There are global moments in history that feel like tipping points of major changes when you view them retrospectively. In the case of Michael Kerstgens exceptional new book 1986 (Hartmann Books, 2021), the writing on the wall could not be more clear looking back at the year. I remember 1986. I am old enough […]
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 […]
“Searles believes that everything in nature has a soul, and these images show her desire to connect with it, calibrating color and composition to establish actual and abstract relations between time, culture, and the natural world.”
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 […]
I do not remember the majority of my dreams. I am told that I often erupt from the fugue state of sleep in panic, screaming, and moaning. The times that I do remember my dreams, something awful is occurring in them. They seem to be hinged on the anxiety associated with flight or fight responses. […]
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 […]
What a strange process it is to sift through the remains of an anonymous person’s photographic trail. You look for clues of authorship, economic circumstance, and their loved ones who emerge through their images in repetition. You try to stitch together a narrative when there may very well not be one to consider. This is […]
The scopic drive, or scopophilia, is, as defined by the psychoanalyst and psychiatrist Jacques Lacan, the human unconscious desire being triggered by our looking and being looked at. It is inherently sexual – it’s about pleasure, or lust, derived from observing or being observed. The notion has been heavily surveyed in psychoanalysis and reflected throughout […]
The gravity of our current moment lies not only in the event itself, but the image that the event has been spun into; namely a large web of the intolerable. Throughout the past year, the constant pressure of the Covid situation has led to a new depiction of the world in which fear, sickness, and […]
Bas Losekoot’s Out of Place is a study of people meandering through urban environments. The locations that Losekoot photographed in the book are cited as Hong Kong, Sao Paolo, Lagos, Mexico City, New York and more. At first glance, the work reminds me of a number of urban image projects of a similar fashion by […]