Fernweh: An Interview with Teju Cole
“I proceed in conversation with the camera, with other photographs, with other photographers, I forget about what writing can do, I think about what photography can do.”
“I proceed in conversation with the camera, with other photographs, with other photographers, I forget about what writing can do, I think about what photography can do.”
“The path of paranoia leads us to a pizza parlor, armed to the teeth and utterly convinced of the righteousness of the mission. At the other end of the spectrum, we’re left with doubt, uncertainty, and a recognition of our own limitations.”
It was the best of years…. Once again it is that time of year where I try to drum up some sort of edit from all of the incredible work the photography book world offers up. This year is difficult as I felt it has been one of the strongest years in recent memory […]
“I felt ambivalent about what was unfolding but in the end, the psychic energy and latent subtext, prefaced by a short story involving a headless woman, a bird and a photographer was too compelling to dismiss.”
“Whiteness is a position that anyone can possess regardless of their colour.”
“It is this binary position that implies the view that African colonization created only victims incapable of looking after themselves, impotent against their oppressors and incompetent without.”
“I was raised alongside the internet, so there was never an othering effect from the introduction to newer technologies, especially the internet.”
The digital image is an image file. It has no form and is invisible until it gets interpreted and transformed by software or the internet user. In the process of being made visible it is staged or performed.
“What is held onto through a photograph, is no longer the disappearing object itself but something that appears or becomes visible in the moment of its vanishing: as it were, the last glance that it casts at us, or the last glimpse of it that we can catch.”
“First, when everything seems unique, and there is an unbridled desire to know, see and discover. It’s important to take advantage of this initial energy, before routine sets in and the eagerness to notice things decreases.”
“The current political narrative that paints immigrants as invaders has been a part of our national conversation for a long time. I want people to be reminded that there is a long and deep history of immigration that forms the basis of our country’s strength.”
“The title Moksha is a Sanskrit word for liberation or emancipation and for me relates not only the freedom gained with independence from the colonial rule but alludes to a freedom of the mind, a spiritual freedom of unlinking oneself from the bind of oppressive states of existence.”