Putting my thoughts on this book together has taken me a while. Most of this comes down to trying to understand how I feel about the subject or lack of subject within the work and the position of the author(s) to that. I often have a knee-jerk reaction when it comes to people photographing […]
For the complete list, please consult the Nearest Podcast in the following weeks, where I will MC over a much longer list of the great books published this year. For this list, I wanted to keep the books down to five that I feel will define the artist’s career or are crucial to the medium. […]
PHOTOBOOK YEAR-LONG COURSE MAY 2022 – MAY 2023 The Intent I have been enthralled with the photobook medium since the late 90s. I do not see the photobook as a simple vessel for photography. I see it as a medium that can be understood as the final message. The book suits me as a […]
“It’s how I fill the time when nothing’s happening. Thinking too much, flirting with melancholy.” Tim Winton, Breath This land that surrounds us, this land that gives impregnable meaning to our terminal character and its capacity to acknowledge our decline never fails to remind us of our place on this spinning orb, […]
RM: What is “home“ to you? Maybe also talk about where and how you grew up and where you feel your roots are. MDG: This is a question I’ve been asking myself many times in the last few years and – to be frank – I still don’t have a definitive answer. I’m more prone […]
“Her one arm is half-raised above the parapet of the water’s edge all soft and white-gone from the limb its rose pigment associated with the flourish of life” Her one arm is half-raised above the parapet of the water’s edge all soft and white-gone from the limb its rose pigment associated with the […]
“Earlier this year, there were some high-profile twitterstorms, in which particular left-identifying figures were ‘called out’ and condemned. What these figures had said was sometimes objectionable; but nevertheless, the way in which they were personally vilified and hounded left a horrible residue: the stench of bad conscience and witch-hunting moralism” This […]
“The historical road of photography is paved with books and bodies of work about family. It is a natural resource for making work” The historical road of photography is paved with books and bodies of work about family. It is a natural resource for making work. Emmet Gowin, Sally Mann, Judith Black […]
““Everything tries to escape from that which determines its freedom” Escape velocity is in scientific terms, according to the grand doyen (cough, cough) of free knowledge Wikpedia “the minimum speed needed for a free, non-propelled object to escape from the gravitational influence of a massive body, that is, to achieve an infinite distance from […]
“The home is an environment that triggers the senses, memories and the grand narratives that life has to offer” How one goes about turning a house into a home varies upon experience and sentimental or emotional need. Ownership implies a difference of value. Mortgage and the implied indentured servitude between life and payoff set […]
“Reading through them, I realised that the best ones seemed to create a kind of mental-image in my mind’s eye – which due to the tone of the text often took the form of a very deadpan, monotone, and even monochrome photograph of a little scene in small-town America; I was imagining a very straightforward picture made by Walker Evans or Lee Friedlander or Diane Arbus or others, of four dogs sitting on top of a car, or a guy standing next to a tree in the middle of the afternoon with bloody knuckles…”
“The “focus” is very eclectic as are my tastes. They are always changing and have been enlarging these past years. The collection has been very contemporary-based from the start and that is still true”. -GCB