By Bruno Vandermeulen, Danny Veys, excerpt from Imaging History. Photography after the fact, 2011 The French artist Sophie Ristelhueber arrived in Kuwait seven months afater the war had ended, photographing aerial views and close-ups of the desert after the battle. The original title for this series, Fait, has a double meaning, translating both as “fact” – […]
Eddie Adams, Saigon Execution, Vietnam, 1968 A Little History of Photography Criticism; or, Why Do Photography Critics Hate Photography? (An excerpt from The Cruel Radiance, Photography and Political Violence) By Susie Linfield In 1846, Charles Baudelaire wrote a short essay called “What Is the Good of Criticism?” This is something that virtually every critic asks […]
Untitled (Mississippi Landscape), 1998. (fig. 1) By Alison R. Hafera, An Excerpt from “Taken in Water: The Photograph as Memorial Image in Sally Mann’s Deep South” (2007) ‘What have they done?’ cries the child / ‘Why have they beaten me, tortured me, / wound me in wire from the cotton gin that tore our years […]
Fait No 20, 1992 By Marc Mayer, essay excerpt from Books on Books #3, Sophie Ristelhueber: Fait Sophie Ristelhueber’s best known work of art is a small book. The title of the book, and of the photographic installation of the same material, is as ambiguous as it is simple. “Fact” seems straightforward, but to what […]
“To be sure, that is also the expression of a particular vital consciousness.” (Essay excerpt from Der Rote Bulli ,Stephen Shore and the New Düsseldorf Photography 2010, brought to ASX by NRW-Forum Düsseldorf) By Christoph Schaden, NRW-Forum Düsseldorf, 2010 The typical historical account of the effect a body of photography exercises on its viewers unfolds […]
By Dana Cox Sally Mann has been quoted as saying, “Art’s role… is almost nefarious. It’s to challenge expectation. To push a little bit, whether that’s aesthetically, politically, or culturally (McQuaid, p.1).” Sally Mann is an artist who became well-known for the controversial photographs of her three children, Jessie, Emmet, and Virginia. She was born […]