Tag: Duncan Wooldridge

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)

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 #4

Valentina Abenavoli

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.

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

—
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-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

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.

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

—
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-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.

Photobook Conversations #2

Aneta Kowalczyk

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.

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

—
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-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

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.

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

—
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-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 21st 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 21st 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 21st 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 18th 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.

1000 Words

Writer Conversations

(Still available)

Click here to order your copy of Writer Conversations.

£13.99

Book launch/event
Thursday 23 March 2023
The Photographers’ Gallery, London
Details here

Writer Conversations offers a lively and engaging analysis of the practice of writing on photography. Composed as interviews with highly distinctive writers at the forefront of discourses and debates around visual culture, it provides sustained exploration into the processes and motivations that have given rise to an array of critical commentary and intellectual histories shaping the understanding, appreciation and study of photography today.

Formed of knowledge from culturally diverse worlds, viewpoints and approaches, the book brings together a range of voices from authors such as Tina M. Campt, David Campany and David Levi Strauss to Christopher Pinney, Joanna Zylinska, and Simon Njami. Drawing on relevant historical and contemporary examples, it grapples with bonds between looking and writing, seeing and “entering” images, qualities admired in other writers, professional demands and the frameworks of criticality. The writers also attend to inclusive and representative strategies, white supremacy and structures of inequality and complicity, autobiography and lived experience, synthesising social and environmental justice, and connecting readers to new emotional and critical perspectives beyond dominant and historically established narratives. Writer Conversations sets out models for imagining ways of writing on the currency and status of the photographic image amidst radical global transformations and a medium departing in new directions.

Featuring Taco Hidde Bakker, Daniel C. Blight, David Campany, Tina M. Campt, Taous R. Dahmani, Horacio Fernández, Max Houghton, Tanvi Mishra, Simon Njami, Christopher Pinney, Zoé Samudzi, Olga Smith, David Levi Strauss, Deborah Willis, Wu Hung, Joanna Zylinska 

Editors Duncan Wooldridge
and Lucy Soutter
Series Editor Tim Clark
Copy Editor Alessandro Merola
Art Direction & Design Sarah Boris
Printed and bound in Great Britain
by Clays Ltd, Elcograf S.p.A

Duncan Wooldridge is an artist, writer and curator. He is Course Director for MA Fine Art Photography at Camberwell College of Arts, University of the Arts London, and is the author of John Hilliard: Not Black and White (Ridinghouse, 2014) and To Be Determined: Photography and the Future (SPBH Editions, 2021).

Lucy Soutter is an artist, critic and art historian. She is Course Leader of MA Photography Arts at the University of Westminster, and is the author of Why Art Photography? (Routledge, 2nd ed. 2018)

Publication date February 2023
Format Softcover
Dimensions 198 mm x 129 mm
Pages 144
Publisher 1000 Words (1000 Words Photography Ltd)
ISBN 978-1-3999-3649-1

Distribution
Public Knowledge Books
diane@publicknowledgebooks.com
www.publicknowledgebooks.com

Writer Conversations #10

Tanvi Mishra

Based in New Delhi, India, Tanvi Mishra works with images as a photo editor, curator, and writer. Among her interests are South Asian visual histories, representation within image-making as well as the notion of fiction in photography, particularly in the current political landscape.

Until recently, she was the Creative Director of The Caravan, a journal of politics and culture published out of Delhi. She is part of the photo-editorial team of PIX and works as an independent curator forming part of the curatorial teams of Photo Kathmandu, Delhi Photo Festival as well as the upcoming BredaPhoto Biennial in 2022. She has served on multiple juries, including World Press Photo, Chennai Photo Biennale Photo Awards and the Catchlight Global Fellowship. She has also been a mentor for the Women Photograph programme and is part of the first international advisory committee of World Press Photo.

Some of her recent writing includes Viral Images: The role of photography in documenting India’s COVID-19 disaster (The Caravan magazine; 2021); Photography in Crisis: Repurposing the Medium for Solidarity and Action (FOAM Magazine, 2020); The New Era of South Asian Photography Festivals; (Aperture, 2021); Archive as Companion: text accompanying Priya Kambli’s work ‘Buttons for Eyes’ (PIX Vol. 18 Passages; 2022); The Great Upheaval: Can the digital revolution potentially shift the power dynamic in photography? (Viewbook Transformations; 2017). She has also contributed to books including WHY EXHIBIT: Positions on exhibiting photographies (FW: Books, 2018) and exhibition catalogues such as Taxed to the Max (Noordelicht International Photography Festival, 2020).

At what point did you start to write about photographs? 

A little more than a decade ago, I was invited to join the team of PIX, an editorial and curatorial practice aimed at building an archive of contemporary photography in South Asia. For the publication, PIX solicits lens-based works, and pairs them with writing that responds to the images. At this point, I was establishing my photographic practice, and negotiating my relationship with the medium. I thought of myself as solely a photographer, and believed that the core of the practice was animated by those who made images. My work at PIX signified my first professional interaction with the work of others, no longer as just a viewer, but as an interlocutor, an editor and a collaborator. The sustained engagement with other makers and their practices played a crucial role in the evolution of my own practice as well. Through this process I was introduced, or rather coerced, into writing. 

I have always found it easier to speak with photographs. Through many years of crafting visual stories, initially as a photographer but largely as an editor, I have become, somewhat, attuned to the rhythms of weaving images into compelling narratives. The trajectory of arriving at this point of “ease” has been somewhat predictable, and regularly working the muscle has made the photo-editing process feel more natural. I approached writing with a greater reluctance – my relationship with it continues to be complicated, but it has helped me give shape and voice to the ideas marinating in my mind. In my earliest published piece, for instance, in 2012, in writing about the artists featured in a volume of PIX, I was forced to articulate my photo-editorial choices into words. This was the first time that I crystallised the process of editing images, inherently abstract and intuitive, into concrete sentences. Since then, this connection – between my practice of writing and editing of photographs – has been constantly reinforced, and one has continued to inform and enrich the other.

Over the years, my writing on the work of photographers has ranged from conversational essays to commentary and analytical pieces. As my practice developed, the work that I was commissioned for became more wide-ranging. I was invited to comment on larger questions looming over the visual medium, reflecting on its theoretical and conceptual framework, as well as examining the contours of the industry and the fault lines that continued to plague it. Since I work primarily as an editor of images, these “prompts” that came my way in the form of writing assignments shaped the trajectory of my writing practice.

During my years at The Caravan, a long-form journal of politics and culture, my writing was heavily influenced by the magazine and its editorial process. It is here that the prompts shifted – from premises assigned by others – to my own responses to themes we were engaging with in the newsroom. While my interests are medium-specific, I am drawn now to the intersection of the image with politics, culture and society. In how images circulate within larger publics, and how that affects our ways of being as citizens in this world.

What is your writing process?

My process is often marked by tedium – it can be terribly slow, frustrating and one that mandates constant revision.

I rarely ever write “for myself”, though that is a direction I wish to desperately move towards. Most of my writing is done on a fairly urgent timeline – either in response to a commission or to an unfolding event. My experience in journalism instilled the belief that getting a piece published at the right moment is as crucial to its reception and circulation, as chiselling it to “perfection”. Since writing is the part of my practice, I am least confident and most unsure about, if left to myself, I can continue to endlessly tweak and tighten, in an attempt to reach the best possible conclusion. Even though the lack of time can feel constraining at the time of shaping a piece, it is also an immensely powerful impetus in releasing my writing out into the world. I am learning to get comfortable with the idea that some of the most compelling writing does not necessarily present normative resolutions or answers, but it offers instead, a space to question, stir debate and generate ideas.

The physical act of writing feels burdened with procrastination. I inevitably delay the start till the last possible moment, perhaps because of the potent anxiety I continue to experience on encountering an empty page. However, the process of writing begins much earlier. In the days leading up to putting words to paper (or a Word document!), I make my way through the premise and arguments in response to the prompt. A lot of this thinking happens in the unlikeliest of places – on a walk, in the shower, while cooking – and rarely at my work desk. On the days when I am actually writing, I am fairly chaotic. I have many books and multiple tabs open, because I comb through references fairly extensively. Most of these are texts I have read before, and that have offered insights that resonate with the idea I am working through. Other sources of inspiration tend to be authors or thinkers whose words help me when I arrive at an impasse. I find myself to be both heavily distracted, fielding multiple influences at the same time and intensely concentrated, in that I cannot pursue any other intellectual task during those days.

My writing process is quite similar to my photo-editing practice: with a large set of images for instance, the beginning can often feel quite scattered, and the ideas and arguments fairly disconnected. It is somewhere at the half-way mark of the process that the links and connections begin to emerge in the loose structure, revealing a possible outcome where the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. Sometimes, the emergence of this clarity can hasten the process, and the remaining puzzle is solved at an accelerated pace. Just as with an edit on images, writing benefits with some resting time, allowing the words to sit next to each other, revealing meanings that were perhaps not as visible the first time around.

I wonder if you might expand on the “prompt” as you describe it: it seems to be a catalyst and a beginning, of course, but I wonder if in some ways, it is also for you a sign of writing’s contingency, something which describes how, as a writer, you are always in dialogue from the very beginning. Does your attention to the “prompt” describe something of your writing practice and your attention to writings relationships?

I see the “prompt” as an impetus, one that pushes me to act. Those of us who choose to think of ourselves as political beings respond to change in our environment. Our craft is one way to channel this response.

The dialogue you speak of is ongoing, and inevitable. We use the tools we have at hand to articulate our concerns. For me, writing may fill in for the inadequacies, or limitations for response, within photography, or it may be used to activate different audiences.

I consider myself fortunate to be able to engage with the image in varied forms. This engagement is what I see as the dialogue – at times collaborating with image-makers, their work and archives and in other instances, using writing as a possible instrument of inquiry. I find this response to be contingent, and writing as one form of that contingency.

What are the questions or problems that motivate your writing? 

Most of what motivates my writing is what motivates my work with images. These concerns shift with time, in response to unfolding events and my evolving personal politics. I see writing as a way to distil the varied questions and ideas that emerge during my primary practice of working as a photo editor and curator.

Currently, one of the biggest questions I am wrestling with in photography is to do with the process by which images make their way into the world, and the manner in which their circulation shapes discourse – within the image economy, but particularly outside it, in society. I am interested in how the surplus of imagery affects our psychological being and how the consumption of these images moulds our reception to social, political or cultural realities.

Having worked in journalism, particularly on the photo and multimedia desks, I have witnessed the impacts of such circulation first hand. The choices we made had the potential to shape public opinion. This was both a potent instrument, as well as a heavy responsibility. While it may sound staid as a concept in the space of photo discourse, I am interested in the image as evidence in today’s media landscape. Where does such evidence hold value, when courts themselves look away? How is media, and the narratives it is composed of, used as information warfare, both by those in power and those opposing it? How does the image need to be packaged to be consumed as truth or propaganda? How do we read political photographic fiction in today’s image world? How do we decide to trust a certain image, or the sources it is disseminated through, and what governs this psychological response? When does image circulation, particularly on social media, trigger a near immediate reaction, whether by the general public or by organised troll armies? It is this response that I’m interested in examining: is it genuine or manufactured; how does it measure “truth”; how do these images change in their meaning as they further circulate in the digital realm?

Another concern that consumes much of my thinking is around the politics of representation – specifically, whether it is possible to ever circumvent the hierarchies and power dynamics embedded within photography. While, earlier, I was curious about how the “democratisation” of the medium impacted this balance, I am no longer as interested in the pervasiveness of and access to the medium, but more so in where this conversation around representation – “who gets to tell whose story” – leads us. The push towards local and “insider” narratives is one that is now, rightfully so, valued. This reorientation is the long-due reparation of the historically skewed representation of many communities and issues, which was a direct outcome of the privilege of either the coloniser’s lens or the “outsider’s” festishistic gaze.

However, I question the notion of this “insider” and how we arrive at its definition. Is there an ideal insider? Is she always best positioned to tell that story? Aren’t we all insiders, truly, only to our own stories? And yet, autobiographical narratives are only a part of how we learn about the world, and how we choose to produce or consume media. Lived experience is a crucial component, in that it brings to the fore a gaze that is less essentialist than what has existed largely in narrative storytelling. We are, often, better placed to access communities or issues that we have engaged with otherwise, outside of the “professional” demand; those that we resonate or connect with as individuals or citizens, not necessarily only when tasked with representing them. Does this mean that there is a possibility for an honest engagement, that may well be “imperfect”, with a narrative outside of the lived-experience paradigm? Is authentic storytelling a function of provenance? Is identity an absolute construct, or does it shift in response to the subject and landscape? I am interested in how the intersection of various markers like gender, caste, class, region, religion as well as traits such as lived experience and personal politics guide the making of this definition, complicate notions of identity and affect the proposition of narratives distinct from historically dominant perspectives. These intersections often guide the choices of artists I write about, and that writing is an important conduit that enables the development of my own understanding of the concerns regarding authorship and narrativising.

Recently, I have been interested in reflecting on the positionality of image-makers, and how their own identity impacts the work they put out into the world. The term “identity” here is not to be seen as synonymous with nationalistic definitions – defined by borders and passports – but more by their position as citizens in the world social order, and in relation to the narratives they construct. Whether it is even possible for works to reckon with aspects of the makers’ identities and if so, whether photographic works are as much about the authors as they are about those who are photographed?

Within this realm lies one of my biggest concerns of late – photography’s inability, or limited ability, to shift the gaze towards the perpetrator, the oppressor, the coloniser. These definitions are not in relation to the conventional binaries of the West/East, urban/rural etc., but with reference to where the author of a work is placed when she is representing someone other than herself. While contemporary discourse has compelled narratives to shift, from unidimensional perspectives of suffering and impact, to include a broader spectrum of human emotion and experience, photography has been limited in visualising those other than the victims or survivors. There has been an inherent difficulty in exhibiting structures of supremacy, of complicity.

My own position as a dominant caste individual from India makes this particularly pertinent for me. The need to pass the lens, and so the power, into the hands of the oppressed and marginalised to build their own narratives – of both joy and suffering – to self-represent their own communities is urgent. But, alongside, authors, especially from majoritarian or dominant identities, need to apply a more critical gaze to their own communities – those, for instance, that have historically oppressed others by way of privilege afforded by the caste system, a discriminatory social order of hierarchy prevalent across the subcontinent. The capacity of visual narratives to critique these systems of power, and not merely display them as “documentation”, is rare in our image world. I am interested in these limitations and in examining whether photography truly has the ability to upend historical narratives, which have inevitably been authored by the very dominant systems and lenses it has failed to effectively illustrate.

Apart from these conceptual interests, a lot of my writing is motivated by visual works emanating from South Asia, particularly when their vocabularies are distinct from mainstream photographic canons. Since most references within photography are from Western histories and contexts, I am drawn to artists and works that attempt to break this trajectory in form and language. I usually engage with the artists in an editorial or curatorial capacity, and the writing emerges from these collaborations.

Your description of the image as evidence feels important, in that it gives an equal weight to how the image is made and also put to use, how it acts and impacts, alongside what it shows. Do you think this process of exploring positionalities leads us in some ways towards images being understood as assemblages, and truth as something that cannot be reduced down to one essentialising characteristic?

The relationship between the photograph and “truth” has been a complicated one. Ambiguous by nature, the image has always been open to a subjective interpretation, even in its use as a document. As an editor, I particularly appreciate the transformation of an image and its meaning, when it interacts with another image, or with text; how it is re-casted depending on where it is placed, how it is disseminated and so on. The notion of “truth” has always been defined by multiple forces, at times by a collection of images, at times by other interactions and factors. What an assemblage may do, particularly in the case of evidentiary images, is to make a particular truth harder to deny. While an “iconic image”, a term I find to be redundant now, may evince a particular truth about a situation by a singular author, the streams of images generated may help reiterate its evidentiary value.

However, as I write this, I find exceptions emerge to this proposition. Take the recent pull-out of the US from Afghanistan or the current war in Ukraine. What we see, despite the surfeit of images generated, is largely a singular perspective. A singular truth? The collections that emerge are predominantly authored by Western image-makers, or for Western publications. This repetition leads to a redundancy, with most photographers creating work that reaches the same conclusion. Rarely do we come across the deployment of the image in critiquing the systems that led to these conflicts, to look at the complicity of Western nations and modern-day cycles of imperialism.

In the case of positionalities, I am not so concerned with this notion of “truth” but more with the aspect of authenticity, of honesty. Exploring an author’s position in their work helps us parse through their motivations. Self-reflexivity can serve as an anchor, from which we construct our truths and reveal why we reach the conclusions we do.

What kind of reader are you? 

Sporadic and unstructured. I now read mostly for work, which fortunately for me is around themes that genuinely interest me and enrich both my writing and image editing. Much of it is triggered through prompts – figuring my way through a writing invitation, working through an edit or deconstructing a premise someone may have posed. Often, reading offers me an articulation of a politics that I find difficult to put into words myself.

During my tenure at The Caravan, my role required extended reading from a wide spectrum of contributors spanning a range of topics. A lot of my writing education has been from observing their first drafts take shape into finessed final pieces. I was privy to the writer-editor dynamic and the tense tug of the relationship. I would pore over the comments from editors to the writers, and witness the evolution of these drafts, as they were refined over time, through intervention and exchange.

I always have a list of pending readings – which seems to grow at a much faster pace than the rate at which I consume them – and I’m constantly dreaming of a reading residency that may give me the time to catch up!

How significant are theories and histories of photography now that curation is so prominent? 

My engagement with the medium began as an image-maker. While my role may have changed significantly over the years, my understanding of photography is largely shaped through a practitioner’s lens. I have never had any formal training in photographic education, and theory has never been a core component of my work with images.

That being said, I do consume some theoretical texts, particularly those that break away from being dense and opaque – the most common obstacle of this genre of writing. I do wrestle with the codification that theory brings with it, particularly for culture, and a medium as inherently ambiguous as photography. I have regard for theory and academia, for its rigour of thought and deep, sustained engagement. However, I am interested in working at the cusp of academia and practice. For this, theory needs to be activated into accessible forms and for academics to invest in dissemination across channels beyond their own structures. To quote from scholar Ruth Wilson Gilmore: ‘to think theoretically, but speak practically.’ I am drawn to artists/practitioners who comment on or respond to theory in their works, building additional channels of circulation and deconstruction.

As for histories of photography, I consume them to keep pace and build context to certain discussions or texts I come across. However, I approach these with some degree of caution, given that no history is definitive and mainstream versions have, largely, been authored by dominant perspectives. I am also constantly trying to strengthen these muscles of criticality, in order to allow an evolution of these definitions of who/what constitutes a dominant/mainstream or oppressed/fringe perspective, and that these can shift depending on relational dynamics. Largely, histories of photography – inevitably mimicking social histories – are rooted in Western canons and colonial perspectives. While they help build structures to understand one linear progression of the medium, they carry with them significant erasures, by missing out on or misrepresenting large populations and perspectives. I do advocate that some of them be read so as to have a framing, from which to subvert. Ariella Aisha Azoullay’s recent publication Potential History: Unlearning Imperialism (2019) is one such proposition for subversion, offering the possibility of an alternate reading of photography through historical time. Tina M. Campt’s Listening to Images (2017) proposes using sound and haptics as a register to re-read images that have historically carried different meanings. I also consider micro-histories or personal histories as potent historical documents, if collated and contextualised within a historical timeline.

Then, it is predictable that my personal view of curation is not dependant on theories and histories of photography. I have always found them to be separate fields, that at some points may collide or intersect, and at others may run parallel or even be entirely removed from one another. I think the choice depends on the curator and/or the institution, depending on how they perceive a “valid” curatorial practice.

I consider curation to be as open-ended as an artist’s practice – some may interpret it through a reliance on pedagogy, others may be influenced by theory without deploying it consciously in the building of work and even others may entirely reject it, dismissing it as didactic to build a curatorial premise on an entirely different tenor.

So, to answer the question, I don’t find the link between theory, histories and curation to always be very direct or consistent to comment on how the supposed amplification of one impacts the other.

What qualities do you admire in other writers?

Accessibility, and the ability to weave complex ideas into simple sentences.

Brevity, precision, and narrative clarity.

An ability to be self-reflexive.

Personality, colour and texture in writing without deploying complicated language or purple prose.

What texts have influenced you the most?

I don’t think I can name texts, because I associate more with authors and their trajectories of thought, than a particular iteration. It is simpler for me to list writers who have had some form of influence or provided inspiration, either to my politics or my practice. The connection is as intuitive as the one between multiple images during an editing exercise.

Listing them in no particular order: Tina M. Campt, Ariella Aisha Azoullay, Mark Sealy, B. R. Ambedkar, Frantz Fanon, Kajri Jain, Maaza Mengiste, Teju Cole, Alana Hunt, David Campany, bell hooks, Amitava Kumar, Aveek Sen, Allan Sekula, Stuart Hall, Gayatri Gopinath, Audrey Lorde, Joan Didion, Joan Fontcuberta, Eyal Weizman.

What is the place of criticality in photography writing now?

Significant.

I do think that many texts in photography, are about images or descriptive writing. A lot of my own writing also falls within this definition, particularly when I am focusing on a specific artist’s practice. While I am in favour of using writing to deconstruct image-making for a general public, and offer them a vocabulary with which to enter the work, I do not believe that a text must decode or lay bare the entire work to the audience. This would be an injustice to the image, to rob it of the ambiguity that makes it universal, in the way in which it connects to each individual.

Critical writing, however, allows an engagement that has the potential to “expand out of” the artists’ practice, using it as a trigger to deconstruct an imposed premise or to weigh it against its own claims. It could also be used as a springboard to speak about larger themes – the image as a sociological study, or more formal, medium-centric concerns. I imagine the act of critical writing to be radical, one that can activate the political imagination. It helps us envision alternate readings and possibilities within a work. Unfortunately, criticality is often seen as an effort to diminish or “cancel” works, and not as a channel to foster debate.

What if criticality were built around the politics of care? For me, this would embody an accountability to our fellow citizens, not just those who are in the role of spectators and subjects, but also to our industry peers, as image-makers and thinkers. This “care” could be embodied in thinking about and building images, reflecting rigorously on how we see and what or whom we show, demanding more out of the practice and building a collective conscience towards questioning the conclusions we reach (or don’t) with photographic narratives. In my practice, since I work mostly with images that are inevitably oriented towards the human experience and society, rather than form-based or conceptual experiments, these concerns have reverberations beyond our own industry.

This grounding in care could be a potent ingredient for criticality – in so much as we view it as collective learning, and as an instrument to dismantle the hierarchies that may emerge in the process. The critic, the image-author, the viewer as well as the practice itself stand to be enriched if we were to build systems that nurture criticality as well as the response to it. While there is no dearth of critical thinking, there are very few platforms that champion this kind of writing. Perhaps for criticality to thrive, it needs to exist outside of a capitalist structure, seen more through a discursive lens as an intellectual pursuit.

Perhaps this existing outside of capitalist structure brings us back to your desire to write for yourself? Have you found tactics for writing which allow you to construct a space where writing functions in its own or in your own time?

What I mean by existing outside of a capitalist structure is that knowledge production cannot be beholden to profit. However, it requires institutional support to sustain itself, functioning akin to the academy but allowing a more fluid exchange with those outside of it. Those that have resources could (should?) divert them to this end, investing in a return far greater than any financial gain.

What stops me from writing for myself is time. The kind of writing I currently pursue does not pay commensurate to the labour it involves. For most of us, we are already functioning outside of this realm of profit-making, and the desire to write stems from a need to respond and engage. If support was extended to foster deeper engagement and thought, it could help in wrestling time away from other pursuits, and to move away from the need to constantly “produce”.

Before I embark on the process of writing for myself, I need to drown out the noise, and listen. To “take in” more than I “put out in the world”. Reading is a necessary precursor and an integral part of this process. For years, I have felt, that as grateful as I am for the writing invitations, I am compelled to respond immediately. While this works a different muscle, writing for myself involves a longer, more sustained engagement with a theme, one that perhaps assimilates many of my influences and experiences.

So the answer to your question is no, I haven’t managed to construct this space, but I am hopeful that it will emerge as my practice evolves, or when someone reading this is compelled to help create it!♦

Further interviews in the Writer Conversations series can be read here

Click here to order your copy of the book

—
Writer Conversations is edited by Lucy Soutter (University of Westminster) and Duncan Wooldridge (Camberwell College of Arts, University of the Arts London), upon the invitation of Tim Clark (1000 Words and The Institute of Photography, Falmouth University).

Images:

1-Tanvi Mishra © Aditya Kapoor 

2-Opening spread of Viral Images, an essay on the role of photography in reporting on COVID-19, first published in The Caravan

3- Issues of PIX since 2011. PIX is a South Asian publication and display practice looking to archive contemporary photography in the region. Over the last ten years, PIX volumes have addressed various thematics and also produced country specific works on photography from Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Myanmar, Nepal and Sri Lanka

4-Opening spread of The Great Upheaval, an essay on the impact of the digital revolution on photography and whether it has the capacity to shift the power dynamic in photography. The piece was published in Transformations, Exploring Changes in and Around Photography, a project to explore changes and support photography in a digitally connected world

David Claerbout and Gábor Ösz

ANTICAMERA

Exhibition review by Duncan Wooldridge

Duncan Wooldridge on an exhibition at the Robert Capa Contemporary Photography Center, Budapest, that unites works by two artists exploring different realities involved in image production: one as captured by the camera and another comprised of all that falls outside of that which is documented.

For the camera and its program, which sets out to record the world, there exists only the visible and the invisible: that which presents itself readily to be seen, and those things which become visible under the specific modes of observation that the photographic apparatus brings forth; at the other pole, there is that which escapes vision, either because they are difficult to observe as they are, or because their specific mode of appearance goes against the camera and its programming. What can be seen and what falls out of view has a strange relationship to what we believe is possible: it may be of surprise to note, as Kaja Silverman has revealed in her research on Louis-Jacques-Mandé Daguerre in The Miracle of Analogy (2015), that the elusive human figure in early photography led to proposals that the camera should be directed only towards those things which do not move. If humans could not be recorded, it was suggested, photographs should be directed only towards the inanimate. Nature and architecture were cited without irony as examples of good subjects for photography to pursue.

Such proposals, absurd as they might now appear, reveal that we are quick to accept and work within the limits of our devices, and this is as true today as it was at photography’s outset. Technology is configured towards enabling an ever-greater visibility and mapping, but is shaped by automation and presets that conceal as much as they reveal. Take, for example, the dialectic between the still and the moving, where the majority of images are both fixed and moving at one and the same time, mechanical and chemical realities being equal to the appearance of stasis. Complexity here is discouraged, and a discourse of arrestedness prevails.

In our culture of automated black box computation, the quantity of images dominates, but we are scarcely cognisant of this turn: on the one hand, we continue to feel bombarded, or overwhelmed – we see a lot of images every day: we have little time for videos of more than a few seconds. But contemporary photographic technology also uses this quantity in another way, stacking and amalgamating multiple images to produce sharp, stable and impossibly balanced exposures, at the same time as producing banks of data for the analysis of machine learning and its development. The sharpening of images, the three-dimensional and four-dimensional mapping of the world and programming of machine learning are interconnected, and deviating from this automation is increasingly complicated. Yet if we query the horizons of appearance and disappearance that take place in our technological processes, we quickly encounter complex realities: an amalgam of movements and a multiplicity of positions which offer compelling possibilities for thinking and acting through images.

In 1981, for a Hungarian exhibition Dokumentum, the painter Ákos Birkás wrote a text Anticamera, stating that two realities were possible: the first was one as captured by the camera, whilst the other would be comprised of all that falls outside of that which is documented. Birkás might have wished to critique the dominance of photographic depiction and leave a space for painting attached to the imagination and the possible, but his proposition – to examine that which falls outside of the camera’s view – drew attention to a logic continuous in the age of technical images: a choice between what László Moholy-Nagy would call production and reproduction, or continuation and invention. Photography presents this to us as in the starkest of possible terms: how would you like your reality: as we show it to you, or as a process of your own action and discovery?

David Claerbout and Gábor Ösz’s ANTICAMERA, at the Robert Capa Contemporary Photography Center, Budapest, places these questions and divergent strategies of image production into a dynamic view. Claerbout’s slow-moving, frame-by-frame assemblies of complex spatial environments, built in the black box of editing and rendering softwares, are brought into dialogue with Ösz’s structural examinations of light and projection, where motorised structures for film projection, and an inversion of the camera obscura, give the photographic apparatus a reflexive centrality. In ANTICAMERA, a tension between the technological and material encounter with the image takes place – ‘is our future mineral or computational?’, we might ask in another dialectical framing – but central to the exhibition becomes the role of image in not only representing but giving form to thought.

Claerbout’s poetic interest in the encounter that the slow-moving image retains a virtuosic assembly. He stretches the capability of the lens as a seeing device. The Quiet Shore (2011) collects images across what seems to be a single moment on the beach in Dinard, Brittany, where figures assemble on the beach and at the threshold of land and water. Viewed from multiple positions and weaved together in a splicing of positions possessing a stillness, the work moves between frames in a slow cinematic pacing that Erika Balsom has remarked is reminiscent of Chris Marker whilst focusing solely upon a single moment against the passing of narrative time. Wildfire (A Meditation on Fire) (2019­­–20) seeks a similarly impossible recording, representing the transformation of a forest, engulfed over time by smoke and flames, as the view traces the circumference of a spreading fire. Clearly not a document in any conventional sense, the work hovers between constructedness and its recorded materials which cannot be staged. Whilst The Quiet Shore subtly disrupts with bleached spaces, almost imperceptible movement and the layering of figures who interact across the montage, Wildfire replaces the intensity of the blaze with the movements of a rendered scene, tracing an accumulation of static images into a four-dimensional encounter. The virtual camera circles and pans, revealing momentary concretions of the fast-moving fire, with subtle ripples and motions amongst the arrest of the images’ terror.

With the complexity of its computational composition, the extended durations of Claerbout’s installations allow the viewer to consider the space of the filmic encounter, and to note that Claerbout’s elaborate construction is contained, made into a single screen projection with a singular source, its labour placed largely out of view. This is a sharp, animating contrast in the work of Ösz, whose works foreground the devices of camera and projector in order to construct a reflexive and site-sensitive meditation on time and place. Drawing one of the exhibition’s fault lines, the foregrounding or negation of the apparatus describes subtly the agencies of image-maker and image-viewer. Whilst Claerbout is interested in the black box and its vampiric capacity to construct a world without shadows, Ösz shows we are bound to complex physical phenomena of which we are rarely fully conscious.

Ösz’s Passive Movements (2021) are works in which a free-standing, motorised projector displays its own image and space onto a parallel wall. The projectors – here there are three in the room – are moving: one rotates in a continuous 360-degree clockwise motion, whilst two are fixed together, moving back and forth on a small dolly along a short track. In this second configuration, the projectors are directed towards different walls, so that one is panning whilst projecting across a parallel wall, and the other projects onto a wall whilst the dolly moves towards it before retreating to its other limit. In each projected image, the position of the projector stays exactly where it is: in the work moving side to side, edges of the frame appear to move left and right until they bump up against the end of the projector in view. Moving back and forth towards the wall, the projector scales big and small, and autofocuses, whilst the projector stays squarely in its original position.

Passive Movements constructs the appearance of stasis in a reflection on the condition of images ongoing movement and transformation, its active and consequential capacities. Although Ösz works regularly with the moving image, the photograph is invoked and examined (here perhaps is another contrast with Claerbout, who uses still images as material to construct sequences of time-based works). We desire stillness and the arrested image, just as we seek the passivity and objective condition of the lens for our understanding and claims to truth. Ösz shows this to be an inversion: we construct elaborate fictions, placing ourselves at the centre of an imagined oasis, with our stasis in the midst of continuous motion. The 360-degree rotating image is especially potent here, enabling not only a visceral mixture of stillness and movement, but also the possibility of thinking, something as large as planetary motion and the horizons of our conscious experience of the world. Drawing us towards physical phenomena at the same time as revealing reflexive conditions of the image places the technological image in its proper context of constructing and maintaining worlds.

This pivoting of position is something that is explored also in the last work in the exhibition, Image of Light (2022), in which Ösz inverts the model of the camera obscura so that light emerges and constructs an image from the inside, towards a room in a state of darkness. Several small box chambers in the space emit this light and the lightbulb contained within, which is caught on a sheet of translucent paper, receiving its focused image on the outside through the aperture. A shift in our physical position, and a switch in perception constructs a radical inversion of our capacity to think from the particular towards the planetary or what Édouard Glissant would call mondialité or worldliness, a being in and with the world.

ANTICAMERA, curated by Zsolt Petrányi and Emese Mucsi, suggests with a precision and economy that we find ourselves drawn between complex trajectories, in which the computational and physical (or mineral) experience of the world needs urgently to be apprehended to encounter the world in its full detail. Beyond polarities, there are competing directions and passages, emphases and urgencies. What is at stake is not only what is shown, but what is made visible or placed out of view: this is the condition of the struggle of images, which Ösz’s rotating projection encapsulates in its prompt to think not only of the image, but of its making and its consequent position in and with the world.♦

All images courtesy the artists and the Robert Capa Contemporary Photography Center, Budapest © David Claerbout and Gábor Ösz

Installation views of ANTICAMERA – An exhibition of David Claerbout and Gábor Ösz at the Robert Capa Contemporary Photography Center, Budapest from 16 February – 3 April 2022.

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Duncan Wooldridge is an artist and writer. He is Course Leader for the MA in Fine Art Photography at Camberwell College of Arts, University of the Arts London, and is the author of To Be Determined: Photography and the Future, published by SPBH Editions. 

Writer Conversations #9

Wu Hung

Wu Hung holds the Harrie A. Vanderstappen Distinguished Service Professorship at the Department of Art History and the Department of East Asian Languages and Civilizations at the University of Chicago, US, where he is also the director of the Center for the Art of East Asia and the Adjunct Curator at the Smart Museum. An elected member of the American Academy of Art and Science and awarded with an Honorary Degree from Harvard University, he sits on many international committees including Guggenheim Museum’s Asian Art Council, and chairs the Academic Committee of the OCAT Museum Group. Wu Hung has received many awards for his publications and academic services, including the 2018 Distinguished Scholar Award and the 2022 Distinguished Lifetime Achievement Award for Writing on Art, both from the College Art Association of America (CAA).

Wu Hung’s research interests include both traditional and contemporary art, and he has published many books and curated many exhibitions in these two fields. His interdisciplinary interests have led him to experiment with different ways to tell stories about Chinese art, as exemplified by Monumentality in Early Chinese Art and Architecture (1995); The Double Screen: Medium and Representation of Chinese Pictorial Art (1996); Remaking Beijing: Tiananmen Square: the Creation of a Political Space (2005); A Story of Ruins: Presence and Absence in Chinese Art and Visual Culture (2012) and Zooming In: Histories of Photography in China (2016).

At what point did you start to write about photographs? 

I started writing about photographs quite late in my career, in the late 1990s after I had received tenure. I was trained as an historian of Chinese art. The books I published before 1996 all dealt with pre-modern art – ritual vessels, monuments and pictorial medium and representation. Photography attracted me via two paths. First, when I started curating exhibitions of contemporary Chinese art and writing about this art in the late ’90s, I discovered that photography was one of the most dynamic branches in this art and deeply enmeshed with painting, performance art, Body Art, Conceptual Art, and so on. Secondly, when I began working on a book about “ruins” in Chinese art and visual culture, I realised that the introduction of photography in the 19th century radically changed how Chinese people and artists perceived and represented the world. At that point, I also began to develop other research projects on historical photographs along two intertwining lines, which I call “Chinese photography” and “photography in China”. The former is an integral component of modern Chinese visual culture, while the latter, though produced in China and featuring Chinese subjects, served external agendas.

What is your writing process?

With contemporary photography, most of the time I’m first captured by particular images in exhibitions and publications, which lead me to their creators. I interview them, befriend them and conduct research on their entire corpus of works, before I sit down to write about them.

With historical photography, my interests are typically aroused by archival materials that pose unanswered questions. One example is my study of Milton Miller’s Chinese portraits which he made in Hong Kong around 1860. I was intrigued by these photos when I studied them in the Getty Research Institute because they confronted me with many questions which I couldn’t answer: Who are the anonymous sitters in the pictures? Are these images really “portraits” in a conventional sense? Why did Miller make these photos in the first place? I spent several years to find the answers to these questions.

In your writing on Miller and on early photography, you advocate for a form of intense looking and reading. How does this meet the writing process for you?

Although looking at old photographs and writing about them are not the same thing, they are certainly related to each other. For one thing, both unfold in time. Intense looking is a temporal process through which the researcher “enters” into the picture and tries to see it from within – to discover significant details from a historical point of view. Writing translates this visual undertaking – if it is successful – into a written form. But the sense of discovery can still help animate the written words and bring readers on an exploratory visual journey.

What are the questions or problems that motivate your writing? 

One set of problems is concerned with the history, status, motivation and function of contemporary Chinese “experimental” photography, which developed into a strong trend in China from the 1980s onward. Instead of perceiving and interpreting this trend as an anonymous movement, I’m more interested in discovering the experiences and experiments of individual photographic artists. To me, the differences between these artists, rather than their commonalities, should remain at the centre of investigation and presentation.

Another set of questions is related to the historical relationship between photography and Chinese art and visual culture. In particular, how did this modern technology change people’s perception of the world and of themselves, as revealed by the emergence of new kinds of images in the second half of the 19th century and later. For example, images of architectural ruins emerged for the first time in Chinese art; new types of portraiture and self-portraiture also appeared (such as inscribed photos I have termed “I-Portraits”). These new images often coincided with seminal historical events.

A third set of problems is even broader and focuses on the general relationship between photography, painting and objects. This is the central thread of my forthcoming book The Full-length Mirror: A Global Visual History (the 2021 Chinese version is titled Object · Painting · Photography: A Global History of the Full-length Mirror). A photograph is both an image and a material construct, and it represents objects in specific ways. While photography and painting are similar in this respect, they also differ in ontology and in the correlation between image and material. Moreover, a more complex story about the relationship of photography, painting and objects begins to emerge when we observe this relationship in a global context.

What kind of reader are you? 

I read mainly around specific research/writing projects. Since I usually conduct two, three or even four projects simultaneously, more often than not I read books and articles on unrelated subjects at the same time. This also means that I read more for work than for pleasure. I don’t consider this an enviable habit.

How significant are theories and histories of photography now that curation is so prominent? 

I am, by training, an historian of images, and my writing and curatorial projects usually have strong historical frameworks. Even for those on contemporary art, including photography, I feel that I need to understand and present historical contexts, which can be artistic, intellectual, cultural and political, and to have a firm grasp of how a photographer’s artistic development is interwoven with their life experiences. In a broad sense all of these can be called “historical”.

In terms of theory, I prefer not to rely on preconceived theories, understood as self-sustaining discourses with their own intellectual context, in developing curatorial and writing projects. To me, “concepts” are more productive because these projects always need certain conceptual frameworks. Four years ago, my colleagues and I at Beijing’s OCAT Institute started an annual competition called “Research-Oriented Curatorial Projects”, encouraging young curators to organise exhibitions that combine serious research and theoretical thinking. There have been a good number of successful examples. But many submissions fall back on well-known (Western) theories as preexisting parameters, either applying them to interpreting artworks or illustrating them with selected examples. The “Research-Oriented Curatorial Projects” programme tries to counter this tendency which has become widespread in the field.

In your interest in early photographs of China, you seem to be looking for a meaning beyond the informational or descriptive, and something of this seems to be at work in your “Research-Oriented Curatorial Projects”. Is this process of researching – whether it is written or curated, a creative exercise? And are writing and curating one and the same as far as this is concerned?

Yes, an historical photograph is never transparent and displays its “meaning” on the surface because of its inevitable dehistoricisation: it has lost its original associations with its time, place and people. In other words, it has “survived” history to become something else. Verbal description of the image alone can tell us little about its historical meaning. But sensitive observations are crucial for a researcher to discover problems, which then stimulate further investigations. I consider this process of finding, observing, describing and investigating a combined creative exercise, regardless whether it can produce a definite conclusion. My writing and curatorial projects more or less follow this logic, but curatorial projects naturally also demand taking into consideration the logic and functionality of the exhibition space.

What qualities do you admire in other writers?

Real understanding of the subject. Clarity. Being engaging. Passion. An interest in new ways of telling a story.

Do writings from beyond photography also influence how you think about the photographic image? Approaching photography from an oblique angle can also be a revealing strategy.

In thinking about photography? It should be Camera Lucida (1980), like with many of us. I also want to mention Benjamin’s “The Little History of Photography” (1931), which says that a photograph has something in it which ‘goes beyond testimony to the photographer’s art.’ In saying this, Benjamin means those things which a photograph doesn’t display on the surface but which are nevertheless there, arousing curiosity or even fantasy. I feel that this is especially true for historical photographs, which always go “beyond” the images themselves, compelling historians to pursue the missing information.

What is the place of criticality in photography writing now?

I take “criticality” as reflections – through either words or images – on photography itself. As such, criticality is always important to photography writing, although it doesn’t have to be externalised as the sole or main purpose. In my mind, the best photography writing – or writing on any type of image – should simultaneously expose hidden meanings of images and articulate new ways of arriving at such meanings. Camera Lucida again provides a supreme example.♦

Further interviews in the Writer Conversations series can be read here

Click here to order your copy of the book

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Writer Conversations is edited by Lucy Soutter (University of Westminster) and Duncan Wooldridge (Camberwell College of Arts, University of the Arts London), upon the invitation of Tim Clark (1000 Words and The Institute of Photography, Falmouth University).

Images:

1-Wu Hung, 2022

2-Book cover of A Story of Ruins: Presence and Absence in Chinese Art and Visual Culture (2012)

3-Book cover of Wu Hung, Zooming In: Histories of Photography in China (2016)

4-Book cover of Wu Hung, Photography and East Asian Art (2021)

5-Wu Hung, Rong Rong’s East Village, 1993–1998 (2003)