“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 […]
2024 has been an excellent year for photobooks. I am surprised that after the past few years with fewer titles surfacing into greatness, 2024 has presented so many outstanding titles. It gives me a bit of hope that the medium is picking up again, though I suspect inflation and a general shrinkage of audience […]
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 […]
Photographer Larry Sultan’s iconic photobook Pictures from Home, initially published in 1992, found renewed acclaim with its 2017 re-release by MACK. Sultan’s intimate exploration of familial bonds captured the attention of audiences worldwide, culminating in an exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art in New York in 1989. The impact of Sultan’s photographic series resonated […]
Ruptures and Raptures It is hard to know where to start writing about a book with such ominous tendencies at its heart. Monuments by Trent Parke, published by Stanley/Barker in 2023 and its third printing in spring 2024, has a doomsday proximity to it. It is hard to explain why I feel this […]
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 […]
In memory of a young woman that I never knew. This reflection is dedicated to Carol Jenkins-Davis I find myself combatively trying to embed myself in the images, memories and families of others. My initial hesitancy in this pursuit comes from acknowledging the failure of such an enterprise. It comes from a point […]
“In very broad terms, it seems that the work made in the West during the 20th century portrays a prolonged event – a disaster, you could say – that unfolded as modernity overtook the landscape and ideologies were instilled in American culture”.
“The subversive gesture to record and document, even if in cinematic discourse, the political and social status that a police officer represents in post-911 New York cannot be taken for granted”. Christopher Anderson’s work in essential terms is cinematic and tightly compressed. His images, when collated in book form become a mellifluous assortment […]
“The achievement of Donald Trump, for every ugly thing he musters to his lips, for every repellent speech and every obnoxiously hypocritical move he makes is entirely endemic of the American century and its reflection in decline”.