Böcker i Aperture Magazine-serien

More than two million people are currently incarcerated in the United States. While the country accounts for 5 percent of the global population, it is home to 25 percent of the world's prison population. How can photography help us understand this vast system, and the lives shaped-and disrupted-by mass incarceration? From a reflection on the origins of the mug shot to stark aerial views of supermax prisons to recent projects focused on everyday life in New York's Riker's Island, Louisiana's Angola Prison, and California's San Quentin Prison, this issue considers the visual record, and human toll, of a national crisis that is often removed from public view. Prison Nation is organized with contributing editor Nicole Fleetwood, author of the forthcoming book, Carceral Aesthetics: Prison Art and Public Culture.

Aperture magazine releases winter issue, “Desire,” featuring an expansive interview with renowned fashion photographer Juergen Teller“Photographs can abet desire in the most direct, utilitarian way,” Susan Sontag observed. Hers was a reference to more prurient activities, but she also allowed that desire could be abstract, something more slippery. The compulsion to want—or, in today’s parlance, to manifest—emerges throughout Aperture’s winter 2023 issue, “Desire,” as both an impulse and a state of mind.“Desire” includes an expansive interview with Juergen Teller, whose photographs upend fashion’s vocabulary of glamour and aspiration, trading conventional beauty for the more peculiar. Artists such as Nakeya Brown, Jonathas de Andrade, Nabil Harb, Oto Gillen, and Marcelo Gomes consider what it means to put one’s own body on display, to break from long-standing customs, to be seduced by raw beauty found in nature or in uncanny artifice. Histories are conjured through evocative personal objects in the work of Ishiuchi Miyako, who for decades has created beguiling images that in two dimensions are at once surreal and surprisingly physical. In “Desire,” photographers render reality as unearthly—and take the viewer somewhere else altogether.

This spring, Aperture magazine presents issue #250, “We Make Pictures in Order to Live,” which explores the relationship between photography and storytelling across generations and geographies. Featuring visual stories that excite, surprise, and illuminate daily life, this issue’s title is a nod to the late, celebrated writer Joan Didion, who declared, “We tell ourselves stories in order to live.” Aperture contributors explore the quiet poetry— or clamorous disorder—of the everyday, and attest that making photographs is a way of being aliveIn a sweeping introductory essay, Brian Dillon asks how we might view Didion through photography, and what images come to mind when we think of her writing. Thessaly La Force profiles Bieke Depoorter, who sees documentary photography both as a listening exercise and a form of investigation, blurring the lines between authorship, fiction, and truth. Alistair O’Neill takes stock of Nick Waplington’s vibrant records of subcultures on both sides of the Atlantic. Lena Fritsch writes about the “exquisite world-making” of photographer Eikoh Hosoe’s collaborative practice. Tiana Reid reconsiders Charles “Teenie” Harris’s vivid, midcentury portraits of Black life in Pittsburgh, several of which are published for the first time in this issue. Among the portfolios, Casey Gerald discusses Adraint Bereal’s images depicting the agony and ecstasy of being a Black college student in the US today. Yvonne Venegas searches for family ghosts in the Mexican landscape, which poet and novelist Daniel Saldaña París describes as “an exercise in freedom and intelligence.” Kamayani Sharma looks at Gauri Gill’s images of a community masquerade in the Indian state of Maharashtra, and its potential to reverse power dynamics inherent in seeing and being seen.  Durga Chew-Bose meditates on the photographs of Mary Manning—also featured on the cover— and their poetic sensitivity toward story and the everyday. For Endnote, Aperture poses six questions for the painter Jordan Casteel. In The PhotoBook Review—included within every issue of Aperture—Bruno Ceschel speaks with photographer, bookmaker, and publisher Alejandro Cartagena about his work. Lou Stoppard reviews a trio of photobooks about domestic spaces, and Aperture’s editors review a range of recent publications.

Anniversary issue features seven original commissions by leading photographers and artists, and seven essays about Aperture’s legacy by award-winning writers and criticsThis fall, Aperture celebrates seventy years in print with an issue that explores the magazine’s past while charting its future. Reflecting on the founding editors’ original mission and drawing on Aperture’s global community of photographers, writers, and thinkers, this issue features seven original artist commissions as well as seven essays by some of the most incisive writers working today––each engaging with the magazine’s archive in distinct ways. Among the original artist commissions, Iñaki Bonillas selects iconic images and texts from the Aperture’s archive from the 1950s to produce open-ended narrative collages. Dayanita Singh reflects on the 1960s and the family album as a serious photographic form. Yto Barrada enacts sculptural interventions to issues and spreads from the 1970s, using remnants of the late artist Bettina Grossman’s color paper cutouts. Mark Steinmetz draws inspiration from the magazine’s Summer 1987 issue, “Mothers & Daughters,” to compose a photo essay of his wife, the photographer Irina Rozovsky, and their daughter Amelia. Considering the matrix of censorship, art, and religion in the 1990s, John Edmonds creates a tableau about family, faith, and grief. Hannah Whitaker explores the turn of the century, and the ways in which our anxieties about technology create speculative worlds. And Hank Willis Thomas draws on Aperture’s issues from the 2010s to create a series of collages that reference traditional quilt patterning, revivifying history and remixing the present.Looking back upon Aperture’s legacy, Darryl Pinckney reconsiders the photographer and editor Minor White, whose vision shaped the magazine for nearly two decades, beginning in the 1950s. Olivia Laing writes about the 1960s and the tensions between reportage and artistry in the work of Dorothea Lange, W. Eugene Smith, and others. Geoff Dyer revisits to the 1970s, which he considers a decade of new ideas and deeper reflection on the medium, looking into the works of William Eggleston and Ralph Eugene Meatyard. Brian Wallis looks back at the politics, art, identity, and the “culture wars” of the 1980s, while Susan Stryker reflects on Aperture’s archive from the 1990s and its foregrounding of identity beyond the gender binary, evoking Catherine Opie, Elaine Reichek, and Aperture’s pathbreaking “Male/Female” issue. Lynne Tillman illustrates how photographers searched for the tangible in an increasingly digital world in the 2000s, and the Pulitzer Prize-winning critic Salamishah Tillet shows how the photo album became a source of connection and narrative amid the information overabundance of the 2010s.

This fall, Aperture magazine presents an issue exploring the idea of cosmologies—the origins, histories, and local universes that artists create for themselves.In an exclusive interview, Greg Tate speaks to Deana Lawson about how her monumental staged portraits trace cosmologies of the African diaspora. “What I’m doing integrates mythology, religion, empirical data, dreams,” says Lawson, whose work is the subject of major solo exhibitions this year at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, and Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston.In an in-depth profile of Judith Joy Ross and her iconic portraiture, Rebecca Bengal shows how a constellation of strangers is brought together through Ross’s precise, empathic gaze. “Ross is guided by a rapt, intense, wholehearted belief in the individual,” Bengal writes.A portfolio of Michael Schmidt’s acutely observed work from the 1970s and ’80s reveals the realms within realms of a once divided Berlin, while Feng Li’s surprising black-and-white snapshots zigzag between absurdist dramas in various Chinese cities. Ashley James distills the surreal visions of Awol Erizku’s still lifes and tableaux; Casey Gerald contributes a sweeping ode to Baldwin Lee’s stirring 1980s portraits of Black Southern subjects; and Pico Iyer meditates on Tom Sandberg’s grayscales marked by both absence and reverence.Throughout “Cosmologies,” artists cast their attention on the great mysteries of both personal and shared lineages, tracking their locations in space, time, and history, and reminding us of the elegant enigmas that can be unraveled close to home.

This summer, Aperture presents a special issue focused on the relationship between photography, urbanism, and activist trajectories from Delhi. Guest edited by Rahaab Allana, the Alkazi Foundation's lead curator, the issue explores multiple incarnations of the city¿s photographic culture, from O. P. Sharmäs experimental works from the 1960s to Aditi Jain¿s intimate tableaux of Delhi¿s trans community today. Interviews with revered writer Arundhati Roy and with Bangladesh¿s best-known photojournalist, Shahidul Alam, illuminate sites of protest in the city and throughout South Asia. Skye Arundhati Thomas revisits Sheba Chhachhi¿s feminist staged portraits from the 1980s and ¿90s. Featuring a cross section of dynamic image-makers and thinkers, such as Jyoti Dhar, Sunil Gupta, Ishan Tankha, and Anshika Varma, and emerging voices Uzma Mohsin and Prarthna Singh, the issue is a distinctive meditation on regionalism, politics, and identity, through archival and contemporary photographic viewpoints.

Marking the one-year anniversary of New York¿s shutdown due to the COVID-19 pandemic, Aperture magazine¿s ¿New York¿ issue honors the city through photographs and essays by visionary artists and writers, from Roe Ethridge and Rosalind Fox Solomon to Hilton Als and Joseph O¿Neill. In ¿New York,¿ acclaimed photojournalist Philip Montgomery speaks with the New York Times Magazine¿s director of photography, Kathy Ryan, about covering the city¿s hospitals at the height of the pandemic. Irina Rozovsky contributes magisterial, sun-dappled visions of Brooklyn¿s Prospect Park landscape. Hua Hsu writes poignantly about the archival photographs that emerged after a fire at the Museum of Chinese in America. Antwaun Sargent speaks with the founders of See In Black, an initiative to support Black photographers and communities. And Tanisha C. Ford profiles Jamel Shabazz, whose indelible images of 1980s street culture are icons of style and joy. Our lives and our city have been transformed over the past year, yet this issue reminds us of how much there is to discover, and relish, when New York comes roaring back.

This winter, in the wake of a pandemic, global protest movements, and a dramatic presidential election in the United States, Aperture releases ¿Utopia,¿ an issue that shows that other ways of living are possible¿when the collective will exists.In ¿Utopia,¿ artists, photographers, and writers envision a world without prisons, document visionary architecture, honor queer space and creativity, and dream of liberty through spiritual self-expression. They show us that utopia is not a far-fetched scheme, but rather a way of reshaping our future.In a profile, Salamishah Tillet considers Tyler Mitchell¿s visions of Black people resting in open green space, a democratizing landscape in which Mitchell continuously asks himself: ¿What are the things that I can do to lessen the inherent hierarchies in the photography-shoot structure of seeing and being seen?¿ Sara Knelman shows the freeing possibilities of the feminist collage works of Lorna Simpson, Mickalene Thomas, Sara Cwynar, and Alanna Fields. Julian Rose speaks with the filmmaker Matt Wolf about his latest documentary, Spaceship Earth (2020), which follows the people who created Biosphere 2 in 1991. And Antwaun Sargent traces Black queer artists¿ journeys into immersive desire. ¿Utopiä also includes compelling portfolios by David Benjamin Sherry, Allen Frame, and Balarama Heller, whose respective works span time and geography, from bohemian New York to a Hare Krishna retreat in India.¿The utopian imagination tends to stir when the world feels simultaneously wrecked and malleable,¿ the writer Chris Jennings notes, in a series of reflections by writers such as Olivia Laing and Nicole R. Fleetwood. Notions of utopia shouldn¿t be restricted to the fantasy of a fully realized ideal society, or the outsize, often failed, sometimes disastrous schemes and social experiments of the past. Instead, we might consider utopia a mode of vision and thought that shields us from hopelessness.

This fall, as debates around nationalism and borders in North America reach a fever pitch, Aperture magazine releases ¿Native America,¿ a special issue about photography and Indigenous lives, guest edited by the artist Wendy Red Star. ¿Native Americä considers the wide-ranging work of photographers and lens-based artists who pose challenging questions about land rights, identity and heritage, and histories of colonialism. Several contributors revisit or reconfigure photographic archives¿from writer Rebecca Bengal¿s look at the works of Richard Throssel and Horace Poolaw, to artist Duane Linklater¿s intervention in a 1995 issue of Aperture, ¿Strong Hearts,¿ the magazine¿s first volume devoted to Native American photographers.¿I was thinking about young Native artists,¿ says Red Star, ¿and what would be inspirational and important for them as a road map.¿That map spans a diverse array of intergenerational image-making, counting as lodestars the meditative assemblages of Kimowan Metchewais and installation works of Alan Michelson, the stylish self-portraits of Martine Gutierrez, and the speculative mythologies of Karen Miranda Rivadeneira and Guadalupe Maravilla. ¿Native Americä also features contributions by distinguished writers and curators, including strikingly personal reflections from acclaimed poets Tommy Pico and Natalie Diaz.With additional essential contributions from Rebecca Belmore and Julian Brave NoiseCat, as well as a portfolio from Red Star, the issue looks into the historic, often fraught relationship between photography and Native representation, while also offering new perspectives by emerging artists who reimagine what it means to be a citizen in North America today.

The Ballads issue of Aperture magazine is organized around the themes contained within the original ballad-intimacy, friendship, community, love, sex, trauma, music-while also honoring the urgent role of the artist as a force for cultural and social change.Few works have impacted the world of photography like Nan Goldin's The Ballad of Sexual Dependency. Published by Aperture in 1986, The Ballad retains an uncommon power with its unflinching portrayal of friends, lovers, and relationships-a dramatic opera of joy and despair. Decades on, influencing new generations of artists. Goldin herself remains a bold, singular force in our culture. Aperture magazine returns to an iconic work with "Ballads," a special issue featuring an exclusive interview with Goldin as well as a section curated by the artist dedicated to her influences.

How do homes serve as emblems of a moment, markers of the past, or articulations of future possibilities? The Spring 2020 issue of Aperture considers the meanings and forms of a home, and the relationships between architecture, design, and the domestic realm.From interviews with leading architects-such as David Adjaye, Denise Scott Brown, and Annabelle Selldorf-and a reconsideration of the irreverent interiors magazine Nest, to previously unpublished work by Robert Adams and new portfolios by artists, including Alejandro Cartagena, Fumi Ishino, Mauro Restiffe, and the duo Randhir Singh and Seher Shah, House & Home considers the concepts of home across diverse geographies and time periods.

"Family" delves into the ways photographers have chronicled their relationships with those closest to them, be it immediate family or their community of friends. Aperture magazine is an essential guide to the art and phenomenon of photography, that combines the smartest writing with beautifully reproduced portfolios. Published quarterly, each issue focuses on a major theme in contemporary photography, serving as a book about its subject, for everyone interested in understanding where photography is heading. With fresh perspectives on the medium by leading writers and thinkers, and beautifully designed and produced, Aperture magazine makes new ideas in photography accessible to the photographer, student, and the culturally curious alike.

Elements of Style investigates the role of style, dress, and beauty in the formation of individual identity. From the stunning studio work of Kwame Brathwaite, the Harlem-based photographer who advanced the potent political slogan "Black Is Beautiful," to Collier Schorr's representations of the queer community in fashion contexts, to Pieter Hugo's portraits of young students at a Beijing art school, this issue reveals, across time and geographies, how fashion and style help us to see who we are and who we might become. Aperture magazine is an essential guide to the art and phenomenon of photography, that combines the smartest writing with beautifully reproduced portfolios. Published quarterly, each issue focuses on a major theme in contemporary photography, serving as a book about its subject, for everyone interested in understanding where photography is heading. With fresh perspectives on the medium by leading writers and thinkers, and beautifully designed and produced, Aperture magazine makes new ideas in photography accessible to the photographer, student, and the culturally curious alike.

"Vision & Justice"Addresses the role of photography in the African American experience, guest edited by Sarah Lewis, distinguished author and art historian.