Bryan Schutmaat – Sons of the Living | Perspective 1
Bryan Schutmaat is a photographer of the American West. His work is dedicated to sites along the interstate highway — forgotten mining towns, abandoned truck stops, weathered billboards, the garbage scattered across dirt roads. What he is attracted to is the region’s extremes: the harsh desert sun, its arid fields, trash heaps of tires, the […]
Sarah Schumann Shock Collages 1957-1964
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, […]
Nolwenn Brod Le Temps de l’Immaturité
I know very little about Witold Gombrowicz, let alone Witold Gombrowicz’s book, Memoirs of a Time of Immaturity. Still, upon reviewing his biography, one can’t help but find him a fascinating character. One part Jean Genet, one part Jean-Paul Sartre, Gombrowicz’s work seems to embody the twentieth century’s anxieties, both in terms of the Holocaust and […]
Dave Heath One Brief Moment
Dave Heath – One Brief Moment Review by Simon Bray Within the opening pages of Dave Heath’s ‘One Brief Moment,’ there is a certain air of occasion. Gathered masses fill the middle of the street, suggesting that these are not singular moments but a crowd united by a collective sense of anticipation and […]
Nikita Teryoshin – Nothing Personal: The Back Office of War
War is good business for some, and misery for most everyone else. The executives of defense contractors such as Lockheed Martin or Raytheon, people who directly profit from the outbreak and continuation of war, are incentivized to hope for its continuation rather than its cessation, because where there is war (in Yemen, Ukraine, or in […]
Daniel Shea: A Purpose-Built Citadel of Economic Despair
“What do the citadels of disaster capitalism tell us about our New World Reich-The Trump Tower, but also the Lehman Brothers buildings, the ING Insurance Corp building, the Rockefeller Center etc? It tells that Epcot Center looks great on bath salts under all those gleaming lights and mirrored windows-prohibitive to the many, inviting to the few”.
Laura San Segundo – El Recinto Circular
The world as will. And representation. Time is a flat circle, The Returnal, Cosmic materiality, and our conceptual place within it. Quantum feelings, quantum seeing. Numerous artists have grappled with our place within the sublime, rotating blue rock we call home as it spins through the vast cosmos, manacled to a bright ball of fiery […]
Christopher Anderson: Manic Compression, High Definition Society
“Cameras are now so advanced that the way we look at our image is now under the threat of becoming unrecognizable with its intense dedication to the state of high definition-pores counted, we recognize a hyper version of our once-future self absconded just far enough to promote simulation and techno-progress, but still close enough to give us doubt about our reflection.”
Satoshi Fujiwara: This City on Rails, It Pivots Relentlessly
”The whole city though I am only in a neighborhood seems capable of changing its face as I am carried through it offering possibilities for omni-architectural and urban planning on rails”. I have this repeating dream in which I am in an urban environment not dissimilar to Berlin. The buildings have a late nineteenth century […]
Andreas Gehrke’s Berlin
“Berlin’s character is not in its facade, but rather its margins” Berlin’s legacy of the wall and the legacy of the war mark its facade and its imperial history like a pock-marked child whose scars were never allowed to heal due to the constant re-opening of their scabrous surface. Berlin is a […]
Bp Laval: Take the world in a love embrace!
“Laval creates a disturbing emotional wilderness, drawing us as viewers into his bush of ghosts with a sense that anything could happen—a couple doing it in the road, a threesome engaged on a mystic highway, a goddess as figurehead on the vehicle in the car chase. Voyeuristic, atavistic, altruistic”.
Justin Kimball: A Country Opening Soon, Indefinitely Closed for Renovations
“FREE HUGS from the opioid den”
Aapo Huhta – Gravity
I feel a common bond with this book. Aapo Huhta has explored a few different terrains that I have also explored or happened upon over the last decade, and he has combined them compellingly. It is another book in an increasingly exciting year for the publisher Kult Books, whose imprint I am following closely […]
Sofia Coppola – Archive 1999-2023
I have never seen a single Sofia Coppola film. This might be surprising for someone reading this book review. Of course, I know her presence and work, but I have not seen the movies for any outward reason. I probably know more about her as a person and a cult hero than I do about […]
Mimi Mollica Interview: Sicily’s Seamless Elasticity
“Religions in general, are indeed a great example how power is (ab)used over people for the elite to keep the desired order on society. It’s not a case that Mafia has a strong association with religious narratives and its very ritual of association includes religious references throughout”
Margot Jourquin – Transi
Within the context of death, I have spoken about, and I am sure that I am not alone in this, the strange feeling when a person, persona, and life slip from the realm of the personable to the world of an object, a thing, a husk, though still loved, ultimately lacking the anima necessary to […]
Thiago Dezan When I Hear That Trumpet Sound
I was confronted with three parts of a mental soundtrack while paging through Thiago Dezan’s new book When I Hear The That Trumpet Sound (Selo Turvo, 2021, ed. 200). The first track based on title and the book’s black endpapers and the ominous black cover was Behemoth’s Blow Your Trumpets Gabriel, a rich and […]
NASTYNASTY: Propositions for THE E-Shovel
“However, by creating an anxiety or a image that begs questions, becomes surreal, or forces the brain and eyes to move around the juxtapositions, the successful adware companies of the future, in determining semi-obtuse economic visual puzzles will be successful. It is as if Edward Bernays has been reincarnated in a land of advertising and marketing opposites and is again reigning SUPREME”
Katerina Angelopoulou – Diary Entry #2: The Fumes of Mars
23rd July 2018 16:41pm: First Report of the fire in Ntaou 16:50pm: First Fire Helicopter is directed to the area with ETA 17:10 17:30pm: One Helicopter operates on the fire 18:00 -18:30pm: No Helicopter operates in the area. 18:06pm: The fire enters the village of Neos Voutzas. 18:20pm: The fire crosses the Marathonos Avenue. 18:25pm: The […]
Karlheinz Weinberger: Leather Chaps and Denim Straps, Belt Buckles Galore
@ The Estate of Karlheinz Weinberger “Youth culture disavowed the mainstream façade of marriage, home, family, and traditional ageing instead looking to music, fashion, drugs, and listless sex for inspiration. They concentrated on the open roaming way of life best exemplified in cinema with “Easy Rider…”” Karlheinz Weinberger’s photography has its roots in […]
Interview with Moises Saman
Moises Saman is one of the most substantive and accomplished conflict photographers working today. A member of Magnum since 2014, he is best known for photographs he has been making for more than two decades working throughout the Middle East, during which time he covered the Iraq War and the Arab Spring. Many of the […]
Curran Hatleberg Blood Green
I do not know that much about Hatleberg’s work. I did get a copy of his last book, River’s Dream, as I had missed out on Lost Coast, his first book with eminent American publishers TBW Books. My surface reading of River’s Dream suggested a post-Soth investigation of American topography. I was reminded of Doug Dubois, Alec Soth, Kristine […]
Eloïse Labarbe-Lafon – Motel 42
Motel 42 (Leaf, 2024) is another testament to the never-ending slew of American road trip books. However, in Eloïse Labarbe-Lafon’s book, you can’t see much of America outside of the cigarette-stained roadside motel rooms she and her lover Adrien have occupied. You can read about the places they visited in the back of the book, […]
Carmen Winant The Last Safe Abortion
Access to medical attention should be a right, no matter religious qualification or moralizing over another adult person’s decision. In the case of abortion, this is complicated by how we judge human sentience in the form of an unborn child. It is complicated. To say otherwise would be a misstep that does not account […]
101 Tragedies of Enrique Metinides at Aperture (2013)
Untitled, (Adela Legarreta Rivas is struck by a white Datsun on Avenida Chapultepec, Mexico City, 29 April 1979) Despite their often gruesome content, it is fascinating and often too easy to look at Metinides’ pictures. In the same way that many of the photographs depict audiences amidst tragedy, we too become spectators of the event. […]
INTERVIEW: Dan Solomon – “Witness” (2013)
WITNESS, an installation by Dan Solomon, In conjunction with ICP’s exhibit “JFK November 22: A Bystander’s View of History. Interview by Raphael Shammaa, November 2013 Shortly before 9:00 AM on November 23rd, as New Yorkers prepare to settle at their desks for the day, I meet with Dan Solomon for a tour of his photographic […]
Tony Oursler’s ‘template/variant/friend/stranger’ at Lisson Gallery
VIE, 2014 Wood, mounted photo print, monitors and media player 262 x 192 x 58 cm The pantomime of big brother and the historical imperative to map individuality of the face for data usage comes at a time when our rights towards privacy and state sponsored collecting of data become a Orwellian theatre of […]
Ezra Stoller “Beyond Architecture” at Yossi Milo” (2013)
Manufacturer’s Trust Company, Fifth Avenue, Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, New York, NY, 1954 “Beyond Architecture” at Yossi Milo. By Raphael Shammaa, ASX NYC, February 2013 The Ezra Stoller exhibit “Beyond Architecture” at the Yossi Milo Gallery has the power to make one fall in love with architectural photography, and with The United States. These […]
Christer Strömholm at C/O Berlin (2013)
By Sören Schuhmacher, ASX Berlin, March 2013 For the first time in Germany, C/O Berlin presents a retrospective of the Swedish photographer Christer Strömholm (1918-2002). Christer Strömholm . Post Scriptum, is at the same time the last exhibition hosted in the unique spaces of the Postfuhramt. Roughly 150 vintage black and white prints are presented […]
Chris Killip & Graham Smith: “Another Country” (1985)
Helen and Hula-Hoop, Seacoal Beach, Lynemouth, Tyneside, UK, 1984 by Chris Killip His affection for the land and its people never blinded him to the toughness of ordinary existence. By Richard Cork, Review of Another Country at Serpentine Gallery, September 12, 1985 Excerpt from New Spirit, New Sculpture, New Money: Art in the […]
Gerry Johansson – “Deutschland” (2013)
Kommingen, 2007 Gerry Johansson “Deutschland” at Swedish Photography, 2013 By Sören Schuhmacher, ASX Germany, April 2013 In 1993 and 2005 to 2012 Gerry Johansson drove through the German countryside, visiting 176 places like Alt Horsbüll, Gelsenkirchen or Solingen. He divided Germany into nine sectors, which he then traveled systematically. Rather than visiting only major cities, […]
BLITZ: World War II in London (2013)
“Tear-Gas Test at Richmond – A Family Out Shopping”, Keystone Press Agency. May 31, 1941. Silver gelatin print on glossy fibre paper, printed 1941. Courtesy Daniel Blau London/Munich. BLITZ: World War II in London, Daniel Blau Gallery, 31 May to 29 June 2013 By Elizabeth Breiner, for ASX, July 2013 Entering Daniel Blau Gallery’s succinctly titled Blitz: WWII in […]
Alec Soth’s ‘Songbook’ at Sean Kelly Gallery
Near Kaaterskill Falls, 2012 © Alec Soth, Courtesy: Sean Kelly, New York “One of the biggest statements in Songbook is Soth’s decision to work solely in black and white. The pictures evoke old press photography: large format, black and white, with a strong flash.” By Shahrzad Kamel, February 2015 Following the critical acclaim for Alec Soth’s […]
Matthias Bruggman’s “UNDERCOVER, THEATRE D’OPERATIONS” (2013)
His photographs do not look like those published in magazines and newspapers. They freely mix landscape, portraits, motion, violence, quiescence, and death, and their aim is not journalistic in the sense that they do not as a project tell a single story. Paris Exhibition Review : Matthias Bruggman’s “Undercover, théâtre d’opérations” at Maison d’arts […]
Carlo Mollino’s Erotic Photography at Gagosian Gallery (2014)
Is it high art? Well, put something in a museum, as they say. Some viewers are sure to scoff at what might be misconstrued as pin-up girl pics; indeed, in unflattering light, they are nothing but the private fetishistic trove of an ageing man. The Cult of the Polaroid, or the Work of Art […]
Two Perspectives on Antoine d’Agata’s – ‘ANTICORPS’ at Le Bal (2013)
The stairs lead us to an overwhelming space. The walls breathe no more, they are covered with images from the floor to the ceiling, as as many painful scars to bear. By Guillaume Blanc, ASX, February 2013 Antoine d’Agata – The drifting mankind With the exhibition Anticorps, Le Bal shows, from 24th January to […]
Christoph Gielen – “Ciphers” (2014)
Christoph Gielen’s new photo book “Ciphers”. Worth a thousand words, at least. Book review by Raphael Shammaa. April 25, 2014 It’s 2003; a building is scheduled for implosion by a demolition company. Perched atop a nearby public housing tower, Christoph Gielen is poised to record the event – his first ever aerial shot… ahem… his […]
REVIEW: William Eggleston – “At Zenith” (2013)
At Zenith I (from Wedgwood Blue), 1979/2013 © Eggleston Artistic Trust. Courtesy of Gagosian Gallery In the sleek and immaculate setting of the Gagosian Gallery, my childhood and adulthood escapes unexpectedly met each other. REVIEW: WILLIAM EGGLESTON – “AT ZENITH”- GAGOSIAN GALLERY MADISON AVENUE OCT 26- DEC 21 2013 BY: Shahrzad Kamel, NYC DEC 2013 When I was […]
Thomas Struth at Marian Goodman Gallery (2014)
Mountain, Anaheim, California, 2013 courtesy of Marian Goodman Gallery Thomas Struth at Marian Goodman By Lauren Weinberg for ASX, February 2014 “How should we judge what we see?” It’s a question posed to dramatic effect by a series of mostly large-scale photographs created by the iconic 59 year-old German photographer Thomas Struth, now on view […]
Robert Frank – “Park/Sleep” (2013)
From Park / Sleep by Robert Frank published by Steidl www.steidl.de Robert Frank – Park/Sleep – REVIEW By Fanny Landstrom for ASX, July 2013 Many of us carry a notebook in our pocket, or an iPhone at least, where we might collect our thoughts, photographs, and pieces of reading that we pick up along the way. […]
Richard Prince @ Lowell (2014)
Kelly Madison (Profile), 2014 17″ x 22″ c-print mounted on board Prince’s images, 17”x22” C-prints of mobile-interface twitter accounts, are feints at the depiction of outsized personalities – drag queens, art dealers, porn stars – ripped from their context and placed in an alien environment, one with three dimensions. By Owen Campbell, for ASX, […]
Christer Strömholm – ‘Post Scriptum’ (2012)
Carla & Zizou, Brasserie Graff, 1963 Many of his photographs were taken in Paris, and anticipate the work of more contemporary photographers like Nan Goldin in that they are documents from Strömholm’s eclectic and vigorous life. By Paul Loomis, ASX, January 2013 This volume compiles photographs from several extremely hard to find books […]
Günter Karl Bose – “PHOTOMATON” (2013)
By Sören Schuhmacher, ASX Germany, February 2013 “Photomaton – The new artistic portrait” was the slogan which advertised the Photomaton Studios in the late 1920’s. The first machines were set up at public places in several German cities, where a cross-section of society passed by every day. For just one Reichsmark, the currency at […]
Helmut Newton’s “White Women / Sleepless Nights / Big Nudes” (2013)
The pigeonhole never suited Newton: His revolutionary ability to merge what we have come to define as photographic genres is in full swing in both White Women and Sleepless Nights where ‘Hitchcockian’ cinematic moods and the photojournalistic street aesthetic are merged into the fashion image seamlessly creating a multi layered discourse. HELMUT NEWTON – […]
Matthias Bruggman’s “UNDERCOVER, THEATRE D’OPERATIONS” (2013)
His photographs do not look like those published in magazines and newspapers. They freely mix landscape, portraits, motion, violence, quiescence, and death, and their aim is not journalistic in the sense that they do not as a project tell a single story. Paris Exhibition Review : Matthias Bruggman’s “Undercover, théâtre d’opérations” at Maison d’arts […]
Bunga Bunga: Italian Politics and the Index of Sexual Subversion
…the book is a small marvel that connects Silvio Berlusconi’s late night sex parties to the economy of interchangeable ways in which we, or perhaps better, Berlusconi sees the women involved as further interchangeable fodder for his aggressive Viagra induced fuckathons. Bunga Bunga Self Published Lorenzo Tricoli By Brad Feuerhelm, ASX, December 2014 Two […]
Roni Horn – “Haraldsdóttir Part Two” (2011)
Roni Horn, Haraldsdóttir Part Two (2011), 10th book in the series, To Place. By Fanny Landstrom for ASX, June 2013 With titles such as Lava, Hot Pools and Verne’s Journey, each book in the series, To Place, are a separate body of material, consisting of 10 books all concerned with different aspects of the nature […]
Todd Hido: “Ohio” (2009)
From Ohio, 2009 By Doug Rickard The clouds are passing by gently… the pale blue sky smiles because it is summer again and the sun beams its warm rays down into your suburban backyard in the Midwest. You’re standing there looking at the white house next door and the curtains are closed. The dry weeds sting […]
Focus on the Feminine Self and Set Aside the Suicide of Francesca Woodman
To interpret Woodman’s work entirely through her death is reductive and backwards-facing. It’s the stated goal of this monograph to set aside the dominant interpretation of Woodman’s work, which sees her photography as an anticipation of her suicide. Focus on the Feminine Self and Set Aside the Suicide of Francesca Woodman By Owen Campbell, ASX, […]
Andreas Gonzalez – “SOME(W)HERE” (2012)
SOME(W)HERE by Andreas Gonzalez By Paul Loomis Somewhere is a small book of 70 photographs culled from a decade of traveling the world. Its cover is simple, and its images are printed in careful color tones on high quality paper. The pictures read like a compendium of feelings and accidents that have accumulated over the […]
Keizo Kitajima: “Photo Express: Tokyo” (2012)
By Paul Loomis, for ASX, August 2012 The photographs in “Photo Express: Tokyo” (Steidl, 2012) were taken in Tokyo within a single year by Keizo Kitajima, and looking at them is like leafing through his intricate memories. They are complex and celebratory, hopeless and certain and full of people with signatures of fate on […]
Joshua Lutz – “Hesitating Beauty” (2012)
The Coming Insurrection, 2010 Hesitating Beauty; Joshua Lutz toys with our heads and hearts. By Raphael Shammaa, ASX NYC, March 2013 A head shot of a young woman in a stylish cocktail dress, eyelids interrupted in mid flutter and lips in mid speech, a strand of pearls adorning her delicate, vulnerable neck composes this book’s […]
Wolfgang Tillmans “Neue Welt (New World)” (2012)
There is a very careful eye at work in these pages, and the photographs mesh even though they shouldn’t. Imagined, Imaged, Believed, or Dreamed By Paul Loomis, ASX, January 2012 Wolfgang Tillmans’ Neue Welt (New World) is littered with diverse images that are fearlessly juxtaposed. On the surface they seem to examine and reveal […]
REVIEW: “POV Female Bogota” (2014)
@Estefanía Gonzáles POV Female Bogota (2014) – Review By Fanny Landstrom for ASX, June 2014 This time, the attention is drawn to Colombia’s capital Bogota. The current POV Female edition features artists Ana María Ruiz, Estefanía González, Guadalupe Ruiz, Joana Toro, and Karen Paulina Biswell. Launched by Damien Poulain, published by Oodee Publishing House in […]
Ezra Stoller “Beyond Architecture” at Yossi Milo” (2013)
Manufacturer’s Trust Company, Fifth Avenue, Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, New York, NY, 1954 “Beyond Architecture” at Yossi Milo. By Raphael Shammaa, ASX NYC, February 2013 The Ezra Stoller exhibit “Beyond Architecture” at the Yossi Milo Gallery has the power to make one fall in love with architectural photography, and with The United States. These […]
Werner Amann’s “Surf Fiction” and the Nature of the Game.
We spend merciless hours absorbing film, video, and internet collateral. Amann’s greatest trick with this book is to play on the nature of this game. By Brad Feuerhelm, ASX, December 2014 Werner Amann’s “Surf Fiction” has landed in my lap at a time when I have been searching for a body of work that […]
“Up, Close and Personal” @ Fuchs Projects
Ruben Natal-San Miguel Up, Close and Personal Curated by Ruben Natal-San Miguel Fuchs Projects, 56 Bogart Street, Bushwick, Brooklyn NY April 4 – May 13, 2014 By Ellen Wallenstein for ASX Curating a show featuring 32 artists in a small space can be a difficult task. But in Up, Close and Personal, Ruben Natal-San Miguel […]
Carlo Mollino’s Erotic Photography at Gagosian Gallery (2014)
Is it high art? Well, put something in a museum, as they say. Some viewers are sure to scoff at what might be misconstrued as pin-up girl pics; indeed, in unflattering light, they are nothing but the private fetishistic trove of an ageing man. The Cult of the Polaroid, or the Work of Art […]
Roe Ethridge at Capitain Petzel – “Sacrifice Your Body” (2014)
“Untitled (Alexis Bittar)“, 2013 © the artist, Courtesy Andrew Kreps Gallery, New York & Capitain Petzel, Berlin. Roe Ethridge, Sacrifice Your Body, at Capitain Petzel, Berlin, Feb 1-March 8, 2014. By Fanny Landstrom, for ASX, March 2014 Located amongst the monumental GDR architecture on Karl-Marx-Allee in Berlin’s district of Mitte is the East German modernist […]
Christopher Wool – “East Broadway Breakdown” (2003)
By Devon Rye The harsh light of a flash firing out of a small camera tends to turn pictures of almost anything into “ugly” at nighttime. As objects are cruelly lit up and dark shadows cast it feels like you are viewing via the eyes of a homicide investigator behind a taped off crime scene. […]