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 […]
The term family is a loaded concept. It suggests something intimate and forged of a bond that is hard to break though it can be called into question. It never feels like a neutral term. From its earliest days, photography has made use of subjects closest to the operator. Photographing children, partners and parents is […]
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 […]
I don’t know if I believe that photography can define a people or a nation adequately, so I surmise that its best course of action is to speak about these topics in metaphor as if an attempt at truth will not be tolerated by observers from a secondhand accounting. It seems as though a majority […]
“Accompanied by a textual silence throughout the book, the repetition of the same gesture forges a totemic significance by accruing an emotional and auditory power similar to the effects of mantra-chanting.”
Next of Kin is everything I want to see in a photobook. It has the raw energy of sub-culture aesthetics coupled with a formal set of skills that exhibits the artist’s obviously studied qualities. It suggests that you can keep the energy of your life in your work and still know how to […]
In leafing through Anton Roland Laub’s critical “Last Christmas (of Ceaușescu)”, I find myself thinking about how traumatic justice is performed for a public and how we respond to images broadcast in which death is used to reclaim sovereign unification. I am reminded that these documents or transmissions facilitate belief that is necessary to […]
I missed this book first time around. The first edition sold out fairly quickly and has been republished in an affordable second edition by the original publisher Witty Kiwi. I will be honest in admitting that I am following contemporary photography from China at a distance. My knowledge of it is relative to Ren Hang, […]
Manifest destiny is an American concept that has been used to propel the country forward to this day. In the Nineteenth Century, the term was used as a way to justify westward expansion and the legitimacy of both slavery and genocide. If God willed that man travel West spreading word, religion and culture, then how […]
Stephan Keppel’s work appears as enigmatic on the surface. This is the first key to consider when trying to decipher it. Surface is the primary motif for the images within his books. After that, there are many levels to try to unlock. In some senses, it’s the kind of work that I might normally be […]