I had not held a copy of Americans Seen until this new remastered edition, published by Nazraeli Press, landed on my doorstep a few weeks ago. I had previously come to Sage’s work through her book Animals, published in 2019 by British publishers Stanley/Barker. It was at that point that I became aware of Americans […]
“Of course they will find it difficult to situate them historically. They must feel free to see them as images that evoke something in their own minds. They’re illustrations inspired by a theme, actually, rather than depictions of a particular story, I think.” – Paula Rego Though she was speaking about her own images, Paula […]
Ikko Narahara – Where Time has Vanished by Joel Pulliam It has been on my mind for a while to write about something that I am provisionally calling “New Orientalism.” It is the phenomenon of highly regarded photographers dropping into Tokyo for a few weeks or months, taking pictures, and then publishing a book. I […]
Full Article on Patreon Gervin’s work reflects the American moment in the second decade of the second millennium through tendencies similar to those seen in a good deal of American photography during the Vietnam War era. I see some resemblances to protest coverage by Gene Anthony, a Black Star agency photographer who captured the […]
Alessandra Sanguinetti Some Say Ice MACK/Magnum Photo A girl plays the piano convincingly. Another different girl, spotlit, plays a different piano, slightly less convincingly. Steam rises from a river, possibly black, convincingly. A buffalo mourns Its condition confined between fences during a winter snowstorm, most convincingly. A man’s hands clean a six-shooter pistol, and I […]
Diane Arbus, from Untitled This is a 20k-word reaction to Diane Arbus’s posthumously published work Untitled by Aperture. The post comes from a long reaction post on Brad Feuerhelm’s Instagram, where various members of the photographic community replied with their thoughts about the book and its ethical boundaries. The resulting post is a […]
Gabriele Basilico is not an artist whose career I had given much consideration to outside of his architectural and urban planning-like topographic images. His poetic monochrome images of both historic cities and bustling urban centers, with their deep and penetrating contrasty shadows, and his fixation between newly built technocentric cities and conversely dormant economically-challenged cities […]
“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.”
“Archetypal symbols from the human subconscious dominate my imagery.”
“Iowa as book itself harbors this moored kingdom previously mentioned as a state of internal configuration and a series of fluid and potential possible memories prescribed for others. It is an evocation of sorts.”
“For me, almost every home is the image of a person”
“Arbus reveals the powerful ability of photography to lie, but also it is a testimony of how the lie is not mere betrayal, but a far-reaching human necessity to escape factual reality, the human urge to create and believe in stories, to draw mythical worlds and the inter-subjective life’s alternative narrative.” Imaginary lives, compulsive […]