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 […]
I was convinced that before writing this that I would have a few examples of books about hunting in my mind when I began to type, but I am drawing a blank. I can think of a few things like Les Krims The Deerslayers, I can imagine or conjure up some images of hunting in […]
The emphasis on performance or performing photography seems like a never-ending discussion. I have been looking backwards through the history of photography and can see without much difficulty that its Western beginnings are full of images that exemplify the tradition such as Hippolyte Bayard’s Self-Portrait as a Drowned Man from 1840 forward through […]
Jindřich Štreit is a Czech photographer that I was not much aware of before recently receiving his book Village People 1965-1990 published late last year by Buchkunst Berlin. I was curious about the artist as Buchkunst Berlin has been publishing quite interesting, if at times haunting and punishing books such as the Dieter Keller Eye […]
“The act of making a portrait can be a genuine form of bonding, a way for an artist to show empathy for what he or she believes that people represent other than themselves.”
Synaesthesia is a condition present in between 2 and 4% of the world’s population. Its literal translation is “joining of the senses” and this is exactly what it means – the combination of visual cues with, for instance, auditory or olfactory sensation. Some people would see the number 4 as always green, no matter the […]
The history of the Doppelgänger-the German word for a look-alike is long and has its roots in a form of teratology or study of medical abnormalities both in human and animal form. These abnormalities can be seen as an example in conjoined or “Siamese” twins. Further to the conjoined version of twinning is […]
RM: What is “home“ to you? Maybe also talk about where and how you grew up and where you feel your roots are. MDG: This is a question I’ve been asking myself many times in the last few years and – to be frank – I still don’t have a definitive answer. I’m more prone […]