Issue 45 - Contents

Paris Photo, the photography world’s “north star” event, has returned to mark its territory under the vaulted dome of the Grand Palais. It opens a new chapter in the fair’s history, boasting a revised layout, expanded sections, smart curatorial interventions and fresh visual branding. Amidst a growing emphasis on contemporary practice, not to mention multiple Surrealist nods to celebrate the art movement’s 100th birthday, works inspired by the land and city provide much contemplation. Here are five standout displays from the fair’s 27th edition – selected by 1000 Words Assistant Editor, Alessandro Merola.

Inspired by Marcel Proust’s epic modernist classic, The 9th Singapore International Photography Festival, under the title In Search of Lost Time, considers photography as a carrier of both personal and national identities. From confronting ethnic subjugation in Indonesia through archival portraits of Chinese Indonesian children to archives that intertwine public and private narratives of Burmese life through family portraits and civilian records, the festival surfaces involuntary gaps in history, memory and documentation, holding a mirror up to the process of self-examination itself, Kong Yen Lin writes.

Worry for the Fruit the Birds Won’t Eat is Sophie Gabrielle’s visual investigation into the unseen effects of illness. Responding to the emotional toll of all the male members of their family being diagnosed with stage IV cancer over two years, the artist employs optics, chemical interactions and investigative photography to render the invisible. Thomas King speaks with the artist about the project and its deeply personal starting point.

In The Lion and the Lamb, Ashley Markle reframes wrestling as a nuanced art form where the search for safe havens, male community and psychological safety reveals the subtle evolution of ‘bro culture’ in competitive sports. By capturing the young men in Columbia University's wrestling ring, Markle aligns herself with a lineage of artists who, as Gem Fletcher writes, challenge the perception of masculinity as fixed and immutable.

Published with Hartmann Books, Ein Dorf (A Village) 1950–2022, is a photobook by Ute Mahler and Werner Mahler in posthumous collaboration with their late family member Ludwig Schirmer. It allows the viewer to travel through time yet stay in the same place – Berka, a small village in Thuringia, Germany – where in recent days the far-right party Alternative für Deutschland (AFD) has come top in a state election. Michael Grieve writes how projects that collaborate with the deceased have the potential to breathe new life and recontextualise how we understand the past, the present, and project with unease into an uncertain future.

Co-curated by Impressions Gallery and Peckham 24, Performing Histories / Histories Re-Imagined features works by eight photographers who reframe official and personal archives to explore the abuses of organised religion and colonialism. As Anneka French writes, the exhibition’s diversity of influences underscores the role and value of the archive and, more crucially, the importance of radical approaches towards its reuse and interrogation.

Books

1000 Words

Curator Conversations

(Second edition)

Features

Photobook Conversations #2

Aneta Kowalczyk