Top 10 (+1)

Photobooks of 2024

Selected by Tim Clark and Thomas King

As the year draws to a close, an annual tribute to some of the exceptional photobook releases from 2024 – selected by Editor in Chief, Tim Clark, with words from Editorial Assistant, Thomas King.


Tim Clark and Thomas King | Top 10 photobooks of 2024 | 05 Dec 2024 | In association with MPB

1. Adam Broomberg & Rafael Gonzalez, Anchor in the Landscape
MACK

Studied witnesses to the State of Israel’s attempt to erase a people and their history, Adam Broomberg and Rafael Gonzalez present a quiet yet forceful declaration of Palestinian resilience in Anchor in the Landscape. This striking series of 8×10 black-and-white photographs of olive trees, accompanied by a text from legal scholar and ethnographer Dr. Irus Braverman, made a bold statement at the 60th La Biennale di Venezia earlier this year. Each page of the book pairs a photograph with its precise geographical coordinates, where the olive tree – facing destruction and theft by settlers – anchors livelihoods, culture, and presence in a relentlessly seized and ravaged landscape. The result is a haunting yet beautiful rekindling of connection to Palestinian land in the occupied territories.

2. Karolina Spolniewski, Hotel of Eternal Light
BLOW UP Press

Winner of the 2022 BUP Book Award, Spolniewski’s seven-year multimedia project-turned-book – replete with holographic foil cover – details the psychological and physical scars of detention, drawing on Hannah Arendt’s writings on totalitarianism and isolation. At its heart is Hohenschönhausen, the notorious Stasi prison in East Berlin, dubbed the “Hotel of Eternal Light,” where unrelenting artificial lighting twisted inmates’ sense of time. Documentary photography, scans of physical traces, inmates’ belongings, portraits, X-rays, archival imagery, and fragments of memories from conversations with former prisoners are combined through the book’s design approach to enhance meaning, one that also speaks through the inmates: one page repeats ‘everlasting interrogations,’ while another chillingly declares, ‘Every three minutes you get… blinded by the lights.’

3. Agnieszka Sosnowska, För
Trespasser

Agnieszka Sosnowska’s debut monograph, För (meaning journey in Icelandic), takes readers on a raw, poetic journey through the artist’s life on a beautiful stretch of unmistable wilderness. Originally from Poland, she immigrated to the United States as a child, then as a young adult spontaneously visited Iceland, met her partner and built a life there. Where nature is both a solace and an ever-present force, Sosnowska’s photography – especially self-portraiture – charts the ongoing journey of self-discovery and belonging. Against the pulse of land and community, her images invite a deeper reading, culminating in a confident yet vulnerable self-portrait of the artist. But to what end? Sosnowska doesn’t just capture her subjects and surroundings; as SFMOMA’s Assistant Curator of Photography Shana Lopes recently writes in her review, Sosnowska invites us to reconsider how labour, heartbreak, death, landscape, and the quotidian shape our idea of home.

4. Carmen Winant, The Last Safe Abortion
Self Publish, Be Happy

Since the re-election of the man who played a key role in overturning Roe v. Wade, Carmen Winant’s sobering photo album-style work – winner of the Author Book Award at the 2024 Les Rencontres d’Arles Book Awards – feels more urgent than ever. Published by SPBH Editions and MACK and designed with a bold spiral binding, Winant’s contemplative exploration of care resists the relentless efforts of anti-abortion movements and the far right to control women’s bodies. Featuring images of health clinics, Planned Parenthood locations, and abortion clinic staff whose tireless commitment sustains this fight, the book spans 50 years – from 1973, when abortion rights were federally protected, to 2022, following their dissolution. Winant reframes the struggle for care and autonomy as a testament to courage, resistance, and hope – urgently needed qualities. Read Gem Fletcher’s review here.

5. Carla Williams, Tender
TBW Books

It’s often a posthumous exercise to uncover a hidden trove of photographs, but for Carla Williams, her artistic debut has thankfully arrived during her lifetime—adding a new chapter to her distinguished career as a photo historian. At 18, while studying photography at Princeton, Williams began creating black-and-white and colour portraits using Polaroid 35mm and 4×5 Type 55 film formats. Now published by TBW Books, Tender spans photographs taken between 1984 and 1999. The collection collapses time through a body of unapologetically vivid work – playful, provocative, and present. The intimate self-portraits reveal the evolution of her gaze, reclaiming, redefining, and becoming, charting her coming-of-age as an artist and a queer Black woman. Winner of the Paris Photo–Aperture Foundation First Photobook Prize and celebrated with a solo exhibition at Higher Pictures, Carla Williams: Circa 1985 marks the first time much of this work has been published or exhibited.

6. Magdalena Wywrot, Pestka
Deadbeat Club

When I look back on photos of myself as a child, they’re worlds apart from the grainy, high-contrast black-and-white images Magdalena Wywrot created in her project about her daughter, Barbara. These are far less sanitised and reflect the otherness of the universe Wywrot creates in Pestka – a name that means seed, shell, or kernel and is Barbara’s nickname. Accompanied by essays from David Campany and Barbara Rosemary, the series brims with a delicate intimacy yet hums with a raw, almost mystical energy. What began as a spontaneous act of documentation has become a richly layered work of magical realism and gothic narrative. Fragmentary and cinematic, the images possess a haunting poeticism that we might find in the avant-garde sensibilities of Vera Chytilová or Dušan Makavejev – full of the playful, subversive potential that Campany mentions in his text.

7. Johny Pitts, Afropean: A Journal
Mörel Books

Johny Pitts, founder of afropean.com and author of Afropean: Notes from Black Europe (Penguin, 2020), unites his expansive work in this thoughtfully curated photobook tracing a five-month journey encompassing Paris, Berlin, Lisbon, Brussels, Amsterdam, and Stockholm. Pitts, in his search for a different side of the continent, collates an epic travelogue that blends striking photography with personal ephemera – tickets, diary notes, maps, postcards – offers a tactile, immersive book that flies in the face of rising populism and far-right politics across the continent. New essays by Pitts deepen the conversation on the Black European experience alongside a six-part podcast, a soundtrack, and three short films shot on location – a bold, multi-layered exploration of Afropean life.

8. Ute Mahler, Werner Mahler, Ludwig Schirmer, Ein Dorf 1950–2022
Hartmann Books

Michael Grieve writes, ‘time, of course, is the great force here,’ in Ein Dorf 1950–2022; that force brings ‘an arbitrary photographic topography brought to reason.’ The village of Berka, Germany, has been captured over seven decades by three remarkable photographers united by a family story – coincidental or not – that ties together personal history with the sweeping political shifts from state socialism to the reunification of a divided country. Alongside essays by Jenny Erpenbeck, Steffen Mau, and Gary Van Zante, the 220 black-and-white images glimpse the subtle yet seismic moments that have redefined the village, its people, and its evolving identity. Here is a rivetting perspective, as sociological as it is a documentary, on a place that has witnessed history, and its political reality unfolding in real-time. Since we published our review, Ute Mahler and Werner Mahler have deservedly been awarded the Order of Merit of the Federal Public of Germany (2024) for services to photography.

9. Olivia Arthur, Murmurings of the Skin
VOID

After gracing festivals, museums, and galleries worldwide, Murmurings of the Skin now emerges as a striking publication from the mighty VOID. Nealy eight years ago, Olivia Arthur began her work on physicality, capturing the energy flowing through bodies and the sensation of skin on skin. Sparked by her experience of pregnancy, the work blossomed into a vivid exploration of youth, sexuality, and touch – charged moments of intimacy. In the stillness of pandemic isolation, these themes gained new urgency. The result is a tactile, sensitive work that remedies the struggle of feeling at home in our skin.

10. Máté Bartha, Anima Mundi
The Eriskay Connection

“Our world right now operates in code. So, if we’re talking about code, isn’t everything about how the universe functions?” There’s no denying that Máté Bartha’s latest work, Anima Mundi, leans into the obscure. If we begin with the title’s translation, Anima Mundi means “world spirit,” a concept rooted in Platonic thought, reflecting an ancient idea of a universal organising principle that connects all beings. Divided into chapters exploring urban phenomena ranging from the microcosmic to the cosmic, Anima Mundi composes intricate patterns, layered grid structures, and cryptic visual codes. Its poetic and philosophical approach to the desperate act of seeking structure and meaning invites us to return to the question: how do we make sense of the universe and its code? How do we find sense in arbitrariness?

+1 Flashpoint! Protest Photography in Print, 1950-Present
10×10 Photobooks

What is the relationship between visual culture and protest? Flashpoint!, both a powerful survey of activism and visual tour de force, is a meticulously curated, global collection of protest photography, zines, posters, pamphlets, and independent publications from the 1950s to the present. The latest offering from 10×10 Photobooks is born from the 2017 project AWAKE: Protest, Liberty, and Resistance collection, which organised protest photobooks by themes through an open call. Flashpoint! builds on this with seven expansive chapters, each containing multiple sub-themes. Across 500 pages, 750+ images, and a series of thought-provoking essays, the endlessly evocative collection reflects Arthur Fournier’s ‘aesthetic of urgency,’ contrasting the polished, institutional protest imagery with the raw, time-sensitive visuals of grassroots movements.♦

 

 

 

 


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

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

Images:

1-Cover of Adam Broomberg & Rafael Gonzalez, Anchor in the Landscape (MACK, 2024). Courtesy MACK

2-Adam Broomberg & Rafael Gonzalez, Anchor in the Landscape (MACK, 2024). Courtesy MACK

3-Karolina Spolniewski, Hotel of Eternal Light (BLOW UP Press, 2024). Courtesy BLOW UP Press

4-Agnieszka Sosnowska, För (Trespasser, 2024). Courtesy Trespasser

5-Carmen Winant, The Last Safe Abortion (Self Publish, Be Happy, 2024). Courtesy Self Publish, Be Happy

6-Carla Williams, Tender (TBW Books, 2024). Courtesy TBW Books

7-Magdalena Wywrot, Pestka (Deadbeat Club, 2024). Courtesy Deadbeat Club

8-Johny Pitts, Afropean: A Journal (Mörel Books, 2024). Courtesy Mörel Books

9-Werner Mahler, Ein Dorf, 1977-78 in Ute Mahler, Werner Mahler, Ludwig Schirmer, Ein Dorf 1950–2022 (Hartmann Books, 2024). Courtesy Hartmann Books

10-Olivia Arthur, Murmurings of the Skin (VOID, 2024). Courtesy VOID

11-Máté Bartha, Anima Mundi (The Eriskay Collection, 2024). Courtesy The Eriskay Collection

12-Flashpoint! Protest Photography in Print, 1950-Present, edited by Russet Lederman and Olga Yatskevich (10×10 Photobooks, 2024). Courtesy 10×10 Photobooks


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 Dahmani

• Shana Lopes reviews Agnieszka Sosnowska’s För

• Valentina Abenavoli discusses photobooks and community

• Michael Grieve considers Ute Mahler and Werner Mahler’s posthumous collaboration with their late family member 

• Elisa Medde on Taysir Batniji’s images of glitched video calls from Gaza

Luigi Ghirri: Viaggi

MASI Lugano

Interview with Curator, James Lingwood

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


Tim Clark | Interview | 14 Nov 2024 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


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

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

Images:

1-Luigi Ghirri, Rimini, 1977. 

2-Luigi Ghirri, Alpe de Siusi, 1979. 

3-Luigi Ghirri, Marina di Ravenna, 1986.

4-Luigi Ghirri, Rifugio Grosté, 1983.

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

6-Luigi Ghirri, Modena, 1973.

7-Luigi Ghirri, Versailles, 1985.

8-Luigi Ghirri, Capri, 1981.

9-Luigi Ghirri, Marina di Ravenna, 1972.

10-Luigi Ghirri, Arles, 1979.

11-Luigi Ghirri, Lago Maggiore, 1984.


1000 Words favourites

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

• Roxana Marcoci navigates curatorial practice in the digital age

• Tanvi Mishra reviews Felipe Romero Beltrán’s Dialect

• Discover London’s top five photography galleries

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

• Academic rigour and essayistic freedom as told by Taous Dahmani

• Shana Lopes reviews Agnieszka Sosnowska’s För

• Valentina Abenavoli discusses photobooks and community

• Michael Grieve considers Ute Mahler and Werner Mahler’s posthumous collaboration with their late family member 

• Elisa Medde on Taysir Batniji’s images of glitched video calls from Gaza

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 Dahmani

• Shana Lopes reviews Agnieszka Sosnowska’s För

• Valentina Abenavoli discusses photobooks and community

• Michael Grieve considers Ute Mahler and Werner Mahler’s posthumous collaboration with their late family member 

• Elisa Medde on Taysir Batniji’s images of glitched video calls from Gaza

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 Dahmani

• Shana Lopes reviews Agnieszka Sosnowska’s För

• Valentina Abenavoli discusses photobooks and community

• Michael Grieve considers Ute Mahler and Werner Mahler’s posthumous collaboration with their late family member 

• Elisa Medde on Taysir Batniji’s images of glitched video calls from Gaza

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 Dahmani

• Shana Lopes reviews Agnieszka Sosnowska’s För

• Valentina Abenavoli discusses photobooks and community

• Michael Grieve considers Ute Mahler and Werner Mahler’s posthumous collaboration with their late family member 

• Elisa Medde on Taysir Batniji’s images of glitched video calls from Gaza

London city guide

Top five photography galleries

Selected by Tim Clark and Thomas King

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


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

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

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

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

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

Autograph

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

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

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

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

V&A Photography Centre

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

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

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

The Photographers’ Gallery

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

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

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

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

Large Glass Gallery

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

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

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

Flowers Gallery

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

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

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

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

 

 

 

 


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

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

Images:

1-Autograph, London. © Kate Elliot

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

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

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

5-Gibson Thornley Architects, V&A Photography Centre – Photography and the Book – Gallery 98 © Thomas Adank

6-Gibson Thornley Architects, V&A Photography Centre – Photography Now – Gallery 97 © Thomas Adank

7-The Photographers’ Gallery, London. © Luke Hayes

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

10-Ursula Schulz-Dornburg: Memoryscapes exhibition at Large Glass Gallery. 13 May-1 July 2023. © Stephen White and Co

11-Francesco Neri: Boncellino exhibition at Large Glass Gallery. 19 January–16 March 2024. © Stephen White and Co

12-Guido Guidi: Di sguincio exhibition at Large Glass Gallery. 3 February-11 March 2023. © Stephen White and Co

13-Flowers Gallery, Cork Street. © Antonio Parente

14-Edward Burtynsky, New Works exhibition at Flowers Gallery, Cork Street. 28 February-6 April 2024. © Antonio Parente


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 Dahmani

• Shana Lopes reviews Agnieszka Sosnowska’s För

• Valentina Abenavoli discusses photobooks and community

• Michael Grieve considers Ute Mahler and Werner Mahler’s posthumous collaboration with their late family member 

• Elisa Medde on Taysir Batniji’s images of glitched video calls from Gaza

Hiroshi Sugimoto: Time Machine

Hayward Gallery, London

Interview with Director, Ralph Rugoff

Hiroshi Sugimoto: Time Machine is now open at the Hayward Gallery, London and marks the largest retrospective to date of the internationally renowned Japanese artist. Featuring key works from all of Sugimoto’s major photographic series, the exhibition, curated by Director Ralph Rugoff, offers an arc of the myriad ways the artist playfully and philosophically explores the ambiguous nature of photography as a medium suited to both documentation and creative expression. 1000 Words Editor in Chief Tim Clark speaks with Rugoff about the exhibition making process, stretching and reshaping our notions of time in photography, the artist’s affinities with other art forms and why Sugimoto’s approach can be framed through a ‘lens of doubt’.


Tim Clark: What is the impetus to stage Hiroshi Sugimoto’s retrospective now at the Hayward Gallery? What would you argue are the reasons behind his contemporary relevance? I’m curious, since, as you have noted, Sugimoto goes against the grain in many ways with his analogue approaches and routinely keeps ‘ancient dialogues in play’, albeit embedded within a conceptually driven approach.

Ralph Rugoff: Sugimoto turned 75 this year, and it seemed like a career survey in London was overdue, as he’s been making influential and highly singular photographs for five decades. I don’t think there’s another contemporary artist who has so rigorously and inventively explored the medium’s possibilities, and in our era of Deep Fakes, some of his work also takes on a special resonance as it reveals photography’s inescapable artifice, and reminds us in different ways that photographs do not present an objective view of reality.

TC: Time Machine is an intriguing subtitle. In what ways has Sugimoto innovated around ideas of stretching and reshaping our notions of time in photography?

RR: He’s messing with notions of time in very different ways with different series. With Theaters (1976–), he condenses the images from an entire movie into a single glowing white screen by keeping his aperture open for the length of the film. Some of his photographs in Portraits (1999), featuring historical figures from Madame Tussauds – including Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn – almost look like photographic portraits of real people; as Sugimoto himself quipped, he might be the first photographer of the 16th century. And with Architecture (1997–), he created images that portray landmarks of modernist architecture as if they were ancient monuments, seen through a haze of historical memory.

TC: Tell us about the journey of ‘Sugimoto as visionary’ that the exhibition takes viewers on.

RR: I wouldn’t use the word ‘visionary’. Sugimoto is an extremely canny artist with a profound understanding of the possibilities of the photographic medium and how it can be used to explore a wide range of psychological and philosophical questions. The exhibition takes viewers on a journey through some of those possibilities, most of which lay far outside our usual experience of photography. It’s a very inspiring, and moving, experience, and his stunningly meticulous craftsmanship plays a role in this, as his carefully nuanced black-and-white prints invite a lingering gaze and encourage us to explore each image in depth.

TC: Are there any curatorial devices within the exhibition’s orchestration that you might like to share?

RR: The works are hung in rooms devoted to particular series, but there’s a progression from his pictures that deal with social environments and cultural representations (Dioramas, Movie Theaters, Portraits, Architecture) to works that have connections to either more spiritual/sublime subjects (Sea of Buddha, Lightning Fields) or to abstract painting and sculpture (Conceptual Forms, Seascapes, Opticks).

TC: In your catalogue essay, you eloquently describe Sugimoto’s approach as framed through a ‘lens of doubt’. Can you expand on this and talk us through an example of where some of these layers of ambiguity that exist within his imagery are particularly palpable?

RR: There are people who think Sugimoto is a wildlife photographer because his pictures of American Museum of Natural History dioramas look so convincingly like images of real natural habitats and animals. For me, they instead seem to occupy a threshold position; they don’t look completely real but then they don’t look obviously artificial either. So this creates a sense of doubt about whether the creatures we’re looking at, say, were alive or if they are mere objects – that kind of uncertainty is practically a text-book definition of the ‘uncanny’. Inasmuch as the diorama was a kind of theatrical precursor of photography, there’s another layer to unpick here as well.

TC: Strategies of deception abound across many of Sugimoto’s bodies of work, which has interesting implications given photography’s responsibility-cum-burden as a document. You talk about how ‘the elusive, “in-between” character of these photographs [is what] links them.’ I’m curious, then, about Sugimoto’s key artistic influences. Marcel Duchamp is often summoned in relation to discussions around Sugimoto’s motivations and key concerns for instance. As are Jasper Johns and the Bechers, to name but a few. What unites this group in your view?

RR: Sugimoto has frequently remarked that photographers steal objects from the real world, and recontextualise them in ways that strip them of their everyday significance to create new possibilities of what they might mean. This is a view that corresponds with Duchamp’s comments about his intentions with his readymade sculptures, something Johns picked up with his paintings and sculptures of everyday objects. The Bechers are a slightly different case, but to some extent their pictures seem to treat industrial structures as found sculpture… Like Sugimoto, they also tend to scrupulously remove any sense of the surrounding environment, so that their subjects are decontextualised. In addition, I think that Sugimoto – who was definitely inspired by the Bechers’ work – also drew on the practice of working in extended series (which Johns also shared) – as a way of drawing attention away from the specific or ‘real’ subject of a picture to its other possible meanings.

TC: Thinking about Sugimoto’s engagement with painting more broadly, as you point out, nowhere are the crossovers between aesthetic conventions more evident than in his deliberately blurred Architecture series and indeterminate Seascapes (1980–), recalling the work of Gerard Richter or Mark Rothko respectively. Can you discuss his affinity for other disciplines, such as architecture?

RR: In terms of the painting reference, I’d add his Opticks series, which really does suggest a new kind of colour field painting (and recalls Rothko even more than some of the moodier Seascapes do). We also have two of his Brâncuși-like Mathematical Model sculptures in the exhibition, and Sugimoto recently unveiled a monumental sculpture in this same series on Yerba Buena island outside San Francisco. Along with his architectural endeavours, I think all this work reflects his keen interest in, and understanding of, how we experience space and light.

TC: In the case of Lightning Fields (2006–), it could be argued that these are maybe Sugimoto’s most elemental and metaphysical works in that he shifts his focus to instantaneous capture. The imagery not only recalls some of the earliest and most ambitious experiments in scientific photography, such as Charles David Winter’s Éclair électrique produit par l’appareil de Ruhmkorff (1865), but also certain examples of contemporary photography like Clare Strand’s The Betterment Room – Devices For Measuring Achievement (2005). Do you think Sugimoto is as interested in exploring or surpassing the limits of human vision as much as he is trapping time? In revealing the invisible?

RR: Lightning Fields – named, of course, after Walter De Maria’s sprawling land-art installation in New Mexico – is an ongoing experiment that has multiple angles to it, some of which have nothing to do with lightning. To produce two of the lightning pictures that are in the exhibition, Sugimoto created a salt water brew intended to replicate the chemical character of primordial oceans. Submerging electrically charged film into the water, the artist was amazed to see light particles move across the surface like microorganisms. The resulting photographs are some of the uncanniest images ever recorded on film – one of them distinctly suggesting a new kind of luminescent deep-sea creature. ♦

All images courtesy of the artist, Marian Goodman Gallery and the Hayward Gallery © Hiroshi Sugimoto

Hiroshi Sugimoto: Time Machine runs at the Hayward Gallery from 11 October 2023 – 7 January 2024.


Ralph Rugoff has been the Director of the Hayward Gallery, London since 2006. He served as Artistic Director of the 58th Venice Biennale, Italy, in 2019 and curated the 2015 Lyon Biennale, France.

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

Images:

1-Earliest Human Relatives, 1994. © Hiroshi Sugimoto, courtesy of Marian Goodman Gallery

2-UA Playhouse, New York, 1978. © Hiroshi Sugimoto

3-World Trade Center, 1997. © Hiroshi Sugimoto

4-Lightning Fields 225, 2009. © Hiroshi Sugimoto

5-Bay of Sagami, Atami, 1997. © Hiroshi Sugimoto

6-Sea of Buddha 049 (Triptych), 1995. © Hiroshi Sugimoto

7-Kenosha Theater, Kenosha, 2015. © Hiroshi Sugimoto

8-Manatee, 1994. © Hiroshi Sugimoto

9-Polar Bear, 1976. © Hiroshi Sugimoto

10-Salvador Dali, 1999. © Hiroshi Sugimoto

11-Union City Drive-in, Union City, 1993. © Hiroshi Sugimoto

12-Hiroshi Sugimoto. © Sugimoto Studio

Fotografia Europea 2023

Top three festival highlights

Selected by Tim Clark

1000 Words Editor in Chief Tim Clark reflects on the 18th edition of Fotografia Europea held in the Italian city of Reggio Emilia with a programme anchored in the theme ‘Europe Matters: Visions of a Restless Identity’, confronting the politics of inclusion and exclusion and the presence of history and culture in the present moment. Across 20 exhibitions, the curatorial proposition considers the relationship between conceptions of nationhood and democratic community, as well as the multicultural realities of European countries for the purposes of reconstruction, solidarity and alternative ways of existing together. We profile Mónica de Miranda, Simon Roberts and The Archive of Public Protests (A-P-P) – artists and collectives defined by their commitment to social change.


1. Mónica de Miranda, The Island
Chiostri di San Pietro

Upon entering the first floor at Chiostri di San Pietro, the vast sprawling 16th century monastic complex that serves as the hub for Fotografia Europea, visitors are confronted by an enlarged reproduction of the work from Mónica de Miranda entitled Whistle for the Wind. It figures the central protagonist from The Island series who is seen overlooking a vast expanse of water, sombre and subdued, as if expectant for answers. It leads into an exhibition of work comprising photographs, film and installation from the Portuguese-Angolan artist, known for her metaphysical investigations that unify postcolonial issues of geography, history and subjectivity related to Africa and its diaspora.

Though de Miranda has summoned an imaginary island to enact her fable, the reference is in fact the crudely named “Ilha dos Pretos” (Island of Blacks) – a denomination of oral tradition given in the 18th century to a community of people of African heritage that settled in the riverside area of the Sado River, southern Portugal; a place where the ghosts from Portugal’s colonial past intersect with the geological forces of deep time. Therefore, one might assume that what lies beyond in Whistle for the Wind are the vestiges of the past, those easily forgotten by a hegemonic system.

The creative and philosophical perspectives of alternate gazes, such as the queer gaze, the Black gaze and the female gaze, break with the idea of a white patriarchal heterosexual system – the many social clases that are ‘othered’ and too often treated as inferior – in order to find a new grammar or expression. They offer subversive counterpoints to the violence in the act of looking and consuming gendered imagery and ensuing reductive representations, whilst seeking beauty, empathy and valorisation of less prevalent experiences.

Political rebellion and resistance against the repression of a Black person’s “right to look” is what underscores bell hooks’ notion of the ‘oppositional gaze’. The late feminist, scholar and social activist first coined the term in her 1992 essay collection, Black Lives, to refer to a gaze that denies a spectator pleasure from looking, combating voyeurism and submits itself to a self-determined subject. It is not about scopophilia but defiance; looking as a form of communication, understanding and recognition. Therefore the ‘oppositional gaze’ affirms a right to identity and to see and document the world one knows or lives in. Perception can be a political act, as James Baldwin once ventured in a speech: “In the case of the American Negro, from the moment you are born every stick and stone, every face, is white. Since you have not yet seen a mirror, you suppose you are, too. It comes as a great shock around the age of five, six or seven to discover that the flag to which you have pledged allegiance, along with everybody else, has not pledged allegiance to you.”

Indeed, de Miranda commands a way of storytelling and coherent cultural memory as a means of empowerment. Holding up a mirror to project and reflect her model’s face, the four photographs entitled Mirror Me literally bring this into sharp relief: across the suite of images an assertive Black women is depicted wearing a captain’s cap, a cowboy hat and a horse-riding helmet. Costume and masquerade work together to form a protective mantle and the duality of the mirror allows us to discover a new system of reality. It evolves a possibility to imagine a different past, present and potential future – coalescing the women’s complex and multiple ideas of identity. There’s power, prestige and performance at work for these are portraits to dream in; an image gallery of internal visions and outward views, a ‘manifesting device’, a looking glass of self and otherness, an apparatus for transformation.

2. Simon Roberts, Merrie Albion: Landscape Studies From A Small Island
Chiostri di San Pietro

Simon Roberts’ Merrie Albion: Landscape Studies From A Small Island was first released as a monograph with Dewi Lewis in 2017 in the wake of the nationalist triumph of Brexit. Inside its pages, Roberts takes the temperature of the UK, offering insights into notions of identity, belonging and, specifically, what it means to be British at this significant moment in contemporary history. With his customary elevated perspective and tableaux style, we oversee views of places and the people that populate them to form a survey of a nation: on the one hand of the spaces and evolving patterns of leisure, the consumption and commodification of history, militarisation and to the lines of demarcation and exclusion in the landscape; and, in parallel, of subjects and events that have an immediate and enduring significance to Britain’s drastically changing trajectory of the past decade. As David Chandler has written in the book’s introduction: ‘[there is] an overriding sense of uncertainty and anxiety in Roberts’ national chronicle as it moves slowly towards the referendum and Brexit, and then culminates in the terrible iconic image of social inequality, injustice, and trauma formed by the blackened high-rise tomb of Grenfell Tower.’

Chandler goes on to point out that at its heart, Roberts’ work seeks to quell the visceral drama of events, not through immersing his camera in the drama of a scene but rather by stepping back. That way, the artist encompasses a fuller view of what’s unfolding, creating photographs that resolve into a multi-layered and nuanced array of comparative and linked information – tea parties, Eton College boat races, army recruitment stalls, Stonehenge, the London 2012 opening ceremony, the Royal Wedding, ‘Occupy London’ camps or trading floors of Lloyds Banking Group.

The cumulative effect of Merrie Albion is an offering; a poignant socio-political mood piece, the power and urgency of which never subsides with every year that passes amidst the continual calamities of the current UK government. Leading up to the exhibition installation, England football legend Gary Lineker was forced off BBC’s Match of the Day programme in a row over impartiality after comparing the vile language used to launch a new government asylum policy with 1930s Nazi Germany – the latest debacle in the so called ‘culture wars’, a clear distraction from the actual pressing issues facing the country today, chief among them: the cost of living crisis, wealth hoarding, inflation, energy bills, public health care systems at breaking point, criminalising the right to protest, taking away freedoms, multiple politician scandals and, of course, the failed and immensely costly project that is Brexit.

Roberts’ photograph Beachy Head, Seven Sisters Country Park, East Sussex, 24 March 2017, may serve as a useful coda here. Roberts says it best: ‘Taken in the very same week that the former UK prime minister Theresa May triggered Article 50, the start of the two year negotiation period to take Britain out of the EU, it shows ramblers exploring the chalk cliffs on the country’s south coast. An instantly recognisable symbol of Britain, the cliffs were recently voted one of the top 20 breath-taking views in the UK. But they also represent a boundary, between land and sea, high and low, the known and unknown, Britain and the outside – a potent symbol of Britain’s increasing isolation and political separation from Europe.’

3. The Archive of Public Protests, You’ll never walk alone
Chiostri di San Pietro

The Archive of Public Protests (A-P-P) was founded in 2019 by Rafal Milach, together with other photographers, academics and activists. Its mission is to examine social and political tensions in Poland from 2015 onwards, particularly among the young generation who have taken to the streets in great swathes with increasing regularity to demonstrate against the country’s leadership. A-P-P has now created a significant repository of work via its semi-open online platform and free newspapers centred on particular events or happenings. Dealing with the mounting complexities that define our troubled times, A-P-P’s stated aim is a “duty to archive” matched with a need to study the visual aspects of protest in the struggle against breaches of the law, discrimination and violence of various kinds. Its results articulate various states of ‘unfreedom’. Through a mix of raw footage, slogans used by protestors, bold design, sound and photographs, their exhibition You’ll never walk alone, as a biodimensional experience, is akin to being amongst a protest. It explores issues and inequalities long silenced by the Polish government, ranging from topics including state and police oppression, climate emergency protests, the LGTBQIA+ community, pro-choice Women’s Strike, Belarussian solidarity protests in Poland, the refugee crisis at the Polish-Belarussian border and anti-war and solidarity with Ukraine protests in Poland. The context is the Anthropocene, and histories unfold individually and collectively, at a hyper-local level but, of course, also resonating on the global stage.

Many members of A-P-P are active participants in the demonstrations whilst also observing the events with a critical eye, noting the shifting characteristics particularly around the use of language, which is said to have become more radical, vulgar even, given the levels of frustration and anger. And though the marches are peaceful, the message is always a bold one. The word “Wypierdalac” [Get the fuck out] is routinely shouted from within the crowds. This is combined with a distinct visual spectacle: people marching to the sound of drums and chants, banners hoisted high, flamboyant costumes as well as spontaneous performances throughout city streets and in front of monuments in the heart of Warsaw and beyond. The tools for intervention are both animated and artful. So too is the iconography, such as the symbol of a crimson-coloured lightning bolt that proliferates most notably throughout the Women’s Strike: as both face and body paint, projected onto building and even as fashion accessories. Similarly, red is the colour of choice: red ink, red clothes, red paint – the visual language of solidarity.

As a project dedicated to the relationship between archival practices and publication-making as a site of learning and solidarity (‘solidarity’ being the operative word as it was name of Poland’s first trade union founded in 1980), A-P-P is not interested in representing resistance or “going viral”. Instead, there is a strong desire to correct firmly established and outdated narratives that are propagated from the confines of mainstream media, the latter now almost entirely controlled by the state. Nor is it an attempt at objectivity, especially given the fact that the many far-right marches that frequent Poland’s streets and public spaces are not documented here. It is a partial account – selective and subjective. Yet A-P-P draws us into the efforts of those individuals and groups who are pushing back, those who are laying bare the ideological tactics of control and manipulation through a different kind of massification of images. Milach himself has explained in a recent interview: “By releasing the newspaper and creating this alternative circulation of images, we control the narrative and their usage. This is crucial, especially today – facing all the fake news or half-truths that influence our political and social life more and more. By creating a distribution channel – one of many – we can crystallise the message. It’s a coherent, closed document, which is manifesting certain clear ideas.” ♦

Fotografia Europea 2023 ran from 28 April – 11 June 2023.


Tim Clark is Editor in Chief of 1000 Words and Artistic Director for Fotografia Europea in Reggio Emilia, Italy, together with Walter Guadagnini and Luce Lebart. He also currently serves as a curatorial advisor for Photo London Discovery and teaches at The Institute of Photography, Falmouth University.

Images:

1-Mónica de Miranda, Whistle for the wind, Portugal, 2022. © Mónica de Miranda, Commissioned by Autograph London.

2-Mónica de Miranda, The Lunch on the beach (after Manet), Portugal, 2022, 350 x 230 cm (6 parts of 115 x 116.50 cm) © Mónica de Miranda.

3-Mónica de Miranda, Double force, Portugal, 2022. © Mónica de Miranda.

4-Simon Roberts, Beachy Head, Seven Sisters Country Park, East Sussex, 14 March 2017. © Simon Roberts.

5-Simon Roberts, Equestrian Jumping Individual, Greenwich Park, London, 8 August 2012. © Simon Roberts.

6-Simon Roberts, Broadstairs Dickens Festival, Isle of Thanet, 19 June 2008. © Simon Roberts.

7-Rafal Milach, Women’s Strike Protest against nearly total abortion ban, Warsaw, Poland, 22.10.22. © Rafal Milach, courtesy The Archive of Public Protests.

8-David Zieliński, Protest in defence of free media, Krakow, Poland, 12.08.21. © David Zieliński, courtesy The Archive of Public Protests.

9-Rafal Milach, Women’s Strike Protest against nearly total abortion ban, Warsaw, Poland, 22.10.22. © Rafal Milach, courtesy The Archive of Public Protests.

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
bryony@publicknowledgebooks.com
www.publicknowledgebooks.com

Les Rencontres d’Arles 2022

Top three festival highlights

Selected by Tim Clark

1000 Words Editor in Chief, Tim Clark, reports back from the opening of Les Rencontres d’Arles 2022, the 53rd edition of the bright, bushy-tailed festival set across the evocative Roman town in the south of France. Among the many exhibitions to salute are Norwegian-Nigerian artist Frida Orapabo’s How Fast Shall We Sing at Mécanique Générale in the dazzling new Parc des Ateliers at LUMA Arles, Rahim Fortune’s I can’t stand to see you cry as part of the Louis Roederer Discovery Award curated by Taous R. Dahmani and Sathish Kumar’s Town Boy, resulting from the first Serendipity Arles Grant in 2020. However, three particularly ambitious thematic exhibitions stand out for their complex visual dialogues and multiple vantage points onto the world and world of images.


1. But Still, It Turns
Musée départemental Arles antique 

The wall text that introduces But Still, It Turns, the exhibition Paul Graham has curated at Musée départemental Arles antique – which, among many notable bodies of work, features Emanuele Brutti and Piergiorgio Casotti’s Index-G, Vanessa Winship’s she dances on Jackson and Curran Hatleberg’s Lost Coast – states, brazenly: ‘there is no didactic story here, no theme or artifice. None is asked, none is given.’ Isn’t no story, like when artists claim their work as ‘apolitical’, a story in itself? In this case, the ‘story’ – or rather, quasi-framework or exhibitionary complex – is that of a statement of positions on a mode of photography identified as so-called ‘post-documentary’. Its meta-narrative draws from a shared approach, or attitude, propagated by this judiciously selected group of photographers who, in one way or another, turn their lens on intimacies and small episodes of contemporary social realities in the US. Specifically, working in the observational mode, they opt to summon quiet or unremarkable moments as a means of possessing the weight of the world: a town and its inhabitants gripped by industrial decline, sounds and situations at the fault lines of race, environment and economy and so on. Yet there are no easy narratives – all is posed as fleeting and messy but also empathetic and genuine; what Graham refers to as ‘a consciousness of life, and its song’.

Originally staged at ICP, New York, But Still, It Turns in the context of Les Rencontres d’Arles is ultimately a hymn to traditional yet enduring forms of photography, its serious artistic application allowing ‘a kind of pathway through the cacophony – a way to see and embrace the storm.’ Graham writes: ‘It could guide you through the randomness and grant the simple mercy of recognising life in all its prismatic wonder’. That such complex dialogues emerge across these meaningful articulations from life, demonstrates the artists’ deep levels of understanding of the bonds between looking and caring, perceiving and visualising. And, unsurprisingly, there are echoes of Graham’s own work at every turn, redolent of a mountain towering over a landscape, whose image can only be glimpsed through its reflection in a lake below.

2. Songs of the Sky. Photography & The Cloud
Monoprix

More curatorial (in the sense of thematising a group exhibition around a singular subject) is Songs of the Sky. Photography & The Cloud at Monoprix, the vast and industrial first-floor area above the French supermarket of the same name. As its title suggests, the show takes the motif of the cloud in photography as a starting point as well as the metaphor of ‘the cloud’ as a technological network that enables remote data storage and computing power commonly associated with the Internet. Of course, the empirical mass of photographs, i.e. those that exist on our smartphones and laptops – baby and cat photographs, holiday snaps, selfies, sunsets and pictures of food – or, by a similar token, those which have been generated by surveillance cameras and satellites, exist ‘up there’ in the cloud, finding in cables, screens and hard drives material form as part of the techno-capitalist system. Artists, on the other hand, have attempted to subvert and critique its principles, infrastructure and structures, ergo this exhibition.

Upon entering, one’s eyes don’t know where exactly to look; there are multiple sightlines onto numerous works from different artists but that’s certainly not a bad thing. As such, striking juxtapositions between historical material from the 19th century, such as Charles Nègre or Louis Vignes’ photographs, and contemporary works by Lisa Oppenheim, Trevor Paglen, Andy Sewell and Simon Roberts come to bear. What emerges is a tension between the sky as something sublime, as something which, for centuries, represented a way of ‘divining the future’ as James Bridle has put it, versus the far-from-romantic means we conceive of it today: a digital phenomenon that transfers and commodifies our data, with dramatic consequences for climate emergency and geo-politics. ‘Will the immense carbon footprint of the technical cloud accelerate global warming to such an extent that in the future it will be rare to see many faced cloud creatures floating by in the sky?’, is just one of the powerful research questions driving the exhibition. Organised with skill and clear focus, Songs of the Sky. Photography & The Cloud has been curated by Kathrin Schönegg of C/O Berlin, who was also the recipient of the 2019 Rencontres d’Arles Curatorial Research Fellowship.

3. Ritual Inhabitual, Geometric Forests: Struggles on Mapuche Land
Chapelle Saint-martin Du Méjan

Native to the temperate rainforests in southern Chile are medicinal plants and a rich biodiversity that have bore witness to endless cycles of construction and destruction. Monocultures of pine and eucalyptus have now come to dominate in service to the hugely lucrative paper pulp industry in the region, Chile being the world’s fourth largest producer from its 2.87 million hectares of plantations after all. The Mapuche (“people of the earth”), meanwhile, have lived on this land long before the country was founded and now find themselves at the heart of an ongoing battle: their spiritual relationship with the environment is at odds with an aggressive, global economy based on the exploitation of natural resources, leading to violence between nationalist organisations, industrialists’ private militia and the army’s specialist anti-terror squad. In response to this conflict, Chilean collective Ritual Inhabitual, created by Florencia Grisanti and Tito Gonzalez García, embarked on a five year photographic and ethnobotanical investigation that encompasses delectable Wet Collodian plates as well as large and medium format colour photographs of members of the Mapuche community, plants, trees and cloning laboratories of a forestry company. That this project encompasses a broad range of cohorts is one of its strongest features, for it offers a multi-vantage point perspective onto the subject at hand. Deftly translated by the exhibition’s curator, Sergio Valenzuela-Escobedo, whose careful choreography of the space highlights these competing factions, Geometric Forests: Struggles on Mapuche Land mediates the political desire to open up a debate on the nature of consumption at large.

While aesthetics may write the script in other environmentally-concerned exhibitions, here a form of infrastructural activism that reflects on the actual conditions and implications of its own making is evident. The exhibition is therefore highly commendable for harnessing the possibility of thinking and talking otherwise about making art in a less extractive fashion, allied with the admission that an entirely eco-friendly exhibition of images is an impossibility. One obvious example of mitigating impact has been to reuse existing frames from previous exhibitions. Similarly, printing directly onto material surfaces bypassing the need for paper or gluing the print onto an archival cardboard as opposed to an aluminium substrate in the event the former cannot be achieved. Even some of the temporary exhibition structures are stripped back to show the bare bones utilisation of wood, itself dismountable and reusable. There is also a kind of in-built critique present in the blurb of the accompanying book, published with Actes Sud, with a particularly striking section revealing a consciousness and self-awareness. It reads: ‘3029 kilos of Munken Kristall paper and 814 kilos of Soposeet paper were used for the book, as well as 220 kilos of Munken Kristall paper for the cover. Based on 24 trees for one tonne of paper, 96 trees were needed to transform those 4,063 kg of paper into 2,200 copies of this book.’ Clearly, in Geometric Forests, its participants take up the responsibility to call for new socio-environmental-political forms of collaboration. Maybe, via the propositions and practices contained in this exhibition, there is a way forward together, a sustainable means of co-existence.♦

Les Rencontres d’Arles 2022 runs until 25 September 2022.



Tim Clark is Editor in Chief of 1000 Words and Artistic Director for Fotografia Europea in Reggio Emilia, Italy, together with Walter Guadagnini and Luce Lebart. He also currently serves as a curatorial advisor for Photo London Discovery and teaches at The Institute of Photography, Falmouth University.

Images:

1-Vanessa Winship, from the series She dances on Jackson, 2013, part of But Still, It Turns. Courtesy the artist and MACK.

2-Curran Hatleberg, from the series Lost Coast, 2016, part of But Still, It Turns. Courtesy the artist and MACK.

3-Kristine Potter, Drying Out, from the series Manifest, 2018, part of But Still, it Turns. Courtesy the artist and MACK.

4-Trevor Paglen, CLOUD #865 Hough Circle Transform, 2019, part of Songs of the Sky. Photography & The Cloud. Courtesy the artist and Pace Gallery 

5-Andy Sewell, Known and Strange Things Pass, 2020, part of Songs of the Sky. Photography & The Cloud. Courtesy the artist and Robert Morat Gallery.

6-Noa Jansma, Buycloud, 2020-21, part of Songs of the Sky. Photography & The Cloud. Courtesy the artist.

7-Ritual Inhabitual, Paul Filutraru, Rapper in the group Wechekeche ñi Trawün, Santiago de Chile, 2016, part of Geometric Forests: Struggles on Mapuche Land. Courtesy the artists.

8-Ritual Inhabitual, Biotechnology series, Chile, 2019, part of Geometric Forests: Struggles on Mapuche Land. Courtesy the artists.

9-Ritual Inhabitual, Geometric Forests series, Chile, 2018, part of Geometric Forests: Struggles on Mapuche Land. Courtesy the artists.