-shoot aesthetic, detailed […]
Daan Paan’s Floating Signifiers, published by The Eriskay Connection is a fascinating study of a type of aesthetic evolutionary morphology as evidenced through several case studies concerning image typology from trees, hinting at ecological questions through fantasy-driven tropes such as the Panta Rhei birthing figure, executed from popular culture, culled from Stephen Spielberg’s Indiana Jones […]
The cyanotype is a very flexible process developed from water. One paints or layers ferric ammonium oxalate and potassium ferricyanide on a substrate, usually paper, but also fabric. One then exposes a negative or an object to direct sunlight. After a test has been made, the print is washed in water, revealing a beautiful Prussian […]
Whether it is a proponent of exoticism and all that it entails — both fascinating and ethically dubious — photography has, at its core, an ability to reveal. It can reveal that which is shuttered, hidden, and usually unobservable. In the case of the colonial camera, much of this fascination with otherness leads to the […]