Features Archives | 1000 Words

Photobook Conversations #5

Daniel Boetker-Smith

Photobook Conversations is edited by Ana Casas Broda (Hydra + Fotografía), Anshika Varma (Offset Projects) and Duncan Wooldridge (Manchester Metropolitan University). Sitting alongside the earlier Writer Conversations (1000 Words, 2023), edited by Lucy Soutter and Duncan Wooldridge, and Curator Conversations (1000 Words, 2021), edited by Tim Clark, it completes the series exploring the ways our understanding and experience of photography is mediated through exhibitions, writing and publishing.

Daniel Boetker-Smith | Photobook Conversations #5 | 16 Jan 2024

Daniel Boetker-Smith is the Director of the Centre for Contemporary Photography (CCP), Melbourne, Australia, and a curator, educator, writer, publisher, and photographer. He is the Founder of the Asia-Pacific Photobook Archive and regularly speaks at festivals and symposia internationally on the subject of photobooks, photographic publishing and self-publishing in the Asia-Pacific area. Boetker-Smith has previously taught and guest lectured for nearly 20 years at universities and institutions in Australia, Germany, Netherlands, Malaysia, Singapore, and the UK and US.

What were the encounters which started your relationship with photobooks?

In my last year of high school, I had a photography teacher who was a bit of a loose cannon pedagogically speaking, and also fancied himself as a jazz aficionado. He had shelves stuffed full of photography books in his office – classics by Walker Evans and Robert Frank, but also obscure Japanese photobooks he’d collected on his travels. I don’t recall ever having any formal classes, but just remember looking at photobooks for hours. The teacher would smoke his pipe and play a Charles Mingus cassette tape loudly over and over again whilst I ransacked his shelves. He would shout over the music about structure, rhythm, tempo, and pattern in images and music, though I couldn’t understand most of what he was saying I trace my 30-year photobook obsession back to those days.

The second important encounter happened over a decade later, in 2001, when W.G. Sebald’s book Austerltiz was released. I was in my final year at university, and I had already read Sebald’s Rings of Saturn (1995) a couple of years earlier. I had been enthralled by Sebald’s weaving of interconnected stories and meandering reflections that placed me in the middle of his experiences rather than just as a “reader”. I had read Rings of Saturn when I had been travelling in Australia and had been on a personal quest to meet my father for the first time. So, for obvious reasons, I felt a strong connection to Sebald’s interspersing of photographs and text as a way of dealing with the past, memories and their fragmentary and non-linear nature. I became magnetically drawn to books that used digression as a mode of storytelling. Sebald created a space for me to embrace disjointedness as a valid way to construct and explore narrative, and to see the world. Since then I have sought out photobooks that utilise such strategies in order to present their tales. I enjoy their disruptiveness, poetic and anarchic quality, and essentially that is all I ever write about.

At this time, around 2001, I was looking at photobooks like Droit de Regards (originally published in 1985 in French, and later in English) by Belgian photographer Marie-Françoise Plissart, the seminal In Flagrante by Chris Killip (1988) and Rinko Kawauchi’s two books published by Little More, titled Hanabi and Utatane (both 2001). It seems now, on reflection, that 2001 was a perfect storm in which a tsunami of elements from literature and photobooks coalesced in front of me in the very moment in which I was ready to absorb them. These photobooks all seemed to apply (in visual form) the very concepts I had found enthralling in Sebald – an ability to resist and deviate from a traditional model of storytelling; to eschew neat, teleological narratives. These publications cemented my obsession with photobooks, formed the basis of my MA thesis that I completed the following year and represented the starting point of my photobook collection/obsession.

How do you like to work with people?

I find it hard to categorise what I do, and therefore how I work with people is difficult to explain. I have published books but don’t consider myself a publisher; I have helped hundreds of people with their photographic projects and their books but don’t consider myself an editor or designer; I have curated exhibitions large and small but don’t consider myself a curator; I have taught photography and art for 20 years but don’t consider myself a teacher; and I often write about photography but don’t consider myself a writer.

I still actually think of myself as a photographer, though I rarely make photographs anymore. I think I unconsciously approach everything I do as a photographer – one who also writes, publishes, curates, and teaches. So, to dig into that and return to the question, I would suppose that this base informs how I work with people. I come at any collaboration I do with a photographer with a sense of being “one of them”, not as someone who sits in a position of power as the Dean of a College, a Gallery Director or publisher.

This background is evident when I’m working with photographers, mostly students or in workshops and masterclasses. It’s very easy for me to pick out the images that are working – to identify the photographs that are benefiting or progressing the broader narrative or theme, and the ones that aren’t good enough. It’s simply a case, for me, of getting a sense of the background, the intent and the aspirations of the photographer (and the images) and then putting myself in the position of the photographer, as if it were my own project, to make decisions about the direction I think it needs to go, and how best it could be manifested as a book or exhibition.

One of the key elements of making an edit of a book is retaining a physicality to the process – printing out all the images, at all different sizes, sticking them in books or on the wall, printing and binding a dummy, and sitting with these various incarnations always leads to good decisions. The other important element is spending time with the photographer in my library of books. At the early stages of thinking about a book, there’s nothing more useful than sitting in a room of thousands of photobooks. This process starts with aimless looking, random conversations and is then followed by frenzied trains of connected thought, which leads to refinement, inspiration, clarity, and purpose for the book yet to be made.

I get the most enjoyment out of working with emerging photographers. After 20 years of teaching, I never became tired or lost the passion for looking at new work. Inevitably, most of my teaching focused around photobooks, and I always found collaborating with students on making their photobooks thoroughly enjoyable. Now, as Director of the Centre for Contemporary Photography (CCP), I get the chance to work in a more informal way with emerging photographers, without my teacher’s hat on. I am constantly reaching out to people to ask them to show me their work. Spending time talking through an emerging photographer’s work in-depth, and discussing how they can improve and move forward and getting excited about how it could look in book or exhibition form is a perfect day for me.

What is the public for a photobook? Who do you think of as your audience?

As most of my interactions with photobooks is as a collector, a writer and an educator, I would like to approach this question differently. I think the audience is the one with the responsibility, and here I am referring specifically to US and European audiences. Given that the focus of the photobook ecosystem in North America and Europe, it is easy for those audiences to be complacent, and only engage with the books that are placed “in front of them”. One only needs to look at the ‘Best of’ booklists in PhotoEye or LensCulture or The Guardian etc., it is essentially a closed circle. There is an urgent need to turn the attention to Asia, to Africa and to South America. Some European publishers and collectors are already doing this to a small degree, however having a small number of gatekeepers isn’t enough. The photobook world needs to recognise and reflect on its biases and inclinations. The best photobooks of the next 25 years will not come from Europe or North America, they will come from places like Indonesia, Nigeria and Brazil. And they will come from photographers who have vital and important stories to tell.

For someone publishing a book in 2025, the best way to think about photobooks is that the audience is entirely different for each book, and that you have to almost start from zero each time. An audience can’t be conceived of until the final book is done and in your hands. Make a book as best you can within your budget, and as close to what you imagined at the start – as close to the idea of the book that got you excited enough about to want to make a book in the first place. Then once the book is done, and you understand what it is you’ve made, start thinking laterally about who the audience could be. For your first photobook, trying to make something with a preconceived audience in mind is a recipe for disaster.

Part of my work here in Australia over the past 15 years has been to build a community of photobook makers and to work with others to grow the audience of those who buy photobooks. When I became the Dean at Photography Studies College in Melbourne, I made sure that photobooks were a central part of the curriculum for both BA and MA students. Now, the students that I taught 10-15 years ago are themselves teaching, so inevitably the “bug” has spread. Most colleges in Australia now have some sort of photobook course. I also ran (with Heidi Romano) the Photobook Melbourne festival in 2015, and have been involved with organising and curating major photobook events at festivals and in national art institutions like the Museum of Contemporary Art in Sydney and the National Gallery of Victoria in Melbourne.

I have also on many occasions ran events large and small with Justine Ellis and Dan Rule from Perimeter Books, Australia’s unofficial epicentre of photobook publishing. Perimeter produce up to 15 books per year, distribute a long list of international publishers to book shops all over Australia and New Zealand, attend fairs across the world and regularly organise photo and art book events, launches and fairs. Their passion and friendship have been a big influence for me over the last decade, and they have built up a massive community here through their commitment and energy.

In 2021, I co-curated a major exhibition here at the Museum of Australian Photography, and it featured a number of internationally recognised “photobook” names, including Mathieu Asselin, Broomberg & Chanarin, Cristina De Middel, Laura El-Tantawy, Yoshikatsu Fujii, Gauri Gill and Rajesh Vangad, Zhang Kechun, Dana Lixenberg, Max Pinckers and Alec Soth, alongside Australian photographers Ashley Gilbertson, Raphaela Rosella, and James Tylor. Though this exhibition wasn’t about photobooks per se, it was, for me, an added bonus to create a platform to introduce an Australian audience to some of the most important international photobooks of the past decade or so.

How important is it for photobooks to reach other continents?

Of course, it’s vital to the future of the photobook that we push for and embrace diversity and access. I would again rephrase the question however, given that this book of conversations and responses will, I imagine, have a predominance of European readers. I would instead ask how important is it for you (the reader) to seek out books from other continents? I would say that it is your absolute responsibility.

European photobooks, though publishers will admit times are tough, at least have a readymade market on their doorstep, with a glut of festivals, galleries and fairs, and geographic accessibility. The issue for photobook makers and publishers from the Asia-Pacific region (and the same is true for South America and Africa) is getting their books in front of a European or American audience, where most of the buying happens, where most of the “hype” is, via competitions, awards and prizes. A small European bookshop, for example, will not survive through charitable gestures supporting smaller publishers located in Manila or Taipei or Auckland. A healthy and profitable bookshop needs to stock books by photographers people already know; as a result most of the bookshops in Europe sell the same or similar titles. Therefore, it is the audience that needs to educate themselves about photographers, photobooks and publishers from other regions.

The opportunity to address this is threefold. At fairs and festivals, prior to their visit, audiences should research which publishers are present from other continents and support them if they can by buying a book. The cost of freighting books across the globe means the margins for these publishers are tiny. The more they can offload and not cart back home, the better. Another way for photobook buyers and collectors to assist is to use the internet smarter, follow smaller independent publishers, festivals and fairs in other countries, and be aware of newly released books that way. The final way is, when traveling, to find and approach the local photobook shops, events and networks, and see who is doing what. Often, if you seek people out and meet with them, they will point you in the right direction to get a sense of what’s happening in photography in that country. These three things mean more exposure for lesser-known publishers and photographers, and eventually this can lead to a more sustainable market internationally for those from Asia-Pacific, South America and Africa.

I try to do my part through my writing, in that whenever I am asked to feature or review new photobooks by a European or American magazine or website, I will only ever write about photographers and photobooks from the Asia-Pacific region. Drawing attention to these photobooks on an international platform might not translate directly to sales, but the hope is that a reader takes note and is made aware of other things happening elsewhere in the world, and uses this information to start to explore further.

How do you attempt to address sustainability in publishing?

I am not sure the sector can talk about sustainability in a cohesive way, as it’s so different in each country. In our little corner of the world, we do what we can, but, in the broader scheme, we are at the whim of larger, cut-throat industries and costs controlling import, export, paper, printing, freight and taxes that are all connected to the larger global economy and currencies. Most publishers print overseas (in Asia and Europe), making it pretty difficult to claim any sort of “green” practices.

Paper is no longer made in Australia at all (the last mill closed in 2023) so we have a huge logging industry that produces material that gets sent overseas, and then all the paper for book printing needs to be imported back into the country. This convoluted process is incredibly expensive, making it practically impossible to produce offset printed photobooks here at any reasonable price. The reality is that printing books in conservative edition sizes, ensuring that there is a market for each book, and working in collaboration with other publishers and distributors is the best that can be done currently.

What is the place of language and writing in a book of photographs?

I am firm believer that photobooks and literature are interconnected. As I mentioned, in response to the first question, my obsession with photobooks came from a kind-of literary realisation. Over years of teaching, I have often tried to make it clear to students that literature can be a source of inspiration and ideas for photographers, and that the best writers can provide road signs for how to think differently about how we deal with visual narratives.

Because of this, I often see and look for literary influences in photobooks, not just in their subject matter, but in the way they are constructed or use storytelling devices. I think photographers can learn so much from literature, not just classics by Virginia Woolf, Marcel Proust or Sebald, but more recently Rachel Cusk, Maria Stepanova and Karl Ove Knausgård, as well as others who tell stories in a way that connect with images, and can perhaps inspire photographers to take risks with their storytelling.

I would recommend all photographers be playful and experiment with text and writing. It doesn’t necessarily need to end up in their photobook, and maybe no one else ever sees it, but the routine and the frustration and the pain of writing down what you are thinking is an immensely valuable one. I have learnt so much about photography from writing. It’s the only way I am able to clarify my responses to images.

Who have been the models or templates for your own activities?

My activities regarding photobooks have developed organically and simply out of a love and passion for the medium. My starting point for a more professional and community-oriented engagement with photobooks was when I established the Asia-Pacific Photobook Archive in 2013. I had been back in Australia for three years and was decidedly frustrated at the focus on European and American photography and photobooks that I found here. I was so much more interested to see what was happening in this region. Having visited a few photography festivals in Asia, I had seen first-hand the energy and talent evident in the work being presented. From this came the desire to grow and push the awareness of the photographic community in this part of the world, and to nurture young talent. I wanted to play my part.

The idea for the Asia-Pacific Photobook Archive came out of seeing the brilliant work that Larissa Leclair was doing in the US (Indie Photobook Library) and Bruno Ceschel was doing in UK (Self Publish, Be Happy), and wanting to take it one step further, not just by collecting books but actively and physically sharing them with new audiences. Different to the Indie Photobook Library or Self Publish, Be Happy, the Archive was never intended to be static. The goal from the outset was to get the books seen by audiences in different locations, so I was very clear in our manifesto that any books submitted to the Archive would travel to festivals around Asia and the world. With this promise, in 2013 I started attending more festivals and events, taking submissions and buying books. I would take a suitcase or two of books from the Archive, and set up a space provided by the festival to show these books. It was a condition from the start that we didn’t sell books, as the Archive was never set up as a “business”. Often photographers at these festivals (in India, Japan, Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, and more) were not in a position to donate a copy of their book to the Archive, so I would buy it instead. The Archive is probably 60% donated books and 40% books purchased by me.

At the start in 2013, there were very few photography festivals and absolutely no photobook related events in the Asia Pacific region. Chobi Mela and Angkor were the only two main festivals, and didn’t have a photobook element at this stage. But this soon began to change, and now there are photography festivals in most countries in Asia, and most have a photobook fair included. Alongside this, there are many collectives and spaces for photography communities to come together to share and support each other across the Asia-Pacific region. As I said, Isabella Capezio (who runs the Archive with me) and I attended festivals all over Asia between 2013-18, we would curate a display of books that were simply for browsing, and we provided photographer contact information for people to then go buy the books directly from the artists. We attended events in different places in Asia, and early on we were also invited to manage the photobook activities of a few festivals in the region, running reviews, book-making workshops, talks and so on.

As the reputation of the Archive grew we started doing pop-up events of Asia-Pacific photobooks even more broadly, in the UK (at The Photographers’ Gallery Bookshop), and at photography festivals in Europe (Latvia, Dublin and Landskrona), and all over the US. The books that people submitted certainly clocked up a lot of miles.

As time passed a lot more festivals had emerged across the Asia-Pacific region, and a lot of these events started running their own photobook fairs and developing their own collections and libraries, so the need for the Archive to actively travel became reduced, and the number of submissions we were getting also dropped off. Just before Covid-19, I stopped needing to collaborate with festivals and fairs as most of them now had their own photobook events and spaces to house their own collections. The Archive served its purpose at the time, and I am happy that we played a small part in the early days of turning the focus on to photobooks in this part of the world.

From the beginning we had a physical space for the Archive in Melbourne that was open to the public and managed by volunteers. This was a very important part of the jigsaw in the early days. Not only were the books travelling all over the world, they also were on display here in Melbourne. The Archive still has a public-facing space, is still open and we still have photographers, student groups and international visitors accessing the Archive, doing research and looking for inspiration. It’s still a free and accessible resource.

What would make a better photobook ecosystem?

I would like to think that in the coming decade the attention of the photobook and photography world will move away from North America and Europe and will recentre itself in other places – in Asia, South America and Africa. As I previously started to discuss, the photobook network in the Asia-Pacific region has developed over the last 15 years, and today there are dozens of events of all sizes across a range of countries. It has become a positive space, though not without challenges and limitations. With the rise in art fairs, photobook fairs and photography festivals in the Asia-Pacific region, European publishers are becoming more aware of the wealth of talent here. There are, each year, more and more books being published featuring non-European and non-American photographers. The difficulty and challenges for the ecosystem is at the ground level and is simple economics; this is where people like Jessica Lim (Angkor Photo Festival), Shahidul Alam (Chobi Mela), Gwen Lee (Singapore International Photography Festival), Anshika Varma (Offset Projects) and other even smaller organisations and collectives in other countries come in and are doing amazing work. These sort of initiatives and organisations need the support of the broader international photobook world. This is true also for South America and Africa. There are smaller groups, collectives and organisations that need the support of their European and North American counterparts.

With what is happening politically, it’s pretty clear the world global economy is going to struggle in the coming years, so I do fear for book sales, especially for smaller publishers who work with tight margins, and with emerging artists without an established following. I firmly believe North American and European audiences need to keep pushing themselves to look outside of the photographers and publishers in their own countries. There are such rich and amazing stories being told in all parts of the world, and they need to be sought out beyond the shelves of their local book shop or book fair.

I find it a conundrum that the connectivity of the art world and the photobook community seems to keep expanding and improving, while at the same time, our political leaders and the majority of our voting populations become more insular and xenophobic. It feels like photography and photobooks, and the diversity of stories they tell, will become even more vital in coming years.♦

Further interviews in the Photobook Conversations series can be read here

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Photobook Conversations is edited by Ana Casas Broda (Hydra + Fotografía), Anshika Varma (Offset Projects) and Duncan Wooldridge (Manchester Metropolitan University). Sitting alongside the earlier Writer Conversations (1000 Words, 2023), edited by Lucy Soutter and Duncan Wooldridge, and Curator Conversations (1000 Words, 2021), edited by Tim Clark, it completes the series exploring the ways our understanding and experience of photography is mediated through exhibitions, writing and publishing.

Images:

1-Daniel Boetker-Smith © Mia Mala McDonald

2-Cover of Auto-Photo: A Life in Portraits (Centre for Contemporary Photography and Perimeter Editions, 2024)

3-Spread from of Auto-Photo: A Life in Portraits (Centre for Contemporary Photography and Perimeter Editions, 2024)

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• Renée Mussai on exhibitions as sites of dialogue, critique, and activism.

• Roxana Marcoci navigates curatorial practice in the digital age.

• Tanvi Mishra reviews Felipe Romero Beltrán’s Dialect.

• Discover London’s top five photography galleries.

• Tim Clark in conversation with Hayward Gallery’s Ralph Rugoff on Hiroshi Sugimoto.

• Academic rigour and essayistic freedom as told by Taous R. Dahmani.

Photobook Conversations #4

Valentina Abenavoli

Valentina Abenavoli | Photobook Conversations #4 | 19 Dec 2024

Valentina Abenavoli is an editor, book designer and visual artist working at the intersection of photography, video, sound and text. She has led intensive workshops on photo editing and bookmaking internationally. In 2012, she co-founded Akina, an independent publishing house producing challenging photobooks by emerging photographers. Her first photobook, Anaesthesia, was released in 2016, followed by her second book, The Harvest, in 2017. Both are part of an ongoing trilogy investigating the subjects of empathy and evil. Recently, she co-founded Neighbour, an alternative art space in Trivandrum, India, focusing on exhibitions, publishing and collaborations.

What were the encounters which started your relationship with photobooks?

When it comes to books, there’s neither a clear beginning nor an end. It’s an ongoing, evolving relationship. It wasn’t a sudden spark or love at first sight. Rather, it grew slowly, rooted in childhood, in stories, in diaries filled to the margins, in old family albums like entire encyclopaedias of strangers. Something deeper stirred within me, drawing my mind toward far-off places and revealing the beauty in life’s most ordinary details – all recorded and preserved in printed form. Books have always been the proof of lives lived. They offer a suspended moment in time, a refuge from reality, an open invitation to step into an extraordinary “other” world.

When I think of my life before working at Akina, I recall a fascination for photobooks that was raw and unshaped – an early, unrefined intuition that supported an imaginative approach without prior knowledge, in its mad and vast simplicity. I would pick up a book because of its cover or title, without knowing what to expect with each turning page. As I learned the narrative structures and rhythm of sequences, I took my sweet time with each book, and some stories, in all their complexities, would linger in my mind for a long time, unfolding in multiple serendipities and nocturnal epiphanies. It was a real pull, a magnetic one, that had been the primary subject of my thoughts for many years. That blissful ignorance is what I now miss deeply.

Many years ago, while still studying, I worked at a book fair in Torino, Italy, in a rather simple role. I was responsible for handing out microphones to writers and publishers as they took the stage. In between talks, I would slip away to wander the stalls with Federico Clavarino, who, years later, would become one of the artists Akina collaborated with. Together, we flipped through the works of Italian photographers like Letizia Battaglia, Luigi Ghirri and Mimmo Jodice. At times, we kept an eye on the clock to avoid missing the next talk, but then one of us would inevitably get lost in the spell of books – the weight, the texture, the world of a stranger offered to you as the most intimate shared space. These books were far too expensive for me, so I filched a few. It’s a good story to mark the beginning of my relationship with photobooks. There was a desire to understand the realm of these visual storytellers, using the book form to express and communicate something invaluable – an expensive magic.

In the same city, around the same time, I would often spend hours among the dust-coated wooden shelves of La Bussola, a local bookstore selling old, preloved and out-of-print titles. These books waited for someone – anyone – to come along and rescue them from the anonymity to which they were relegated. Sometimes, I think many survived years under the indifferent dust of the bookshop only to gather a new layer of dust on someone’s shelf at home. The gesture of taking a forgotten, preloved book that could be reintroduced to someone’s life, where it might one day be opened again, its pages turned by another’s hands. There was a kind of timelessness to it, a quiet, slow resistance to finitude, defying the rules of a fast-paced market, where books need to be sold out within the same year of release. The photobook selection was scarce and mostly generic, but some obscure gems I still own today were found there, on a corner shelf labelled ‘fotografia’.

When this fascination for photobooks found me, beyond the coffee table books of famous photographers whose names I never learned, there was a growing urge for independence in photography – a push against the establishment, a need to create something outside the mainstream. From the underground up. I see now the sense of rebellion that led me to want to be part of that movement of zine makers and cheaply produced books filled with loud content and honest rawness. I started collaborating with a literary agency, learning editing, publishing and marketing. But I think it wasn’t enough to simply work with books. I wanted to create the book object itself, from scratch: the design, the choice of size, paper, sequence and text. A book is more than just a collection of images or words – it has the intrinsic quality of being made by many hands, collectively contributing to different stages of creation, production and dissemination. I wanted to be part of that effort to create vessels of beauty and change.

It is an everlasting joy and a never-ending pain, my relationship with photobooks. It has its roots in intuition and surely changed my life when it began, but I haven’t yet figured out how much I’ve changed in relation to them. It used to be all I could talk about – books, books, books – and I still do, even though Akina no longer publishes, and I no longer stand on stages, advocating for space and support to experiment with new ways of expanding the market beyond its bubble. I’m just quieter and more specific about it now, which seems to go well with age.

What is your process for arriving at decisions about books and the projects that you undertake?

As a publisher, I was once drawn to photographic projects that required courage, often tackling controversial or thought-provoking subjects. I was keen to engage with works that had the potential to spark conversations, provoke complex social dialogue, or explore political and existential themes. If the visual narrative was compelling enough, I believed that words weren’t necessary in the book. But both the market and I have changed since then. What excites me most today are projects that embrace interdisciplinary approaches, where photography is one part of a larger composition – often working alongside text, illustrations or video stills. In this context, the book itself becomes a form that embodies connections between disparate elements. Each spread follows the next, creating both linear and non-linear relationships between subjects, objects, actions, places and time. These parallel narratives, and the potential meanings they carry, are familiar to us and can be part of a larger scope, like a symbiotic root-like system of interconnections.

The concept of the “third image” created by the juxtaposition of two images placed side-by-side is that inexplicable mental image that words cannot express, yet it’s something we all understand and discuss when reading, teaching or analysing photobooks. Being by contrast or by accumulation, this is a catalyst for endless possibilities and effects. It reflects a state of being mutually dependent, not only in the natural world but across different disciplines as well. It speaks to the emotions we give and receive, the long-term use of knowledge, and the process of unlearning in order to learn again. It really highlights humanity’s complex relationship with both the known and the unknown. And in this sense, the more we look at the world in an interrelated way, the more we can deepen our sensitivity to various subjects and towards each other.

There is a clear need to bridge the gap between art practices and academic research, as both fields can benefit from each other’s insights. We are too accustomed to thinking, working and acting within the photography niche, but by doing so, we often tend to congratulate each other’s results without truly challenging the way photography can serve as a carrier of meaning. If we are curious about humanity, we would only benefit from collaboration, which allows us to better contextualise knowledge beyond specific areas of study.

We often formulate projects based on our imagination and speculation, and I am deeply fascinated by this potential, by the process itself. I like to linger in the urgency of ideas that provoke thought with no immediate purpose other than offering alternative perspectives. I like the aftermath of creation, when the work becomes at the service of an audience to be dissected, interpreted, carried forward in any iteration possible.

Over the years, I’ve come to realise that a new model of the art world is needed, one that challenges the individualist culture of authorship and creative production. I prefer to engage in works that are rooted in collective experience and that are participatory. This is where my interest in collaborative authorship began – where books and exhibitions are the result of dialogues, negotiations and exchange, and where there’s a certain acknowledgement of the new forms projects have taken, emerging from a shared creative responsibility of multiple voices. Artists, writers, designers, curators and editors add layers of meaning, context and interpretation of the work, making it a complex and dynamic entity beyond the purely artistic expression. It is within this space of mutual influence, where roles and responsibilities intersect, where I find the greatest creative potential to break down the hierarchies in the art world and maybe create a more sustainable model for all.

I think moving to Kerala, India, and working primarily with artists and institutions from the Global South for the past five years, has given me a different perspective on what collective narratives can achieve. This shift from the individual to the collective requires rethinking agency itself, recognising that personal stories are always entangled with larger social, political and economic forces. It means moving beyond isolated experiences to examine the structures that shape them. There’s a need to decolonise our understanding of stories and power, and I believe this will always shape my collaborations moving forward.

How do you like to work with people?

Meaningful conversations are the foundation of how I work with artists. I believe that truly listening to someone’s story is essential in my role as both editor and designer. I like to be convinced, questioned and challenged. Serving the potential of the work, bringing forth everything that is yet to be said or seen. This requires not just a deep understanding but also a healthy mix of empathy, respect and imagination to translate these works into book form.

Trust is built by being open to each other’s vulnerabilities. There was a time when conversations with artists were so visceral and emotional that hours would pass without eating or sleeping, leaving my mind on fire. I’ve only recently learned the importance of saying “no” and setting boundaries. I experienced complete burnout once, and it took me two years of healing and rest to be able to absorb what an artist wanted to share and to help them navigate the book form again.

Now, I’m much more selective about the projects I take on. Becoming a mother gave me a new perspective. The urgency I once felt to engage with every intriguing project has shifted. Now, I weigh not only the potential impact of a project but also how it aligns with my current priorities – mental health being one of them. There’s still a bounce of ideas and shared vulnerabilities, but it’s a slower, more considered process.

How do you balance choices between working with highly specific materials or processes, and the desire for access?

My practice began with a clear focus on balancing specific materials and processes with accessibility. In 2012, we at Akina started printing and binding handmade books at home, inspired by zine culture as a revolutionary, accessible way to spread ideas. Without funds for offset printing, we explored new approaches to both content and form, collaborating with emerging photographers. We managed to get trial machines twice, and published four zines and two books in editions of 100 to 200 copies each, paying only for the paper. London, at the time, was alive with creativity, and we had the support and courage to leave stable jobs for counterculture.

Over the years, we produced handmade books in two editions – a standard and a collectible edition – at prices people could afford (£8 to £12 for the standard edition, £35 to £50 for the collectible). All the books sold out within a very short time, leaving us often with a backlog of production and long nights spent surrounded by obscure vinyl records, managing humidity in perpetually damp London and stacks of paper covering every inch of our space.

The idea was to meet the needs of both collectors and those who wanted to be part of the community but couldn’t usually afford expensive books. It was our way of addressing the divide we saw in the photobook market, where books either became collectible and expensive or were inaccessible to many artists and readers. It was also the proof that limitations – being money or materials – can really help creativity to strive, instead of containing it.

Large companies reach broader audiences with offset printing, lowering costs and benefiting from wide distribution while producing high-quality books. However, I never worked with distributors, and staying independent and sustainable was challenging. Eventually, we decided to shift to offset printing as demand grew, but in doing so, the books seemed to lose their intrinsic value of being unique. That was when it stopped being fun and transformed into something more rigid – a business governed by profitability frameworks. Although I partnered with a visionary printer in Istanbul, Ufuk Sahin, known for his ability to challenge the impossible, creativity can become subject to the pressure of meeting market demands. This leaves less room for failure when the investment is too high. I don’t have the answers. Ultimately, I closed my publishing house after eight years and many books produced.

What do you think is the significance of the shift towards the book as an object?

It’s the tactile experience, the quiet moment of slowly unfolding someone else’s work in a sentimental manner. In a world that’s increasingly digital and ephemeral, the book is an anchor, a testament, an act of resistance. When one begins to notice how a book feels, and makes a ritual out of it – picking it up, running the fingers over the cover, that first crack of the spine, the smell of the ink on the paper, the whole experience of reading becomes an encounter with its own physicality. It slows you down, draws you into its pace, and invites you to stay for a while. The book becomes a place, almost, one that you inhabit for a time. And what a profound, enduring form of communication it becomes – tangible, intimate and moving – capable of being disseminated while resisting the passage of time.

Anaesthesia, the work I am most attached to, asked to be a book from the very beginning. It emerged from a profound personal struggle, fuelled by anger at the Western bias of empathy towards the Middle East – a bias that has perpetuated the dehumanisation of certain populations, shaping cultural narratives and influencing perceptions for decades. The choice to work on a book – densely black in its form – was the most visceral reaction to a world of violence and indifference. In exploring how reality is documented, shaped and presented to us, the book poses a fundamental question: if we’ve been overwhelmed by images of horror and war, becoming numb to the suffering of others, how will we choose to respond? Through the way the images and words are placed in the book, I wanted to invite others to feel, to pay attention, and to have radical positions towards humanity. Now, one year into the ongoing genocide in Palestine, on the verge of a much larger escalation, we are still bearing witness to our collective history, we are still challenging the false narratives. That book is a small testimony.

What is the place of language and writing in a book of photographs?

I’ve always loved the freedom that lingers at the edges of the image, outside of the frame. It is where the reader is really able to imagine. When words are offered, language becomes at once illuminating and restraining. The writing evokes what is not immediately visible. It guides, suggests, hints and eventually offers a way to begin, without ever telling you how to end. But also, words can impose. They can point to specific narratives, excluding, in part, the infinite possibilities of imagination. On the other hand, words that are not descriptive, and that generate abstract meanings, can create a beautiful tension, where text and image subvert each other’s autonomy, pulling in opposite directions – one towards specificity, the other toward openness.

An intellectual controversy that has accompanied photography since the beginning is whether it can be defined as a form of language. I’ve often thought it is reductive to classify it this way, and I believe its unreliability as a form of language is one of the reasons why contemporary photography often relies on archetypal symbols, such as an isolated house in a bare landscape or hands holding something (or each other). These are simplistic, symbolic representations used to convey meanings of relationships, of belonging, of loss or identity, but they are not arranged in a systematic structure, which leaves them open to a certain simple interpretation without offering the precision of language. Many might disagree and argue that this approach opens up the ambiguity of photography for viewers who lack visual literacy. Words allow for precise and systematic communication, yet they also leave room for ambiguity due to the absence of a precise visual representation. On the other hand, when images are overly symbolic, they offer a clear visual representation but lose the ambiguity inherent to the photographic medium. I am looking at that isolated house, and I cannot imagine another type of house, which, in itself, reduces the interpretative imagination.

I believe the only way to resolve this dilemma – and to elevate the photobook market to the same level of prominence as written books – is to make visual literacy a common subject, continuously and at every age, in every educational institution. To be more mindful about the current world as it is represented in images. Because art asks for a dual engagement: a visual one and an intellectual one. And too often it leaves out those less familiar with the other “language”.

Who have been the models or templates for your own activities?

In many parts of my life, I can trace exactly where it all began – the contexts in which I gathered each facet of the person I’ve become, the moments when decisions were made, who stood by me, and who drifted away. It’s like a vivid map made of memory lanes and sentimental journeys, and I cherish every turning point, each past version of myself. There is a series of consequential events, and connected people, that have led me here, now, in Trivandrum, with my partner Joe and our son Eli.

It was 2015 when I met Sohrab Hura in Arles for the first time. He is not only an incredibly talented and considerate artist but also a reliable friend who has this unique ability to connect like-minded people. With a short and precise email, he introduced me to the wonders of Nayantara Gurung Kakshapati, the founding director of photo.circle, Photo Kathmandu and Nepal Picture Library. It took a year and a half before I could finally meet her in Kathmandu, and we spent a full week in one of the most immersive and life-changing workshops I’ve ever run. I have pictures of the students editing at 4am, with book cover cloths wrapped around our heads like veils. After that week, we began calling each other “mama”. I believe it was love from the start, but also the joy of finding that our complementary skills allowed us to create something powerful together.

Nayantara’s work is about the transformative power of visual storytelling – not just as art but as a force for social change. Together, with a growing team who feel more like family to each other and to me, she’s shown how photography and visual media can empower communities to reclaim their own stories. These aren’t just acts of creativity, but acts of rebellion against dominant narratives. What makes their approach special is that it’s about building systems that nurture relationships and spark long-lasting dialogue. It challenges the status quo, drawing from indigenous knowledge to reframe ideas of inclusivity and equity, using art, ecology and political stands as collective tools for change.

In 2018, during my artist residency for Photo Kathmandu, I stayed at a guesthouse in Durbar Square in Patan. Every morning, the temple bells would wake me at 5:30am, and from my window, I’d watch people of all ages and backgrounds interacting with the exhibition The Public Life of Women. It was surreal – people staring, reading, commenting on archival images of women who made history, all before dawn. It’s unimaginable to have such public engagement in the West at that hour, let alone one that addresses themes of gender and society. It made me question who we create art for and why.

I find myself thinking often about the present – about what role I have in our community, and how deeply Nayantara and the photo.circle family have inspired me. My mind drifts to Neighbour, the space Joe and I are about to open here in Trivandrum. It feels like the necessary next step, an extension of everything I’ve learned and believed in as an artist, a publisher, a designer, an educator and as a witness to current times. Neighbour is the combination of books, art and coffee, basically what makes my everyday. It is a reflection of our hope to engage with the world through the act of gathering, of being present with one another. I hope we can become a catalyst for change – however small that might be at first in our neighbourhood – where conversations can have that imaginative narrative, and books and art can push boundaries, challenge perceptions and ask difficult questions.♦

Further interviews in the Photobook Conversations series can be read here

Images:

1-Valentina Abenavoli © Joe Paul Cyriac

2-Yusuf Sevincli, Oculus (Galerist and Galerie des Filles du Calvaire, 2018)

3-The Public Life of Women: A Feminist Memory Project (Nepal Picture Library, 2023)

4-Sayed Asif Mahmud, Marta Colburn and Jessica Olney, Bittersweet, A Story of Food and Yemen (Medina Publishing, 2024)

1000 Words favourites

• Renée Mussai on exhibitions as sites of dialogue, critique, and activism.

• Roxana Marcoci navigates curatorial practice in the digital age.

• Tanvi Mishra reviews Felipe Romero Beltrán’s Dialect.

• Discover London’s top five photography galleries.

• Tim Clark in conversation with Hayward Gallery’s Ralph Rugoff on Hiroshi Sugimoto.

• Academic rigour and essayistic freedom as told by Taous R. Dahmani.

Photobook Conversations #3

Miguel Del Castillo

Miguel Del Castillo | Photobook Conversations #3 | 21 Nov 2024

Miguel Del Castillo is a writer, translator, editor and curator. He was born in Rio de Janeiro and lives in São Paulo, Brazil. Named one of the best young Brazilian novelists by Granta, he is the author of Restinga (Companhia das Letras, 2015) and Cancun (Companhia das Letras, 2019). He coordinates the Photography Library at Instituto Moreira Salles (IMS) in São Paulo and was formerly Editor at Cosac Naify and ZUM magazine’s website. Del Castillo previously published an online column on photobooks and is now pursuing an MA in Literary Theory at the University of São Paulo.

What were the encounters which started your relationship with photobooks?

I began my career at Cosac Naify, an art and literary publishing house, where I started as an intern before being hired as an Assistant Editor for children’s books. After a few years, I also began assisting with architecture and art books, as well as handling image rights. Eventually, I had the opportunity to become a full editor, overseeing both architecture and photography books. I had the opportunity to work on books by notable Brazilian artists such as Bob Wolfenson, who, in Belvedere (2013), explored a series quite different from his renowned work in fashion, focusing instead on photographs of decaying tourist spaces. With Vicente de Mello, I collaborated on Parallaxis (2014), which brought together several of his series. Our aim was to create something that felt less like a catalogue and more like a photobook – a reflection of his life and artistic journey. I also worked on Contrastes Simultâneos (2014) by Walter Carvalho, whose photographs in the book closely echo his acclaimed work as a cinematographer.

At this stage, my studies in architecture, combined with my interest in photography and experience with art books, played a crucial role. Additionally, my work with children’s books honed my sense of sequencing, and my ability to handle image-text relationships and page transitions which are vital in photobook editing. In fact, I believe photobook studies could benefit significantly from the theory and criticism that surrounds children’s books. Following my experience in publishing, I was invited to join Instituto Moreira Salles (IMS), which was then developing a new museum in São Paulo. I was tasked with leading the Photography Library, building its collection from the ground up, and developing public programs centered around photobooks.

To kick off the collection, we first established our priorities: the primary focus would be Brazilian photography, followed by Latin American, and then international works. Our aim was to gather as many photo-publications as possible from Brazil, while being more selective with foreign acquisitions. We already had some books that were purchased for curatorial research, as well as the Stefania Bril collection – around 1,000 books which demonstrate her important role as an articulator of the photographic circuit in the country, with an eye in tune with the international production of her time (the 1970s and 80s). From there, we formed institutional partnerships, established contacts with national publishers to acquire more books, and purchased several private collections from key Brazilian figures, giving us a solid foundation to build on.

What is your process for arriving at decisions about books and the projects that you undertake?

I strive to think beyond a niche, especially when developing public programmes around photobooks. In São Paulo, there are many specific initiatives that are valid and interesting, but I aim to foster interest among a broader audience. At the IMS library, we have a dedicated space for photobook exhibitions, and I curate selections that appeal to the general public. For example, at our opening in 2017, I presented an exhibition titled São Paulo in the Photographic Book: 1954–2017, which aimed to highlight, through books, the city’s inequalities and rapid, ongoing transformations. Subsequent displays have included a focus on books about military dictatorships in South American.

Previously, at the publishing house, I was fortunate to work closely with in-house graphic designers. This setup is somewhat rare, especially in Brazil, where the editorial team is typically fixed, and graphic work – like covers or the entire design – is usually outsourced to external collaborators. Having graphic designers integrated into the team from the very start of a project was a real advantage. We were able to discuss ideas from the initial concept phase, make adjustments throughout the process, and refine every detail all the way to the final product. This close and continuous collaboration between the designers and the editorial team was a powerful catalyst for the book-making process. The ability to brainstorm, revisit decisions and fine-tune both the visual and editorial elements together made the creative process much more dynamic and cohesive. It allowed for a seamless exchange of ideas, resulting in books that were more thoughtfully crafted from both an editorial and design perspective.

What is the public for a photobook? Who do you think of as your audience?

Being a non-librarian heading a library has significantly shaped how I approach this question. I greatly benefit from my team (including librarians), who offer valuable perspectives on book culture and knowledge sharing. First, what does it mean to create a library dedicated to photography, with photobooks at its core? For us, it means expanding a specific audience and democratising access to photobooks. We achieve this not only by having quality books available but also by fostering an open, welcoming space without membership cards or access restrictions – some visitors even come to work on their own projects. We provide direct access to shelves and promote talks, study groups, book exhibitions and thematic selections.

As editors, we may not always consider how to distribute our books through libraries. Early in the IMS library’s journey, artist Rosângela Rennó gave a lecture in which she said something that has since become our guiding principle: “Photobooks are how we’ll explain what photography was to future generations. We must fill libraries with them; they cannot be confined to private collections.” When I talk to editors now, I try to convey this idea. It doesn’t have to be our library, but it could be their local library or the museum library near their home. To condense this into one sentence: I believe the audience for photobooks is still quite limited, but libraries offer a powerful way to broaden it.

How important is it for photobooks to reach other continents?

I believe it’s essential for the general public to have access to books from diverse places and cultures, as much as possible. At the IMS library, our priority is Brazilian books – we aim to collect everything published locally to preserve our photobook culture. However, we also include foreign books in our collection. When we started, we acquired private collections built between the 1980s and 2000s. Only later did we realise that most of the foreign books were from North America and Europe, as those were the main references and the ones available for purchase here. In response, we made a concerted effort to acquire more books from Latin American, African and Asian authors for our archive. This required active research and engaging in discussions with scholars and researchers who specialised in these regions. We also had to recognise that, even today, many voices from outside North America and Europe are still being published by presses within these continents. Acquiring books published locally in places like Africa, for instance, remains a particular challenge due to issues such as limited distribution channels and prohibitive shipping costs. Navigating these barriers has been an ongoing effort, but it’s essential for ensuring that our collection has the broadest representation of voices.

I can’t speak directly for authors regarding how it impacts them when their books are recognised or showcased abroad, but personally, if I were to publish a photobook, I’d love to know that it was being seen in a library in Mexico, Japan or elsewhere in the world.

What do you think is the significance of the shift towards the book as an object?

There is something in this idea that started to bother me, especially while establishing the library at IMS and developing our access policies. While it is indeed important to recognise the photobook as a three-dimensional object with unique qualities, I’ve found that this perspective can sometimes lead to treating it as an untouchable work of art. At IMS, we decided to keep most of our books accessible on open shelves for the public to browse. Just because a book might cost $300 from an online reseller (due to multiple speculative reasons), it doesn’t mean it should be kept away from users.

If one of the main ideas behind creating a photobook is to provide a more accessible experience than a traditional reproduction, then it doesn’t make sense to publish it only to confine it under a glass dome, where people can see only the open spread or, at best, view a video of it. Of course, there are exceptions for older, more fragile books that require special handling or artist books produced as unique editions. But in general, I advocate against the unnecessary sanctification of photobooks. Books are meant to be touched, seen and flipped through; they should be accessible for people to engage with and share.

What is the place of language and writing in a book of photographs?

As a writer myself, I have a particular appreciation for books that balance writing and images, where both elements complement, provoke or even contradict each other. I’m not referring to photobooks that include a preface or postface (although those can be valuable), but rather to books where text and images are intertwined more deeply, such as El infarto del alma (1994) by Chilean photographer Paz Errázuriz and writer Diamela Eltit, or the Brazilian classic Paranoia (1963) by poet Roberto Piva and photographer/graphic designer Wesley Duke Lee. Contemporary examples also abound, with specific categories even created for this kind of work, such as in the Arles Book Awards.

Maureen Bisilliat, an English-Brazilian photographer, offers a compelling approach with her series of books that pair extracts from renowned Brazilian writers (like Guimarães Rosa, Jorge Amado and Adélia Prado) with her own photographs, creating new narratives she terms ‘photographic equivalences’. She challenges the cliché that “a picture is worth a thousand words” by asserting that her photographs are only complete when paired with text. I once curated an exhibition about this aspect of Maureen’s work, which I called Writing with Images and Seeing with Words, a quote of her own. This perspective adds a rich layer to the discussion of photo-text books.

I also believe there’s much to learn from children’s book theory in this context. For instance, Sophie van der Linden’s Lire l’album (2006) notes that: ‘In picture books, texts and images sometimes ignore each other, contradict each other… But they cannot be compartmentalised or separated completely. Present together in a single space, that of the double page, they are apprehended by the same gaze and necessarily relate to each other from a formal point of view. It is therefore a question of appreciating the occupation of space by these two languages, their own characteristics, their arrangements, the effects of resonance or contrast… Considering that, at the formal level alone, there are already countless implications in terms of narrative and discourse.’

Who have been the models or templates for your own activities?

Before the opening of our library in 2017, I extensively researched various art and photography libraries around the world for inspiration. The first ICP Library was definitely one of them. I was also particularly intrigued by Stiftung Sitterwerk’s advanced system for digitally emulating book shelves, which uses a robotic scanner to recreate book spines side-by-side. Although such a system could be valuable for remote users, what I learned from their effort was the importance of allowing visitors to physically interact with shelves, and that’s exactly how we decided to approach our own library policy. There’s something uniquely rewarding about browsing freely and stumbling upon a book you weren’t specifically looking for alongside one you were. We also drew from independent initiatives like TURMA in Argentina, which has developed a library and a space for courses and activities, as well as other Latin American institutions such as Mexico’s Centro de la Imagen and Uruguay’s Centro de la Fotografía (CdF), with whom we continue to stay in touch.

In terms of publishers, Steidl has been a key partner from the beginning. Gerhard Steidl’s significant impact on photography publications since the 1990s is well recognised. He also decided to collaborate with us to host the first Steidl Library, which includes a complete set of his publications generously donated to us.

What’s currently on your desk?

I have the privilege of working in a room adjacent to the library, which means that each time I go to the bathroom, I cross a long corridor lined with tall bookshelves filled with photography books! This constant visual presence is quite stimulating.

Recently, I’ve had two Brazilian photobooks on my bedside table. One is Sete Quedas by Shirlene Linny and Júlio Cesar Cardoso (2020), an in-depth visual investigation into the story of a brutal kidnapping and murder of an ambassador during Brazil’s military dictatorship. The other is República das Bananas (2021), a strange and brilliant fiction created by Shinji Nagabe. Additionally, I had been frequently revisiting Entre (1974) by Polish-Brazilian photographer Stefania Bril, as I have been working on her major exhibition, entitled Stefania Bril: Desobediência pelo afeto [Disobedience through Affection].♦

Further interviews in the Photobook Conversations series can be read here

Images:

1-Miguel Del Castillo © Carolina Ribiero

2>3-Stefania Bril, Entre (Self-published, 1974)

4-Photography Library at Instituto Moreira Salles (IMS), São Paulo © Pedro Vannucchi

1000 Words favourites

• Renée Mussai on exhibitions as sites of dialogue, critique, and activism.

• Roxana Marcoci navigates curatorial practice in the digital age.

• Tanvi Mishra reviews Felipe Romero Beltrán’s Dialect.

• Discover London’s top five photography galleries.

• Tim Clark in conversation with Hayward Gallery’s Ralph Rugoff on Hiroshi Sugimoto.

• Academic rigour and essayistic freedom as told by Taous R. Dahmani.

Luigi Ghirri: Viaggi

MASI Lugano

Interview with Curator, James Lingwood

Luigi Ghirri: Viaggi. Photographs 1970–1991 is a major exhibition dedicated to the Italian photographer Luigi Ghirri running at MASI Lugano, Switzerland, until 26 January 2025. Featuring 140 colour photographs – primarily vintage prints from the 1970s and 1980s – sourced from both the artist’s estate and the CSAC collection in Parma, the exhibition underscores the role of travel in Ghirri’s oeuvre. An accompanying book, co-published with MACK, situates Ghirri’s photography within both Italian and international contexts, marking his unique relationship with image-making and visual culture. In a conversation with Editor in Chief Tim Clark, curator James Lingwood discusses the making of the exhibition, Ghirri’s playful and reflective approach to photography, his distinctive use of colour, and how his work subtly critiques the impact of mass tourism on the medium.

Tim Clark | Interview | 14 Nov 2024

Tim Clark: Do you remember your first encounter with the work of Luigi Ghirri?

James Lingwood: Coming across Ghirri’s first book, Kodachrome published in 1978 was a revelation. It has many memorable individual images, but what is really remarkable is its orchestration, the undulating rhythms of the book. It’s not a coincidence that the very first image in the book is of a cloudy sky, with several horizontal lines running across – like a page of sheet music without the notations. Then at the Venice Biennale in 2011, there was a group of Ghirri’s photographs in the main exhibition in the Italian Pavilion, including some he made on the Adriatic coast, with a children’s swing or carousel on an otherwise empty expanse of beach and the horizon line behind. Or it may have been the other way round…

TC: Tell us about the impetus for this show at MASI following the retrospective The Map and the Territory exhibition that toured Museo Nacional de Arte Reina Sofia, Museum Folkwang and Jeu de Paume from 2018–2019 that you curated. How did you want to build on that previous proposition through this notion of ‘the journey, as idea and image’ as a point of emphasis?

JL: The Map and the Territory exhibition was put together to foreground Ghirri’s singular way of thinking about his work, to show how reflective, poetic and also playful it is. I decided to work with the structure of the most important exhibition of his work in his lifetime, Vera Fotografia which was presented in Parma in 1979. Ghirri presented 14 different groups of photographs in the exhibition. It’s important to say that Ghirri considered the group as a work; he used the words interchangeably. Some works had a tight conceptual framework, such as Atlante, a series of photos of close-up details of pages from his atlas, or ‘∞’ Infinito, a grid of 365 photos of the sky, taken every day through 1974. Other groups, (or works!) such as Kodachrome, Diaframma 11, 1/125, Luce Naturale, or Vedute were much more open. The Map and the Territory reprised this structure, and its focus on the first decade of Ghirri’s photography, up to 1979.

Viaggi grew out of the earlier exhibition and develops some of its themes through the prism of the journey. The journey resonates throughout his work; not only because almost all his photographs were made on trips of various kinds, but also because he considered photography to be a ‘journey through images’. It’s implicit in The Map and the Territory, and made more explicit in Viaggi. For example, the selection of photographs from his series Paesaggi di Cartone and Kodachrome concentrates on images of travel and tourism ‘found’ in the urban landscape. There are important groups of photographs from other series such as Diaframma and Vedute which are central to Ghirri’s exploration of the act of the viewing.

In both shows, it was impossible not to give a prominent space to two important works, to the speculative journeys prompted by the close-up images of details of his atlas in Atlante, and Identikit, Ghirri’s take on Xavier Le Maistre’s novella A Journey around my Room, a group of photographs of the books, LPs, maps and mementoes in his home.

The selection for Viaggi ranges widely across his work from the 1970s and 1980s, and extends to groups of photographs made on Ghirri’s travels to different parts of Italy, both to tourist destinations like Rome, Venice, Naples and Capri, but also to places off the beaten-track, small towns and cities in Puglia or Emilia Romagna. It is more open than the earlier exhibition.

TC: One thing that is clear about the curation here is the fairly fluid layout as opposed to a fixed structure. This allows visitors to seek out connections and consider how travel guided Ghirri to subjects and places. How did you approach this creative aspect of putting together the show? It seems very redolent of Ghirri’s adage that ‘if photography is a journey, it is not so in the classic sense suggested by this word; it is rather an itinerary that is drawn, yet with many diversions and returns, randomness and improvisation, a zigzag line.’

JL: If photography is a journey, so is an exhibition. I love the idea of the zig-zag line, with different routes through the work rather than one prescribed route. I don’t think it helps to present Ghirri in too linear a way, with extended sequences of images on long walls. So we broke up the space at MASI with a smaller walls to create a more open structure, and to offer different pathways through the work. When you reach the ‘end’ of the exhibition, you need to move back through the same spaces, seeing different perspectives and making different connections.

TC: In your catalogue essay, you summon the words of Arturo Carlo Quintavalle, Ghirri’s friend and interlocutor – who himself was so instrumental to building discourse around photography in Italy from the 1970s onwards – from a small text that accompanied Ghirri’s images in La gita from Enciclopedia pratica per fotografare (1979): ‘The photographic ritual is the ritual of the trip, there is no trip without photography, without adjusting the aperture and recording [the scene … Ghirri’s] research begins with planning, with a trip seen in images, with the map of mountain paths in perspective, and gradually follows different familiar routes, in the mountains, at the seaside, at lakes, and in the city.’

This particular framing of Ghirri’s work suggests a critical reflection on photography’s vital contribution to industrial societies becoming “image junkies” or “modern” (in Susan Sontag’s sense of the word), where consumption and excess built a status for the photographic image beyond that of mere document. How does Ghirri’s work represent a profound shift in the culture of his time, and ours now?

JL: Ghirri sensed the shift and in some of his work, he consciously pictured it. He could see that as the activity of taking photographs, especially on holiday, was becoming commonplace, it was having a profound effect on the experience of the places people travelled to. He thought a lot about the impact this was having on modern culture. However it’s a big jump to today’s “image junkies”. The consumption of images in Ghirri’s time was moderate compared to today’s excesses. He was critical, but he was not harsh.

TC: You’ve also previously mentioned that Ghirri intentionally positioned his work in ‘proximity to the amateur’ through his distinctive use of tonal range and colour. How would you describe the way colour functions and matters in his photographs?

JL: Ghirri did to some extent side his work closer to the amateur, and to popular and vernacular culture, and away from the approach and look of the photography professional.

Certainly most ‘serious’ photographers in the 1970s favoured bravura black-and-white prints of their landscapes, portraits or still lives. Documentary photography was predominantly black-and-white. Colour was for advertising, for popular magazines. It was at the margins of the serious photography world whilst in the late 60s and early 70s, but at the same time it was of interest to artists like Ed Ruscha. John Baldessari or Dan Graham, or closer to home Franco Vaccari who embraced the vernacular.

Working in colour was a key decision that Ghirri made right at the beginning, in 1970. In his first piece of published writing, he stated: ‘I photograph in colour because the world is in colour, and because colour film has been invented.’ The film he used through the 1970s was almost always Kodachrome – the same film millions of people would take to be processed in a lab when they got back from their trip. Ghirri did the same, taking his films to a processing lab in Modena. But there is a difference, an important one, both in the type of images he took and their colour. He wasn’t interested in eye-catching effects, whether through dynamic framing, dramatic incident or sharp colour. He was interested in a quieter, more reflective image and he worked closely with Arrigo Ghi, who made the prints in Modena, to develop a tonal range which was in keeping with the quietness of his images. Ghirri’s skies are instructive. The light is often even and flat, and the blue is rarely vivid.

TC: To what extent does Ghirri adopt or eschew the iconic tourist photo?

JL: There are a few if any photos that Ghirri made that simply adopt the iconic tourist view. But he’s very aware of the types of photos that tourists were taking, the stereotypes of postcards, advertising and the like. In 1973 he wrote that when he travelled, he took two kinds of photographs; ‘the typical ones that everyone takes… and then the other ones, the ones I really care about, and the only ones that I really consider “my own.”’ Whereas the tourist image tends to conform to type, Ghirri’s photographs both recognise and diverge from it.

TC: In what ways do you feel Ghirri harnesses and pushes back against the ‘decisive moment’ across some of his different series, let’s say if we compare the overarching concerns of Diaframma 11, 1/125, luce naturale with Vedute?

JL: Decisive moments in photography generally need people and they need movement. There is very rarely any movement or incident in Ghirri’s photographs, and there aren’t many people. When they are present, they are seen from a distance, or from behind, quietly looking at something (a map, a painting, a display in a shop window) or taking in the view. What was important for Ghirri was not so much a moment in time as its distillation.

TC: Can you say something about your own personal journey through Ghirri’s archive? For example, are there any particular pairings of individual images and their resonances that you relished either putting together or recreating in the show?

JL: Spending time with Ghirri’s work feels like being in a story by Calvino which never ends, and which leads you to many different places, some recognisable, and others new. Ghirri delighted in playing with the vast repertoire of possibilities his archive offered and I feel his sense of adventure through a world of images gave me the licence to work in the same spirit, discovering new resonances as well as revisiting familiar. Some of the pairings in Viaggi are straight out of the pages of Kodachrome, like the photo of a tourist from Paris holding a little souvenir of the Eiffel Tower paired with the model Eiffel Tower in a theme park in Rimini. Others were improvised whilst installing the show. Hopefully this makes the journey full of discoveries, diversions and returns…♦

All images courtesy Estate of Luigi Ghirri, MACK and MASI Lugano © Estate of Luigi Ghirri

Luigi Ghirri:Viaggi. Photographs 1970–1991 runs at MASI Lugano, Switzerland, from 8 September 2024 – 26 January 2025, with an accompanying catalogue published by MACK.

–
James Lingwood is a curator, producer and writer, based in London. From 1991–2023 he was Co-director of Artangel with Michael Morris, producing over 150 new projects by artists, choreographers, composers, filmmakers, and writers.

Tim Clark is Editor in Chief at 1000 Words and Artistic Director for Fotografia Europea in Reggio Emilia, Italy, together with Walter Guadagnini and Luce Lebart. He also teaches at The Institute of Photography, Falmouth University.

Images:

1-Luigi Ghirri, Rimini, 1977.

2-Luigi Ghirri, Alpe de Siusi, 1979.

3-Luigi Ghirri, Marina di Ravenna, 1986.

4-Luigi Ghirri, Rifugio Grosté, 1983.

5-Luigi Ghirri, Scandiano, presso la Rocca di Boiardo, 1985.

6-Luigi Ghirri, Modena, 1973.

7-Luigi Ghirri, Versailles, 1985.

8-Luigi Ghirri, Capri, 1981.

9-Luigi Ghirri, Marina di Ravenna, 1972.

10-Luigi Ghirri, Arles, 1979.

11-Luigi Ghirri, Lago Maggiore, 1984.

1000 Words favourites

• Renée Mussai on exhibitions as sites of dialogue, critique, and activism.

• Roxana Marcoci navigates curatorial practice in the digital age.

• Tanvi Mishra reviews Felipe Romero Beltrán’s Dialect.

• Discover London’s top five photography galleries.

• Tim Clark in conversation with Hayward Gallery’s Ralph Rugoff on Hiroshi Sugimoto.

• Academic rigour and essayistic freedom as told by Taous R. Dahmani.

Photobook Conversations #2

Aneta Kowalczyk

Aneta Kowalczyk | Photobook Conversations #2 | 11 Nov 2024

Aneta Kowalczyk is a self-taught photo editor, book designer and art director at BLOW UP PRESS. The books she has designed have won several awards, including the European Design Award (2024), POY81 Pictures of the Year International (2024), Polish Graphic Design Awards (2019, 2022), Prix Bob Calle du livre d’artiste (2023), International Photography Awards (2018, 2019, 2020, 2021) and Maribor Photobook Award (2020). She also been shortlisted for Les Rencontres d’Arles Book Award (2022, 2024), Lucie Photo Book Award (2022) and PHotoESPAÑA (2018, 2019, 2020, 2023, 2024).

What were the encounters which started your relationship with photobooks?

In my case, it was a natural development. Everything started with the first publication we produced within BLOW UP PRESS. This was an online monthly magazine dedicated to documentary photography, doc! photo magazine. It was a real lesson for me as all my previous design projects were related to corporate identity. Making the magazine, being in a strict time regime, taught me to organise my working system. It was something that was very useful when switching to paper. From the beginning, we wanted our magazine to focus on photographs, to let them talk, with as little distraction as possible. We wanted to have all pictures visible in full, even if they were on spreads, and we wanted the magazine to be a clear statement. With all this in mind, I had to learn how to make it happen.

As I didn’t like how some photo magazines were designed, I followed the approach of the architecture and fashion magazines. I cannot provide any titles here, but they all represented the highest printing quality, and they paid a lot of attention to the images. They were not afraid of big white spaces on the page, nor were they afraid of placing the images on different parts of page and in different sizes to let them breathe and give them a proper visual flow. And what is also very important is that they used bindings and papers borrowed from books, not from regular magazines. Much easier for me to list is some photobooks or books containing photographs that inspired me: The Irreversible (2013) by Maciek Nabrdalik, Karl Lagerfeld’s book about nothing but which is amazing as an object, The Little Black Jacket (2012), and then two books by Japanese artists that are simply masterpieces for me: The Restoration Will (2017) by Mayumi Suzuki and Silent Histories (2015) by Kazuma Obara. And finally, Parasomnia (2011) by Viviane Sassen. You can discover some of their solutions and ideas in our magazine as well as in our books.

Seeing them, or experiencing them, I started to feel the need to create something more durable than a magazine, something that would stay a bit longer, a book. It was necessary for me to free myself from the magazine routine or the magazine-like style of working. I wanted to explore multi-layered and long-term projects, and to create books that go beyond just presenting imagery and text. And then, by the end of 2017, five years after the first issue of doc! photo magazine was uploaded on our website, I designed my first photobook – 9 Gates of No Return (2017) by Agata Grzybowska, which became a driving force for further books.

I’m still learning. It’s not that you stop at one moment. If you do, you risk that you will get into a routine and then all your projects will look the same. For me, the most refreshing moment when thinking about books and what they can look like, how they can be constructed and from which materials, not necessarily papers, came when visiting Ivorypress’ collection of art books. If you happen to be in Madrid, you should go there. This one visit may change a lot.

What is your process for arriving at decisions about books and the projects that you undertake?

At BLOW UP PRESS, we have a motto which goes: “When the story matters.” And that is the most important factor for me when deciding whether to undertake a project or not. I must feel the project, I must be touched by the story. It must resonate with me and my emotions. Then I try to understand the artist’s intentions, motivations and thinking. It takes a lot of time to enter into somebody’s mind, but it is necessary to understand all aspects of the project to transfer its complexity into a book. And I definitely like to be challenged. I don’t have any specific topic I am looking for. I prefer multilayered, long-term projects; really going into the details, exploring the story in all possible ways, where I can see that the artist dedicated themself to making it.

The rest is a journey meandering through the project. All my decisions are dictated by the story, whether we are talking about the paper, book format, length or layout. The book must mirror the project and not simply insert it into some readymade graphic template. The design should somehow be invisible, not to be more important than the story it provides. Each decision taken by the designer must be based on the project and how to make it sound its best, so that the final reader will be impacted, or hopefully floored, by it.

How important is it for photobooks to reach other continents?

Photobooks use the most communicative language of the world: images. Thanks to this, they can be easily understood in any place in the world. Therefore, reaching other continents should be something natural. The bigger audience of the book, the better it is for the story, its reach. Not to mention the artist, publisher and designer, of course. Imagine you live in Australia. It’s a big country but contrary to its size, the photobook market is relatively small. So, if you want your story to reach as many readers as possible, if you want your project to be a game changer, you must go beyond some limitations, including geographical ones. It was also the case for BLOW UP PRESS. We come from Poland which has a population of 40 million people, with a visual culture that is in an early stage in the direct aftermath of Communist time and a lack of proper visual education at schools. If we were to count on our domestic market only, we would have been out of business years ago. As a result, we stopped making separate Polish language editions of our books as we would just lose the money on them. Besides, the English language is becoming more and more popular in Poland, so we reach our audience here anyway.

What do you think is the significance of the shift towards the book as an object?

At BLOW UP PRESS, we often say we do not make photobooks but art objects. For us, each book is another galaxy with all its own secrets, dark and bright sides. Today, when you visit any photobook fair or bookstore, you will see many books coming from different publishers and artists that look exactly the same, created with the same templates I already mentioned. For me, the photobook’s visual qualities summon experience and emotions and it is exactly this what I’m trying to reflect in my projects.

When I think about the book as an object, the only word that comes to my mind is experience. The reader should experience the book the same way the artist experienced the project. The role of the designer is to transform the artist’s feelings into material form. And this materiality refers to everything, from the papers, through to printing techniques, the interactivity of the book in terms of inserts or any hidden content, up to the final book format and cover.

Let me illustrate this with an example. Recently, BLOW UP PRESS released the book Eternal U (2023) by Hubert Humka that covers the topic of passing, the life and death cycle, eternality. It consists of photographs of British forests existing as natural burial places. The artist came to me saying: “I don’t want to have just a nice book with photographs of forest, I want an artbook. Do whatever you want with my photographs.” It would be very easy to destroy such a fragile project using shiny coated paper or having a traditional approach to layout. In order to translate the artist’s ideas into the final book, I decided to use recycled papers only, to emboss the entire text instead of printing it, and to create negatives from some of the photographs to reflect the cycle of life and death. I wanted readers to be lost in the forest, and so all photographs are printed full bleed. Thanks to embossing, the readers can also experience the bark of a tree if they touch the back side of the page. All this matters for this project and for this book. And all of this makes this book an object to experience. When a friend showed this book to his students, he told them: “Watch with your hands.” So, as you can see, it is something more than just seeing and contemplating images. You must also feel them, physically. This makes the book a desired object to come back to, to collect, to think about in terms of the story it provides and to experience. Yes, it will cost more than a regular photobook, but it is worth making the additional effort.

What is the place of language and writing in a book of photographs?

They say that good pictures will defend themselves and in most cases it’s true. But sometimes it is necessary to give them proper context so they can be read in the way the artist intends them to be seen, regardless of the place and the time. There are many examples of images that were misunderstood when they first emerged, or which outraged the public, and today we admire them. And vice versa. If we give them proper context made through writing, we feel more secure that they will be read in the way were made. Times change, our understanding the world change as well, so does the reception of images. The same refers to photobooks which consist or may consist of such images.

Language in the photobook is also important. It’s the same as with your question about reaching other continents. The more popular, universal or globally known the language you use in the book, the better for the book. As I said, at BLOW UP PRESS, we publish books in English as it is the most widely learned second language in the world, but in some books, we also introduce other languages especially when the project has significant meaning for the local community and/or the artist. What really matters here is to make sure that the text within the book does not overtake the meaning of photographs. We should remember that in photobooks, the story is presented through images, not through the text. The text here is always supplementary to the images. Not the other way around.

Who have been the models or templates for your own activities?

I am a self-taught photo editor and designer. So everything I know, I have learned from my own mistakes and obstinacy! However, there are two artists I would like to mention. The first is the designer Ania Nałęcka-Milach, it’s thanks to her that I felt in love with photobooks. I am always impressed by her projects and how open she is to share her expertise with other designers. The second person is the amazing Yumi Goto. It’s incredible how she can lead artists and their projects from the idea to the final object. They don’t know this, but these two women shaped me as a conscious photobook designer.

What would make a better photobook ecosystem?

There is a lot that could be done to make it better. Proper visual education in schools and better state support for photobook publishers and sellers for starters. Also, a greater assertiveness among publishers to not be afraid to refuse publications when they see that the project is weak. Not all projects merit the book format, let’s be honest. Some projects work much better in shorter form and others should never leave the drawer of the artist. We should all be more aware and conscious of qualities and the need for particular projects to provide readers with good books. They deserve this and we owe it to them.

What’s currently on your desk?

A few projects such as the book by Polish artist Weronika Gęsicka titled Encyclopædia. In it, manipulated stock photographs and AI generated images illustrate false entries she tracked down in different dictionaries, lexicons and encyclopedias. Weronika comments on a contemporary world attacked by fake news that threatens the credibility of media and our freedom. It is another project that adheres to the ethos of BLOW UP PRESS, as fake news is now one of the biggest tools used to manipulate our opinions and minds. It is a very important topic and working on this has been a privilege for me as through this book I can also mark my position on the phenomenon of information disorder. ♦

Further interviews in the Photobook Conversations series can be read here

Images:

1-Aneta Kowalczyk © Hubert Humka

2-Near Dark from Weronika Gęsicka: Encyclopædia, published by BLOW UP PRESS and Jednostka Gallery (November 2024)

3-Théophile Fogeys Sr from Weronika Gęsicka: Encyclopædia, published by BLOW UP PRESS and Jednostka Gallery (November 2024)

4-Jungftak from Weronika Gęsicka: Encyclopædia, published by BLOW UP PRESS and Jednostka Gallery (November 2024)

1000 Words favourites

• Renée Mussai on exhibitions as sites of dialogue, critique, and activism.

• Roxana Marcoci navigates curatorial practice in the digital age.

• Tanvi Mishra reviews Felipe Romero Beltrán’s Dialect.

• Discover London’s top five photography galleries.

• Tim Clark in conversation with Hayward Gallery’s Ralph Rugoff on Hiroshi Sugimoto.

• Academic rigour and essayistic freedom as told by Taous R. Dahmani.

Photobook Conversations #1

Hans Gremmen

Hans Gremmen | Photobook Conversations #1 | 24 Oct 2024

Hans Gremmen is a graphic designer based in Amsterdam, The Netherlands. He works in the field of photography, architecture and fine art and has designed over 300 books. He has won various awards for his experimental designs, among them a Golden Medal in the Best Book Design from all over the World competition. In 2008, he founded Fw:Books, a publishing house with a focus on photography-related projects. Together with Roma Publications, he recently founded ENTER ENTER, a project space in the centre of Amsterdam which explores the boundaries of the book.

What were the encounters which started your relationship with photobooks?

It began when some friends from art school from the photography department wanted to make a collective zine about their work. They asked me to be involved to work on that. I really liked their invitation, and because it was a zine, I also felt lots of freedom to come up with way too many ideas. Those zines evolved later into magazines, and after that into books. However, the feeling of freedom and experimentation continued through all the other publications. Equally, an idea that you work on with friends never changes. It is an ideal, because most of my collaborations start with mailing people who I haven’t met before, but sometimes we end up working several years on a project, which creates an intense and special relationship. These collaborations can only exist when there is no hierarchy. We both have to keep an open mind for each other’s ideas. This means both to move out of your comfort zone. That way, new things can happen, and are created.

How do you balance choices between working with highly specific materials or processes, and the desire for access?

Perfection is fine conceptually, but it should never be the goal. In fact, I think perfect books are very boring. A book should have an edge, some friction. I mean that a book should have some level of desire to make you uncomfortable, because in that way a viewer has to bring something to the book. You are going to be sharper, more present when looking at the work. Perfection lets the viewer be lazy.

It is also not too complicated. Friction can occur when there is a blank page, or when there is an image of a tree in an edit full of portraits. It shakes the viewer, and keeps them on point. And this aspect makes you aware that we are making and looking at a book, not a machine. A book should follow some rules, but also shouldn’t be afraid to break those rules too. For me, this is one of the most important aspects in editing. Further, a book is also made within the restrictions of an industry. If a quote from a printer is high, that is a signal for me that the puzzle is not yet solved. For me, this is an indication that the system of printing and binding is not working for me, but against me. I always try to use the system in the best ways possible. This often means that productions are economically healthy, and in general means a best use of paper, technique and production process.

I like to work within the limitations and restrictions the industry gives me, even if I like to question the restrictions from time to time. I also like to create within reasonable budgets to prevent the creation of expensive books. We aim for our books to be affordable and accessible for (art) students. When we were in art school ourselves, books were an important part of our inspiration and research. And Fw:Books also started as a group of students making books, so we feel very connected to that audience, and therefore making books accessible for them is always important.

How important is it for photobooks to reach other continents?

The idea of borders, and – in a larger context – continents doesn’t really exist in books, I think. We work with people from all over the world, with different views and backgrounds. There is always common ground. The other side of this story is that I think our books should be available for everybody. If you take something, you also have to give something.

What do you think is the significance of the shift towards the book as an object?

Often people come to me saying: “I worked for years on this body of work and want to make a book to finalise the project”. That is a wrong view on what a book is. A book is a beginning, not an end. Also, the relation between photography and books is very unique. There is no such thing as “original” photography. Photography is always a reproduction. Whether it is a C-print on the wall or printed in a book, both are as original. This perspective means a book is a work of art, not a random container of work. The only way for the photobook to survive is if it stops to exist as a genre.

How do you attempt to address sustainability in publishing?

We try to keep our print runs as precise as possible, and when in doubt, we keep it on the lower side. This saves on transport, paper, storage and other costs. It’s a very small gesture, but the idea behind it is to try to be critical towards what we are making. However it is always a dilemma, and a “catch 22” situation. For instance, we wrap our books in plastic. It’s not that we like plastic, but if we don’t do it, we get books back often because they are damaged. That would be creating extra shipping, handling and waste. It is always a matter of pros and cons. We have explored, for this specific issue, the use of biologically disposable plastics, but these are not yet good enough to seriously consider. I have hopes this will evolve in the very near future.

What would make a better photobook ecosystem?

If you mean the “photobook ecosystem” as “photobook world”, then life is too short to think in boxes. Books can have texts, photography, drawings, clippings, art, theory, questions, answers, perspectives, microcosmos, expanding universes, confusion, fiction, facts. Books are books. The photobook should get out of its own self-imposed golden cage and join the other animals in the zoo!

If you mean “photobook ecosystem” as an “ecosystem”, in the environmental sense, I don’t think it is my place to make general remarks or suggestions about this, because I think people should be able to make whatever they want, and however they want.

Who have been the models or templates for your own activities?

Second-hand bookstores. The great thing about these places is that you can browse through books, without a fixed plan. You have to take it as it comes. The books are sometimes organised by genre, but often not really. It is nice to just look at what you come across. Also, it is good to realise that books have a life after the first buyer. Every now and then, I come across a book I was involved in, and makes me very happy to see it there, not thrown away, but patiently waiting for the next person to pick it up, to enjoy it.

What’s currently on your desk?

A never-ending “To-Do List”.♦

Further interviews in the Photobook Conversations series can be read here

Images:

1-Hans Gremmen © Keita Noguch

2-Read Books, Buy Books, Buy Local campaign: Hans Gremmen and Idea Books

3>4-Fw:Books studio images © Keita Noguch

1000 Words favourites

• Renée Mussai on exhibitions as sites of dialogue, critique, and activism.

• Roxana Marcoci navigates curatorial practice in the digital age.

• Tanvi Mishra reviews Felipe Romero Beltrán’s Dialect.

• Discover London’s top five photography galleries.

• Tim Clark in conversation with Hayward Gallery’s Ralph Rugoff on Hiroshi Sugimoto.

• Academic rigour and essayistic freedom as told by Taous R. Dahmani.

1000 Words archive

15 Years, 15 Picks

Selected by Lucy Soutter

Marking 15 years of 1000 Words, Lucy Soutter takes us on a journey through our archive, offering a selection of features based on her own affinities across the magazine’s history. Capturing the richness of an archive and its ability to generate multiple routes through the material contained within, Soutter’s eclectic picks, as she writes, ‘celebrate the sweep of 1000 Words in embracing a range of 21^st century photographic practices.’

Lucy Soutter | Archive highlights | 26 Sept 2024 | In association with MPB

I once spent a week time travelling to the 1960s. I was half-way through a PhD on photography in first-generation Conceptual Art when my supervisor sent me to the library to immerse myself in period art magazines – including Artforum for the avant-garde side of things, and Art in America for a mainstream view. She told me not to worry about reading every article (though I made some useful discoveries) but to skim every single page in chronological order, to immerse myself in the general culture of the time through the pictures, letters pages, ads, layout, etc. My week-long flashback to the decade of my birth gave me untold insights into the aesthetics, politics and general mood of the period. Magazines are traditionally classed as “ephemera,” cultural forms with fleeting significance, important primarily in the moment they are produced. That very topicality makes them an ideal form for studying the conscious and unconscious preoccupations of the time, whether the past or the near-present.

This assignment, to look back over 15 years of 1000 Words (particularly the last 12, as archived on the website) has taken me on a journey through my own past: exhibitions visited, books read, and articles shared in the classroom with students, as well as many important things I missed. At the same time, the exercise clarified trends that have emerged from the flow of visual and written materials. My selections are eclectic to celebrate the sweep of 1000 Words in embracing a range of 21^st century photographic practices. I also want to draw attention to the ambition of the editorial teams over the years, led by Tim Clark, in extending the discussion of contemporary photography into new terrain. Although the pieces in this online magazine are short, they are bold in mobilising concepts from an array of academic and pop cultural contexts. The magazine has often been the first to publish emerging artists and writers, many of whom are now familiar names. Tracing the expansion of the field through evolving configurations of genres and presentation formats, it has also played a key role in promoting a broader range of practitioners.

Part of the richness of an archive is its capacity to generate multiple different routes through the material. This set of selections, loosely chronological, are based on my own affinities. I hope that they will invite you to dip in, whether to revisit familiar selections or make fresh discoveries.

1. Esther Teichmann, Drinking Air, and Mythologies
Interview by Brad Feuerhelm Issue 14, 2012

When I started teaching at art schools in the early 2000s, the UK photography scene was dominated by documentary approaches. Contemporary photography is now so much more eclectic that it is hard to believe that a practice such as Esther Teichmann’s needed to take a stand against this orthodoxy to embrace symbolist themes, painterly gestures and mixed media installation. The images in this portfolio combine with the text to offer a rich field of possibility. Teichmann’s distinctive voice, her embrace of poetics, and the generosity of her approach are all evident in this interview. 1000 Words has provided a platform for a number of artists emerging in parallel expressive modes, including Tereza Zelenkova (28) and Joanna Piotrowska (30).

2. Daisuke Yokota, Back Yard
Essay by Peggy Sue Amison Issue 15, 2012

‘There is a revolution going on in the work of emerging photographer Daisuke Yokota, a revolution that links the past with the future of Japanese photography.’ In a few deft paragraphs, Peggy Sue Amison provides several different points of entry for viewers seduced by Yokata’s evocative, mysterious images. She sketches in Yokata’s context in relation to the grainy, blurry aesthetic of the Provoke movement and describes how the photographer updates Japanese zine culture with collaborations and a participatory approach. Amison illuminates how his use of experimental processes such as solarisation and rephotographing combine with banal architecture, natural forms and faceless figures to create work that is distinctly Japanese and distinctly contemporary. As with Gordon Macdonald’s essay on Thomas Sauvin’s Beijing Silvermine project (15) or Sergio Valenzuela-Escobedo’s framing of Nadège Mazars’ Mama Coca (38) this concise piece provides essential context for interested readers to pursue further research into an important international practice.

3. Sara-Lena Maierhofer, Dear Clark, A Portrait of a Con Man
Interview by Natasha Christia Issue 16, 2013

I confess that I was late to the photobook scene. It had been heating up for the first decade of the 2000s before I realised that this was not just a fad or nerdy subculture (though it has its fads and nerdy aspects) and that I needed to pay attention to it. 1000 Words was one of my go-to destinations for reading about new releases. I was so impressed by Natasha Christia’s interview with the author/artist/maker of Dear Clark that I ordered the book and looked with new eyes at its skilful combination of obsessive research, idiosyncratic reenactment and seductive, self-referential layout. As I have learned more about this aspect of contemporary photography culture, I have come to appreciate the extent to which the book reviewers for 1000 Words (variously photographers, writers, book-makers, curators and editors themselves) have contributed both to defining the photobook as a form with its own unique concerns, and to creating a canon-in-progress of its plural possibilities.

4. Julian Stallabrass, Memory of Fire: Images of War and the War of Images
Book Review by James McArdle Issue 16, 2013

In 2008 – five years into a war that had seen the US, UK and allies invade and occupy Iraq – Julian Stallabrass curated the Brighton Photo Biennial as a searing critique of the uses of photography as a tool of pro-war propaganda, exploring the ways photographers past and present can work against the conventions of the genre to provoke other forms of understanding. How can war photography serve as a lesson or a warning rather than just pulling us into its quasi-pornographic thrall? James McArdle draws some of the key issues out of Stallabrass’ 2013 anthology of projects, essays, and interviews related to the festival, pointing to artists including Trevor Paglen, Adam Broomberg & Oliver Chanarin, and Coco Fusco, and writers including Sarah James and Stefaan Decostere.

5. Duane Michals, Storyteller: The Photographs of Duane Michals
Essay by Aaron Schuman Issue 18, 2014

In this feature on Duane Michals, Aaron Schuman traces the historical roots of staged, narrative photography far beyond Cindy Sherman’s Untitled Film Stills to Victorian tableau photography. Schuman argues convincingly that in Michals’ hands the genre does not merely advance photography as an art form, but also grapples with aspects of experience that transcend ordinary vision. Although it may be difficult to identify the direct impact of Michals on contemporary photographers whose work, like his, is filmic (like Jeff Wall), fictive (like Gregory Crewdson) or constructed (like Matt Lipps), Schuman points out that the sophisticated use of series and sequence by photographers such as Paul Graham and Alec Soth owes a debt to Michals’ storytelling capabilities. (The final image in this portfolio, Michals’ This photograph is my proof is my all-time favourite image + text work).

6. Laura El-Tantawy, In the Shadow of the Pyramids
Book Review by Gerry Badger Issue 19, 2015
Matthew Connors, Fire in Cairo
Book Review by Max Houghton Issue 20, 2015

It is difficult for a magazine, which in its previous format, only came out a couple of times a year to respond to current events or political crises like the Arab Spring, especially when photographic projects, like novels, sometimes take years to come to fruition*. Gerry Badger’s 2015 review of Laura El-Tantawy’s book In the Shadow of the Pyramids describes the artist’s response to the events in Tahir Square in 2011 in the context of her own life inside and outside Egypt. In response to this blend of document and personal archive, Badger provides a personal meditation on how we create photographic narratives out of the messy flow of life. Max Houghton’s review of Matthew Connors’ Fire in Cairo in the following issue is a more wrought, imagistic essay, a perfect fit for Connor’s disorienting, back-to-front combination of surreal images and fragmented fiction. Together, these two reviews open a space to consider how we see, remember and understand protest and its aftermath.

7. Saul Leiter Retrospective
Essay by Francis Hodgson Issue 21, 2016

One of the important tasks of the critic is to return to older works and read them afresh in light of current developments. Events may be fixed in the past, but their importance for us shifts in significant ways that need to be acknowledged and articulated. This review illuminates one of the things we take for granted about contemporary photography – that most of it is in colour – and reminds us that it was not always so. Roving across Leiter’s street photography, fashion work and painterly ambitions, Hodgson’s essay and selection of images offer a celebration of Leiter’s glowing Kodachrome aesthetic and illuminate its contemporary appeal.

8. Richard Mosse, Incoming
Essay by Duncan Wooldridge Issue 25, 2017

1000 Words has provided a constructive platform for encountering 21^st century social documentary photographers who use strategies from contemporary art. Photographers like Lisa Barnard (25), Salvatore Vitale (26) and Gideon Mendel (36) offer projects that are rigorously researched, visually and technically innovative, and presented in layered, imaginative forms designed to jolt us out of familiar understandings of social situations. Such work can be highly controversial. This essay by Duncan Wooldridge provides a response to a flurry of topical online debates (by writers including Daniel C. Blight, Lewis Bush and JM Colberg) around Richard Mosse’s exhibition at the Barbican Centre, London and book Incoming from 2017, and its controversial use of military-grade thermal imaging technology to create eerie, spectacular video and still imagery of migrants from the Middle East and Global South. Fiercely analytical and ethically engaged, Woodridge frames the project in the philosophy of Judith Butler and Giorgio Agamben, while keeping an eye on the economic and institutional dilemmas of being a (materially successful) political artist.

9. Lebohang Kganye, Dipina tsa Kganya
Interview with Sarah Allen Issue 34, 2021

For centuries, self-portraiture has provided artists with a way to explore their own identity and self-presentation. A new generation of artist photographers including Arpita Shah (27) Kalen Na’il Roach (32) and Sheida Soleimani (38) are turning to archival imagery, family albums and strategies of montage to counter dominant colonial (and frequently racist) histories with imaginative autonarratives. In this interview with Sarah Allen, Lebohang Kganye (Deutsche Börse Photography Foundation Prize 2024 winner) explores the complexities of figuring her own identity within post-apartheid South Africa, and how the interweaving of family photography and performance gives her scope to recuperate personal, familial and tribal memory within the context of an exhibition in a Bristol slave owner’s 18^th century home.

10. Curator Conversations #11: Alona Pardo Features, 2020

At their best, exhibitions can define practices and the ways they are understood, bringing new ideas into focus. To make this work happen, curators must embody various qualities: administrative, collaborative, critical and visionary. In her contribution to the Curator Conversations feature series, subsequently drawn together into a book, Alona Pardo discusses the layers of consideration that went into the exhibitions she curated at the Barbican before leaving to be Head of the Arts Council Collection. Her drive to facilitate spaces for creative discussion rather than promote her own point of view have led to a series of highly influential exhibitions including Masculinities: Liberation through Photography of 2020 and RE/SISTERS of 2023.

11. Stanley Wolukau-Wanambwa, One Wall a Web
Book Review by Taous R. Dahmani Issue 30, 2019

Photographers are more likely than other kinds of artmakers to also be writers of non-fiction, fiction and/or criticism. This can sharpen the edges of the language they use in their work. In this review, Taous R. Dahmani looks at artist/writer/editor Stanley Wolukau-Wanambwa’s award-winning book One Wall a Web and describes the associative force of his filmic juxtapositions of text and image. Dahmani seeks precedents for his pointed appropriations in the scrapbooks of historical African Americans seeking to reclaim their own representation. On a related note, Dahmani’s response to questions provided by the 1000 Words feature series and book Writer Conversations (edited by myself and Duncan Wooldridge) convey a vivid sense that research and writing around photography are urgent and thrilling. She includes an inspiring list of classic and recent texts related to photography that made me want to run away on an extended reading retreat.

12. Cao Fei, Blueprints
Essay by Sergio Valenzuela-Escobedo Issue 34, 2021

While the cultures of contemporary art and photography share certain structures, there are ongoing disparities in their economic and cultural currency (one reason why many lens-based practitioners insist on being called “artists” rather than “photographers”). It is sometimes difficult for outsiders to decipher the coded language used to place a practice in one camp or the other, especially when some move fluidly between contexts. Sergio Valenzuela-Escobedo’s account of Cao Fei’s 2021 Deutsche Börse Photography Foundation Prize win provides a window into the world of a high-flying international artist, represented by mega-gallery Sprüth Magers and whose astonishingly polished, high-tech, multimedia work is more likely to be seen at Serpentine Gallery or the Venice Biennale than in a dedicated photography gallery. Escobedo’s essay explores the work’s push and pull between ironic simulation and fantastical techno-utopianism. The Chinese State’s role as a geopolitical and industrial superpower is never far out of the frame, but Fei’s relationship to it remains strategically ambiguous. As a productive counterpoint, this issue also features Fergus Heron’s exhibition review of Noémie Goudal’s Post Atlantica (34), a body of photographic and moving image installation work that sits firmly within a contemporary art sphere while also asking rich and probing questions about how photographs operate as documents, images and phantasms. For those interested in the representational politics of The Deusche Börse Photography Foundation Prize, the most prominent international art photography award, see Tim Clark’s impassioned 2020 editorial, ‘False signals and white regimes: an award in need of decolonisation.’

13. Laia Abril, On Rape: And Institutional Failure
Book Review by Jilke Golbach Issue 36, 2022

1000 Words has devoted a significant number of its features to female experience and points of view, including the delirious layered portrait constructions of Dragana Jurišić (22), the intimate portraits of Yukuza women by Chloé Jafé (29) and Carmen Winant’s powerful lexicon of found images around abortion (43). Laia Abril’s On Rape is the middle piece of her trilogy of books On Misogyny, following On Abortion (2016) and leading towards On Mass Hysteria. Bodily harm, trauma, silence, guilt and victim-shaming weave through Jilke Golbach’s review, framing Abril’s investigative project with its evocative, visceral images in relation to the persistence of rape and its impacts in the contemporary world.

14. After the End of History: British Working Class Photography 1989–2024 Exhibition Review by Lillian Wilkie Issue 42, 2024

In photography, as in the rest of society, one of the anxieties about globalisation is that it will erode local cultures. At the same time, we live with the paradox that it is often in relation to each other’s intersectional differences that our own distinctive cultures come into focus. An important strand of 1000 Words essays and reviews has explored work by photographers from the UK and Ireland, well-known ones (like Brian Griffin, 20) and those deserving greater attention (Vanessa Winship, 16), those exploring private relationships (Matthew Finn, 25), those who record distinctive local places and material culture (Café Royal Books, 41), and those who explore the performance of Britishness (Simon Roberts, 27). In this review, Lillian Wilkie dives into Johnny Pitts’ unruly travelling exhibition of British photography since the fall of the Berlin Wall, her vivid language looping around the rich mix of photography to ask, as the exhibition does, how we might reimagine the cultural and creative force of the British working class after Thatcherism.

15. London City Guide
Tim Clark with Thomas King Features, 2024

When I ask photography students to read magazines, it is to improve their knowledge of recent practices and debates, and to introduce them to the key figures, communities, activities, institutions and markets that make up the contemporary network. The intermittent city guides, festival highlights, annual photobook roundups and even obituaries provided by 1000 Words provide different angles on a scene that is growing, multifaceted and increasingly interconnected. The London City Guide sets the stage by providing an instructive analysis of the current crisis in UK arts and education funding before introducing a handful of the leading institutions, including the V&A, The Photographers’ Gallery and Autograph, as well as Flowers Gallery as a sample of a large commercial gallery, and Large Glass as an example of a smaller gallery making interesting propositions about photography within contemporary art. These features provide a vital way to trace flows of influence in the UK and internationally. They also fulfil one of the original key functions of art criticism: providing a pleasurable vicarious experience of things we may not be able to see in person. ♦

—
An artist, critic and art historian, Lucy Soutter is Reader in Photography at the University of Westminster where she is Course Leader of the Expanded Photography MA. She is author of Why Art Photography? (2018) and co-editor with Duncan Wooldridge of Writer Conversations (2023) and The Routledge Companion to Global Photographies (2024).

1000 Words favourites

• Renée Mussai on exhibitions as sites of dialogue, critique, and activism.

• Roxana Marcoci navigates curatorial practice in the digital age.

• Tanvi Mishra reviews Felipe Romero Beltrán’s Dialect.

• Discover London’s top five photography galleries.

• Tim Clark in conversation with Hayward Gallery’s Ralph Rugoff on Hiroshi Sugimoto.

• Academic rigour and essayistic freedom as told by Taous R. Dahmani.

What we’re reading #2: Autumn 2024

For the second instalment of What we’re reading the focus sharpens on both the urgency of our deepening political crises and the symbolic power of messianic imagery. Thomas King spotlights Yanis Varoufakis’ ongoing analysis of big tech, insights into the current U.S. election campaigns courtesy of David Levi Strauss, an eagerly anticipated book from Ekow Eshun that offers a form of literary portraiture of five black men, and more, presenting an overview of recent reflections at the intersection of politics, technology, and visual culture.

Thomas King | Resource | 12 Sep 2024

Yanis Varoufakis, Technofeudalism: What Killed Capitalism Penguin Books, June 2024

In Technofeudalism: What Killed Capitalism, popular economist and ex-Greek finance minister Yanis Varoufakis details the ascendancy of big tech oligarchs to the status of modern feudal overlords. He argues that the traditional capitalist engine – ‘private profit fuelled by central bank money’ – has been supplanted. In its stead, digital fiefdoms orchestrated by tech platforms extract value and ‘cloud capital’ from the masses, the purpose of which is to ‘train us, to train it, to train us’ while consolidating power within a diminutive oligarchy. Taking the form of a letter addressed to his recently deceased father, Varoufakis charts the evolution of capitalism from the 1960s into the present era. Here, Varoufakis contends that capitalism’s unchecked triumph has led to its latest grotesque mutation.

Varoufakis argues that the likes of Amazon and Facebook embody a new techno-order where digital platforms with a single algorithm dictates what is sold, who sees it, and how much ‘cloud rent’ is siphoned from vassal (or traditional) capitalists. Economic power is then seen to be shifting from traditional markets to digital spheres of operation controlled by small groups of unimaginably wealthy and powerful individuals. Within this hierarchy, vassal capitalists are squeezed by platform overlords, cloud proletarians (Amazon warehouse workers) are surveilled and managed by algorithms, and cloud serfs – everyday users – unwittingly contribute free labour, enhancing big tech’s capital stock. As wealth extraction has moved beyond traditional profit to a more insidious form of rent, Varoufakis describes the masses as ‘unpaid producers, toiling the landlords’ digital estates,’ much like feudal peasants who viewed their labour as integral to their identity. He warns that while today’s tech barons ‘treat their users however they like’ and are seemingly impervious to resistance, a ‘cloud rebellion’ offers hope. Varoufakis insists that ‘unless we band together, we shall never civilise or socialise cloud capital,’ nor will we reclaim our autonomy from its pervasive control.

‘This Is Not Just an Image’ | David Levi Strauss for The Brooklyn Rail, July 2024

‘Dying to make an image?’: this is the question David Levi Strauss, writer, poet, cultural critic asks of America’s deepening political crisis in a series of dispatches published in The Brooklyn Rail. Across numerous instalments Strauss delves into the polarising campaign period, refining his concept of ‘iconopolitics’ – where words and images become disconnected from reality. His analysis begins with the recent assassination attempt on Donald Trump, which despite its apparent failure, baptised him ‘in blood and in the image’ and arrived at an opportune moment to reinforce his messianic image – further amplified at the Republican National Convention shortly thereafter. Strauss’s inquiry has since extended to Trump’s choice of J.D Vance as his running mate – ‘an absolutely malleable subservient Vice President’ – and to Joe Biden’s passing of the torch to Kamala Harris, where ‘the old feeble man in the race is now Donald Trump.’

Although his 2020 book, Co-Illusion: Dispatches from the End of Communication, predates Trump’s iconic mug shot and the subsequent assassination attempt image, it crucially outlines the rise of Trump and Trumpism. Here, Strauss reveals the underlying decay in American exceptionalism and the evolving nature of how words and images are produced and perceived to make the current surreality possible. Strauss then delineates the latest iconic political image – more than just an image, as he contends – that has pierced the social psyche. The photograph of Trump that we all know, with his fist raised and face bloodied, is noted for its powerful, pyramid-like composition. Strauss concludes that this evocative frame distils a complex moment and, with its messianic overtones, will serve to reinforce belief, where both ‘images and politics are primarily about belief.’

‘How They Fell’ | Max Pinckers for De Standaard, July 2024

If Strauss argues that images rely on belief, Max Pinckers posits that ‘most iconic pictures are shrouded in controversy that alludes to their mythical powers.’ In his essay How They Fall, Pinckers critically examines the mythic significance of such images. Commissioned by Flemish newspaper De Standaard to write about a photograph that defines his life, Pinckers chose instead to focus on an image of death – or the illusion of it: Robert Capa’s The Falling Soldier, purportedly capturing the precise moment a Libertarian Youth soldier is shot during the Spanish Civil War. Pinckers challenges the authenticity of this image, which has been the subject of intense debate since the 1970s. He speculates on the photograph’s origins, writing that ‘most iconic photographs stand in for an event that they do not literally represent,’ suggesting that images are ‘experienced collectively and cannot claim a singular truth.’ Regarding The Falling Soldier, Pinckers notes that we often choose to believe the more compelling or dramatic narrative – that this image captures the split second when a man’s life ends. What does this reveal about our society? In a world increasingly mediated by social media, iconic images serve as ‘monuments’ to the histories that sustain them, encapsulating entire worlds in a single frame. These images, Pinckers suggests, are less about documenting reality and more about the widespread beliefs and master narratives we impose upon them.

Ekow Eshun, The Strangers: Five Extraordinary Black Men and the Worlds That Made Them, Penguin Books, September 2024

Writer, curator, and broadcaster Ekow Eshun presents The Stranger published by Penguin, an incisive study of five Black men – Ira Aldridge, Matthew Henson, Frantz Fanon, Malcolm X, and Justin Fashanu – all of whom grapple with the pervasive experience of exile and estrangement. Eshun approaches these figures, in his own words, not through the lens of ‘conventional biography’, but as a form of literary portraiture – intimate, impressionistic and acutely observed. Eshun’s objective is clear: “I wanted to give voice to the inner lives of these men. To explore what it feels like to be made Other, while also giving subjective lens to the ideas and dreams that sustained them.” His prose, both precise and evocative, renders these individuals not as mere subjects of historical scrutiny, but as complex persons navigating a world that relentlessly marginalises. By charting their trajectories within the wider framework of Black history and culture, Eshun reveals the intricate interplay of alienation, identity, and the unyielding quest for dignity. The Stranger is more than a historical account; it is a critical intervention that restores agency to its subjects, offering a profound meditation on the intricacies of belonging and the lasting impact of othering.

Ex-Machina, A24, Screenplay Book, MACK, July 2024

Ex-Machina is the first title in the Screenplay Collection by MACK and A24, ‘the first of its kind between a studio and a publishing house.’ Each Screenplay Book focuses on an individual film and includes the entire script as well as original essays, director-selected frames, behind-the-scenes content and other extras. This edition features Alex Garland’s celebrated sci-fi script, essays by queer theorist Jack Halberstam and AI expert Murray Shanahan, and concept art by Jock. Shanahan, a cognitive robotics expert who consulted on the film, warns of the dangers of creating human-like AI and questions whether we should craft beings ‘capable of both empathy and suffering.’ Whether we engineer AI from scratch or emulate the human brain, his cautionary message remains critically relevant a decade after the film’s release.

The film of course stars Domhnall Gleeson as Caleb, a programmer who wins a week at the secluded estate of tech CEO Nathan (Oscar Isaac), and explores ideas of artificial intelligence, consciousness and ethics. Caleb’s task is to determine whether Ava (Alicia Vikander), an advanced humanoid robot, possesses AI. Nathan’s creation of Ava is more than a scientific achievement; it asserts control over nature, positioning himself as a god-like figure. In a telling moment from the film, Nathan reveals to Caleb that his competitors thought search engines were “a map of what people were thinking. Actually, they were a map of how people were thinking. Impulse, response. Fluid, imperfect. Patterned, chaotic.” However, despite this warning, Ex Machina becomes concerned with Ava’s personal liberation and manipulation of the humans around her. She challenges perceptions of consciousness and autonomy as she becomes the ‘God’ of her own story – a true deus ex machina. While the book explores the layers of authorship behind the film, Garland’s script and the book as a whole stand as a complex, multifaceted work, engaging readers in a dialogue about reality, perception and control in the age of AI.♦

—
Thomas King is Editorial Assistant at 1000 Words and a student on BA (Hons) Culture, Criticism, Curation at Central Saint Martins, University of the Arts London.

Images:

1-Cover for Yanis Varoufakis, Technofeudalism: What Killed Capitalism (Penguin Books, 2024)

2-Republican presidential candidate former President Donald Trump is surrounded by U.S. Secret Service agents at a campaign rally, Saturday, July 13, 2024, in Butler, Pa. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)

4-Cover for Ekow Eshun, The Strangers: Five Extraordinary Black Men and the Worlds That Made Them (Penguin Books, 2024)

5-Still from Ex-Machina

1000 Words favourites

• Renée Mussai on exhibitions as sites of dialogue, critique, and activism.

• Roxana Marcoci navigates curatorial practice in the digital age.

• Tanvi Mishra reviews Felipe Romero Beltrán’s Dialect.

• Discover London’s top five photography galleries.

• Tim Clark in conversation with Hayward Gallery’s Ralph Rugoff on Hiroshi Sugimoto.

• Academic rigour and essayistic freedom as told by Taous R. Dahmani.

What we’re reading #1: Summer 2024

Introducing What we’re reading, our new column where we set off on a literary journey to discover writing that intersects critical thinking and visual culture. Each instalment features a selection of recently published titles, articles and interviews from around the web and world of print, offering a spotlight onto a myriad of contemporary concerns. Kicking off the series, Editorial Assistant Thomas King writes about Anne Carson’s thoughtful Paris Review interview, Fatos Üstek’s blueprint for new institutional horizons, Holly Connolly’s assessment of social media protest posting, and more.

Thomas King | Resource | 27 June 2024

‘What Is The Purpose of Protest Posting?’ | Holly Connolly for ArtReview, March 2024

Holly Connolly’s words for ArtReview carry urgency as she questions how we can give ‘the correct weight’ to images of genocide, in light of the ongoing bombardment of Gaza and ‘recurring condition of objectification’. The article underscores the paradox of social media activism, wherein the boundaries of “meaningful” political action are often blurred. Connolly cites recent images of stripped and blindfolded Palestinian men presided over by IDF soldiers, drawing a parallel with the infamous Abu Ghraib photographs taken by US soldiers in 2004. She goes on to condemn perpetrators who broadcast their atrocities committed upon others and notes that, even when they wield the camera, it lets the subject address a possible future viewer beyond the present horror, making us, the onlookers, accountable to them, and in turn witnesses, ‘part of a kind of citizenry of photography’ (what Ariella Aïsha Azouley refers to as ‘transit visas’). Ultimately, Connolly asks: ‘does an image reshared in opposition to its original intent perpetuate the initial violation of its subject?’. Connolly concludes by applauding the fastidious work of Forensic Architecture, whose crucial efforts to document the destruction of medical infrastructure in Gaza – through cross referencing hundreds of reports alongside photographs from numerous social media sites – prompt us to question our role as witnesses to genocide in a digital age.

‘Throwing Yourself Into the Dark: A Conversation with Anne Carson’ | Kate Dwyer for The Paris Review, April 2024

Kate Dwyer interviews Anne Carson, the erudite essayist and poet, on the release of Wrong Norma (2024), her first work in eight years. When asked about the book’s title, Carson refers to academic life as a constant balancing act on the brink of ‘wrongness’ and ponders how contradiction might serve to loosen the mind. Having translated numerous Greek tragedies, Carson describes how the translation process interacts within a space she likens to a ditch filled with floating possibilities. She cites Emily Dickinson’s works as a form of self-translation, with poems existing in their ‘untidy, unresolved entirety’ – those that confront the space, or nothingness, as John Cage would put it, between dialogue that Carson advocates. Her latest work – ‘a collection of disparate pieces, not a coherent thing with a throughline or themes or a way you have to read it’ – represents her newest self-translations that continue to explore the emptiness of a page and absence-as-presence. As for the creative process, Carson explains that sometimes, she chooses to simply focus on writing about the light in her apartment. This engrossment illustrates our willingness to halt time, to immerse ourselves in ‘total attention’, to be fully present and unaffected by its passage. The poet concludes the interview by lamenting that she only has fleeting minutes to experience this state of being, and so, while it may be some time before we receive another work, in the meantime, we can gain so much from what she articulates in this interview, or, as she would argue, what she doesn’t.

‘The Automation of General Intelligence’ | Matteo Pasquinelli for e-flux Journal, December 2023

In Issue 141 of e-flux, Matteo Pasquinelli expands on the release of his book, The Eye of The Master (2023), which probes into the intricate relationship between labour, automation and AI. Linking historical developments in labour theory and contemporary technological advancements, Pasquinelli argues that ‘technical artefacts reveal the form of the society that surrounds and runs them’. Pasquinelli meticulously traces how AI represents less a revolutionary departure from previous modes of automation but rather the culmination of a lengthy history of labour quantification, social hierarchy and technological evolution. He details the transition from the industrial division of labour to intricate systems like AI, revealing the role of cybernetics, psychology and economics in deciphering social dynamics. Advocating for a transformative political approach to reimagining AI, Pasquinelli underscores the imperative for collective action to challenge existing power structures and reimagine labour and social relations. He advocates for a culture of invention and design that prioritises community wellbeing over technological determinism, stating: ‘in confronting the epistemology of AI and its regime of knowledge extractivism, a different technical mentality, a collective “counter-intelligence”, has to be learned.’ Recognising that ‘the first step of techno-politics is not technological but political’, Pasquinelli urges us to challenge prevailing modes of thinking and empower communities to shape the future of technology in alignment with their values and interests, thereby inspiring a new vision for the role of politics in the AI era.

Fatoş Üstek, The Art Institution of Tomorrow: Reinventing the Model Lund Humphries, April 2024

The Art Institution of Tomorrow: Reinventing the Model (2024) by Fatoş Üstek is a manifesto advocating for the urgent transformation of art institutions in order to adapt according to contemporary social, economic and environmental changes. This book is part of Lund Humphries’ ‘Hot Topics in the Art World’ series and serves as a call to action for art institutions worldwide to break free from stagnation in favour of embracing a new model centred on artists and inclusivity. The current stagnation, Üstek argues, is exacerbated by financial constraints, underpaid staff and outdated operational frameworks, resulting in a lack of innovation and relevance. She writes that current art institutions lack ‘the resourcefulness to imagine new horizons’ and risk losing relevance unless they refocus on their core purposes and undergo significant structural and operational transformations. Declaring an institutional crisis that ‘manifests itself in stale and populist programming that lacks curatorial rigour and artistic nuance’, Üstek argues that this results in ‘a cultural offer for everyone that is about everything and nothing in particular’. In reinventing the model, she then lays out a two-pronged strategy to rejuvenate art institutions: focusing on an artist-centric model and implementing radical decentralisation. Firstly, she emphasises the importance of centring artists in all institutional activities, from commissioning to structuring budgets that comprehensively support the artistic process. Secondly, she argues for removing existing institutional hierarchies in favour of cross-disciplinary teams, aiming to foster commitment and engagement among staff and create a supportive environment conducive to superior creative output. While there are questions about the feasibility of creating such committed and decentralised teams, Üstek presents a blueprint for restructure that we must imagine is possible to foresee a new institutional horizon.

‘It’s Not What the World Needs Right Now’ | Andrew Norman Wilson for The Baffler, April 2024

Andrew Norman Wilson offers a raw, humorous and harrowing account of his life as a contemporary artist within an ‘echo chamber/conference room where overeducated try-hards compete to display the most perfect politics.’ Wilson writes to his resourcefulness and internal struggles as he competed (and competes) with a system often indifferent to individual plight. Despite exhibiting in prestigious biennials, financial stability eluded him as only a windfall from FedEx losing his sculpture allowed him to buy an old Volvo and travel West, seeking the role of an ‘LA Artist’. Fast forward a few years, Wilson precariously navigates life, staying in an Airbnb themed like a medieval castle, undergoing medical procedures at the shadowy Airport Endoscopy Center, while witnessing the Capitol riots under a Trump administration that deemed art as less ‘urgent’. Here, he begins to grapple with his artistic identity and the harsh realities of his career. His ‘success’ is imbued with chronic health issues, drug abuse, suicidal tendencies, financial instability and isolation (albeit punctuated by the companionship of his mother’s rabbit, Ziggles). Wilson reflects on his lifestyle, stating: ‘The maxim “money doesn’t buy happiness” starts to ring in my head. Not because I actually have money, but because I’m living with the material comforts of someone who does, and it doesn’t seem to make me feel any better.’ For Wilson, as for many outside society’s elite, the entrenched immobility within social hierarchies – an institutionalised issue perpetuated by the myth of meritocracy – fosters a profound sense of impostorism, felt intensely on the fringes of the art world. Describing the world as caught ‘between the demands of yacht owners and delusional incompetents with advanced deskilling degrees’, Wilson says he will defect and let others ‘get bullied’ into shallow pursuits and deceptive practices, as he avoids gallery openings and talks. In 2024, as Wilson gets closer to shooting a romantic thriller long in the pipeline, we can say that the art world does not need more governed voices. It has plenty of them. Instead, it needs the vulnerability of artists like Wilson, who expose the ‘cottage industry of critical art’ from within, not least through the voice of a defiant outsider.♦

—
Thomas King is Editorial Assistant at 1000 Words and a student on BA (Hons) Culture, Criticism, Curation at Central Saint Martins, University of the Arts London.

Images:

3-Cover for Matteo Pasquinelli, The Eye of the Master: A Social History of Artificial Intelligence (Verso Books, 2023)

4-Cover for Fatoş Üstek, The Art Institution of Tomorrow: Reinventing the Model (Lund Humphries 2024)

1000 Words favourites

• Renée Mussai on exhibitions as sites of dialogue, critique, and activism.

• Roxana Marcoci navigates curatorial practice in the digital age.

• Tanvi Mishra reviews Felipe Romero Beltrán’s Dialect.

• Discover London’s top five photography galleries.

• Tim Clark in conversation with Hayward Gallery’s Ralph Rugoff on Hiroshi Sugimoto.

• Academic rigour and essayistic freedom as told by Taous R. Dahmani.

London city guide

Top five photography galleries

Selected by Tim Clark and Thomas King

As the dust settles on Photo London 2024 and Peckham 24 – the capital’s two key points of reference within the UK photography calendar – we benchmark five leading London galleries and museums who are making a sustained effort to create productive and welcoming spaces for the encounter, use and consideration of photography today.

Tim Clark with Thomas King | City guide | 14 June 2024 | In association with MPB

At a time when the funding climate in the UK is at its least favourable in decades, setting up – let alone sustaining – a gallery dedicated to the art of photography, public or otherwise, is far from straightforward. The sector is currently groaning under the weight of government funding cuts, exorbitant energy bills, messy logistical and bureaucratic ramifications arising from Brexit, the fallout of the pandemic and cost of living crisis; not to mention the constant undermining of the arts in education in favour of science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) subjects at the hand of the outgoing Tory party, allied with pedalling culture wars and all round anathema.

Yet, despite – and even in spite of – these significant challenges, the UK government’s own estimates show that the creative industries generated £126 billion in gross value added to the economy and employed 2.4 million people in 2022 alone. A global leader clearly, but one that is woefully underfunded, leaving an increasing amount of arts organisations out to dry as they struggle to thrive in one of the world’s most expensive cities. In a parallel universe, the city of Berlin’s culture budget for 2024 is set at €947 million (with a population of 3.56 million) while the entire culture budget for England in 2024 pales in comparison at £458.5 million (with a population of 57 million): two wildly different per capita spends.

Meanwhile, in March this year, opposition party leader Kier Starmer spoke at the Labour Creatives Conference claiming he would “build a new Britain out of the ashes of the failed Tory project” and restore, what he called, the UK’s “diminished” status on the global stage. His top line pledges were as follows: getting art and design courses back on the curriculum, supporting freelancers’ rights, cracking down on ticket touting and improving access to creative apprenticeships. Essentially, promising to ensure creative skills are a necessity, not a luxury. To use the creative industries as a form of soft power. But it will require a detailed arts strategy coupled with fierce and charismatic advocates, and, crucially, increases in funding for the arts to European levels to get the UK’s cultural infrastructure back on sturdier ground. It is nothing short of a miracle, then, to have London gallery and museum spaces fully participating in a civic society at such a high calibre level.

What follows is a rundown of five leading London galleries and museums who are making a sustained effort to create productive and welcoming spaces for the encounter, use and consideration of photography today. It should be noted that there are a handful of medium specific spaces that haven’t been included, but doubtless could be. Among them: the ambitious British Centre for Photography currently looking for a permanent home; Tate, whose new Senior Curator of Photography and International Art, Singaporean Charmaine Toh, is just a few months in post; beloved and sorely missed Seen Fifteen (its founding director Vivienne Gamble now channels her energies towards growing the annual photography festival Peckham 24); Webber Gallery, which has seemingly shifted the emphasis of its exhibitions’ focus to a vast Los Angeles space; not neglecting to mention stalwart dealer Michael Hoppen whose eponymous gallery no longer operates from its multi-floor premises on Jubilee Place, instead opting for a location in Holland Park. Hopefully that goes some way to account for their omissions. There are other bricks and mortar spaces too: Hamiltons, MMX, Atlas, IWM’s Blavatnik Art, Film and Photography Galleries, TJ Boutling, Huxley-Parlour, Leica, Photofusion, Albumen, Purdy Hicks, Camera Eye, Augusta Edwards Fine Art and Doyle Wham, all worthy of a mention and giving much cause for celebration.

Autograph

Autograph
Rivington Place, London, EC2A 3BA
+44 020 7729 9200
autograph.org.uk

Every exhibition that Autograph stages is unmissable. The organisation’s remit is to ‘champion the work of artists who use photography and film to highlight questions of race, representation, human rights and social justice’, and it offers opportunity after opportunity to see powerful and vitally important work. Far from jumping on any bandwagon, this mission has long been embedded within the organisation, its practices and via ambitious work. Autograph was established in 1988 to support black photographic practices, and began in a small office in the Bon Marché building in Brixton, when it was known as the Association of Black Photographers (ABP). It applied for charitable status and moved to a permanent home at Rivington Place in Shoreditch in 2007, the first purpose-built space dedicated to the development and presentation of culturally diverse arts in England, decades before museums considered it necessary to start rethinking themselves.

Autograph punches significantly above its weight, and has long been an essential port of call for any photography lover living in or coming through the city, not to mention the impact on the capital’s culture at large. Largely owing to the skill and determination of visionary director Mark Sealy OBE – in post since 1991 – and talented and rigorous curator Bindi Vora, exhibitions at Autograph are born out of a professional methodology that is fundamentally interdisciplinary and grounded in both real-life research and experience. Yet it also moves past cultures of “them and us” to routinely bring to life transgressive and inclusive commissions, projects and publications.

As one of Arts Council England’s National Portfolio Organisations (NPO), Autograph saw a 30% uplift increase from £712,880 to £1,012,880 a year to support its work for the period of 2023–2026 (as per the last round of funding decisions announced in 2022). Stuart Hall once served as a chair on the board and Autograph’s unique collection contains works by Rotimi Fani-Kayode, Zanele Muholi, James Barnor, Lina Iris Viktor, Yinka Shonibare, Ingrid Pollard, Joy Gregory, Colin Jones, Phoebe Boswell, Raphael Albert, Ajamu and others.

V&A Photography Centre

V&A Photography Centre
Cromwell Road, London, SW7 2RL
+44 020 7942 2000
vam.ac.uk/info/photography-centre

Two transformative moments in the recent history of the V&A’s longstanding relationship with photography have been, firstly, the appointment of scholarly curator Duncan Forbes as the inaugural Director of Photography in 2020, who came from the Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles, and then the launch of The Parasol Foundation in Women Photography Project in 2022, spearheaded by the prodigious Fiona Rogers. Dedicated to supporting women artists though acquisitions, research and education, augmented through a commissioning programme with support from the Parasol Foundation Trust, Rogers’ programme also features an increasingly important prize established to identify, support and champion women artists. It attracted over 1,400 submissions for the 2024 edition produced in partnership with Peckham24.

Prior to this, its vast photography holdings were bolstered when the Royal Photographic Society (RPS) Collection was transferred in 2017, and the collection now runs to over 800,000 photographs that span the 1820s to the present day. Programmes have evolved amidst a backdrop of institutional accountability and inclusivity during the dramatic changes we’ve witnessed in recent years and has embraced dynamic contemporary practices as well as pivoted to account for the medium’s many histories. It’s now the largest space in the UK dedicated to a permanent photography collection, with a total of seven galleries, three rooms of which focus on contemporary international practices with Noémie Goudal and Hoda Afshar commanding ample space, the mighty impressive resource that is The Kusuma Gallery – Photography and the Book, and The Meta Media Gallery – Digital Gallery. Fledging curators: take note of The Curatorial Fellowship in Photography opportunity, supported by The Bern Schwartz Family Foundation, aimed to facilitate in-depth research into under-recognised aspects of the photography collection.

The Photographers’ Gallery

The Photographers’ Gallery
16-18 Ramillies St, London, W1F 7LW
+44 020 7087 9300
thephotographersgallery.org.uk

While the restrictive nature of its building – a converted, six story former textiles warehouse situated off Oxford Street in the heart of Soho – doesn’t make for an optimum exhibition experience, The Photographers’ Gallery remains an important and well-visited public gallery for photography in London. TPG spaces are tricky given the premises’ vertical orientation and warren-like galleries, but recent exhibitions such as the exemplary Daido Moriyama: A Retrospective, guest curated by Thyago Nogueira of São Paulo’s Instituto Moreira Salles, did well to turn the entire gallery into something coherent.

Founded by the late Sue Davies OBE (1933-2020) in 1971 as the UK’s first public gallery dedicated to photography, TPG has a strong legacy and recently saw is funding maintained at £918,867 per year as one of Arts Council England’s NPOs during the 2022 announcement, the same year it launched its outdoor cultural space, Soho Photography Quarter – a rotating open air programme with much potential. It’s the world-class education and talks offer, programmed and curated by Janice McLaren and Luisa Ulyett, that are among its standout qualities. Workshops and short courses are just some of the events that broaden access and steer conversation. At street and basement level there is an innovative Digital Wall catering for photography’s increased automated and networked lives, a print sales gallery, well-stocked bookshop and much-loved café area providing a condensation point for a range of different publics. TPG’s annual exhibition, The Deutsche Börse Photography Foundation Prize, an award of £30,000, has also entered a new phase since 2020 to include a broader range of voices as evidenced by the past five winners: Mohamed Bourouissa, Cao Fei, Deana Lawson, Samuel Fosso and Lebohang Kganye.

Former Photoworks director Shoair Mavlian took the helm in 2023, positive news given her curatorial background, NPO experience and canny thought leadership. Of course, it takes a couple of years for a new incumbent to put their stamp on a place like this but TPG is primed to reap the benefits of Mavlian’s ethos – contemporary, generous and diverse – and question what the space can be and who it can be for in order to thrive into the future.

Large Glass Gallery

Large Glass Gallery
392 Caledonian Road, London, N1 1DN
+44 020 7609 9345
largeglass.co.uk

In 2011, former director of Frith Street Gallery, Charlotte Schepke established a contemporary art gallery that leans heavily into photography: the innovative and elegant Large Glass Gallery based near Kings Cross on the edge of central London. Large Glass bills itself as an ‘alternative to the mainstream commercial gallery scene’, a description that is wholly warranted in light of its original and inquisitive approach to exhibition-making. From the inaugural exhibition, a precedent was set: channelling the energy of Marcel Duchamp by way of eclectic presentations of artworks, design pieces and found objects that take inspiration from the father of Conceptual Art, not only nodding to his famed work The Bride Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors, Even (1915–1923), more commonly known as ‘The Large Glass’, but through embracing experimental juxtapositions.

Playful use of concepts and materials are still to be found and the current “rolling” exhibition is in case in point. Staged in three parts, After Mallarmé is curated by Michael Newman, who is Professor of Art Writing at Goldsmiths, University of London. The heady thematic exhibition riffs off the works and legacy of French poet Stéphane Mallarmé to reflect on ideas of spaces, the page, the book, chance, mobility and contingency. Whereas, previously this year, Francesco Neri: Boncellino offered a more classic take via a selection of quiet and meditative, mostly black-and-white portraits of farmers and the farming community in the countryside around Modena in northern Italy, ‘a census of a village’s population’. Large Glass’ represented artists are: Hélène Binet, Guido Guidi, Hendl Helen Mirra, Francesco Neri and Mark Ruwedel.

Flowers Gallery

Flowers Gallery
21 Cork Street, London, W1S 3LZ
+44 020 7439 7766

82 Kingsland Road, London, E2 8DP
+44 020 7920 777
flowersgallery.com

Heavyweight Canadian photographer Ed Burtynsky may occupy much of the limelight at Flowers Gallery and their presence at art fairs such as Photo London and Paris Photo (Burtynsky was recently the subject of back-to-back exhibitions at the gallery’s Cork Street space which coincided with Saatchi Gallery’s major 2024 retrospective, BURTYNSKY: EXTRACTION / ABSTRACTION, the largest exhibition ever mounted in Burtynsky’s 40+ year career), but it boasts an impressive roster of photographers. This has been built up over years, first by Diana Poole then Chris Littlewood who established the department now run by Lieve Beumer. Among them: Edmund Clark, Boomoon, Shen Wei, Robert Polidori, Julie Cockburn, Gaby Laurent, Tom Lovelace, Simon Roberts, Esther Teichmann, Lorenzo Vitturi, Michael Wolf, Mona Kuhn, Nadav Kander and Lisa Jahovic, all recognised for their engagement with important socio-cultural, political and environmental themes. Aficionados of the medium may hope for further in-depth and major photography exhibitions in due course from the esteemed gallery, but despite Flowers’ deep commitment to photography, it works across a range of media within contemporary art.

Flowers has presented more than 900 exhibitions across global locations, including from New York and Hong Kong outposts, and lists a total of 80 represented artists. Established in 1970 by Angela Flowers (1932–2023), Flowers has long held East End venues, initially in the heart of Hackney with Flowers East on Richmond Road, set up in 1988, before moving to Kingsland Road in Shoreditch in 2002, a 12,000 square foot venue spread over three floors of a 19^th century warehouse, arguably London’s most elegant white cube space within which to view photography. ♦

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Tim Clark is Editor in Chief at 1000 Words and Artistic Director for Fotografia Europea in Reggio Emilia, Italy, together with Walter Guadagnini and Luce Lebart. He also teaches at The Institute of Photography, Falmouth University.

Thomas King is Editorial Assistant at 1000 Words and a student on BA (Hons) Culture, Criticism, Curation at Central Saint Martins, University of the Arts London.

Images:

2-Hélène Amouzou: Voyages exhibition at Autograph. 22 September 2023-20 January 2024. Curated by Bindi Vora. © Kate Elliot

3-Wilfred Ukpong: Niger-Delta / Future-Cosmos exhibition at Autograph. 16 February-1 June 2024. Curated by Mark Sealy. © Kate Elliot

4-Gibson Thornley Architects, V&A Photography Centre. Installation view of Untitled (Giant Phoenix), 2022, Noemié Goudal, Photography Now – Gallery 96 © Thomas Adank

8>9-Daido Moriyama: A Retrospective exhibition at The Photographers’ Gallery. 6 October 2023-11 February 2024. © Kate Elliot

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