Loredana Nemes – Graubaum und Himmelmeer

Look up the beech in a book for plant taxonomy and you will find a picture of a tall tree with a strong trunk and long branches that form a symmetrical crown. Open Graubaum und Himmelmeer (Hartmann Books, 2023), the new book by Loredana Nemes, and the image of the single majestic tree gets shattered […]

Danny Franzreb – Proof of Work

My initial response to the massive swell of attention that cryptocurrency received in 2021, and more specifically to the non-fungible token (NFT) hysteria that gripped so much of cultural discourse online and in the press, was a dismissive roll of the eyes. Admittedly, what I was reacting to most were the claims that cryptocurrency was […]

Ulrich Wüst Cityscapes 1979–1985

  I am attracted to the idea of audibility in photographs. In assessing my desire to hear photographs, I would suggest that this stems from a few reasons. Firstly, the static and still nature of a photograph rent from the passing and often raucous movement of life is singular in its condition to be viewed […]

Michael Kerstgens 1986

  There are global moments in history that feel like tipping points of major changes when you view them retrospectively. In the case of Michael Kerstgens exceptional new book 1986 (Hartmann Books, 2021), the writing on the wall could not be more clear looking back at the year. I remember 1986. I am old enough […]

Hans-Christian Schink’s Slowness as Method in Hinterland

"Slowness as an idea is to suggest something still in the photographic image. If not still, it suggests something tectonic or glacial in pace"   Slowness in photographic terms reflects an indebtedness to a few varying factors. One is of course technical. Large cameras take by comparison a very long time to set up and [...]

Udo Hesse: Tagesvisum Ost-Berlin

“The moat as it were, was governed by armament and barbed wire with an intervening hinterland of desolate stretch impolitely, if realistically referred to as the Death Strip. You can consider the Death Strip as an evaporated moat in which many escapees gave their lives fleeing the reverse castle. The reverse castle in real terms, […]

Ute and Werner Mahler: Kleinstadt Keep and Kin

“Main street includes, if followed at length, an exit to a highway or the autobahn. The community center and church are the gathering points in which social conditioning and inclusion or exclusion become modes of continuity for the community”.