“In contrast to the concrete metaphors in the urban architecture and the materiality of construction, the bodies and flesh of the workers on the beach refer to something humane: of the flesh, tactile and intimate, something that is deeply lacking in these isolated lives.”
“I have assumed this focus on the found vernacular to be American in nature. However, the details of national ownership is missing apart from the rise of American modernism or the focus on its anti-thesis, namely quaint small town America advertising often hand painted and rough” It is somehow impossible not to mention […]
“It would be easy for me to say that this book is published at the right moment and that it correlates a simple reminder about the inhuman conditions of the past…” It is June 9th, 2020 and as I sit here penning this “review” of Gordon Parks perhaps sadly non-anachronistic and oddly prescient […]
“Through connections to her family, dual religions, rituals and historic re-interpretations she staged herself in performative postures, using dress and ritualistic objects to perform specific rites or ceremonies for the camera.”
We confuse ourselves with our recognition of our portrait in a mirror. The hand that brushes away the hairs from the forehead, the sweet sticky perspiration that pins the lock to the crown is read in reverse and yet, this reversal is apathetic to the self that it stares back at. The eyes glare […]
“Every image poses the question of American identity not just from the standpoint of our present reality, but from the playbook of iconic images – most of them from the twentieth century – that make up the history of American photography.”
Fons Americanus is a 13-metre tall working fountain inspired by the Victoria Memorial in front of Buckingham Palace, London. Created by artist Kara Walker for the 2019 Hyundai Commission, it is one of the most ambitious installations in Tate Modern’s Turbine Hall to date. Rather than a celebration of the British Empire, Walker’s fountain explores […]
“Whiteness is a position that anyone can possess regardless of their colour.”
First introduced in the 1860s, cabinet card photographs were similar to cartes-de-visite, only larger. Measuring approximately four inches by six inches and mounted on cardstock (similar to cardboard), cabinet card photos got their name from their size—they were just the right size to be displayed on a cabinet. Cabinet cards reached their peak of popularity […]
What aspects of this collaboration, both Thompson’s and Reynolds’ are complicit in the same ideology and methodology of representation that perpetuates this distance between the photographic, its technological apparatus and its subject matter?