Subterms
The scene seems innocuous enough – an old brick wall crumbles with age. Weeds spring from its dusty base, and a couple of cedar trees peek over from the other side. But the photo, from Miquel Gonzalez’s Memoria Perdida project, holds a secret. Between 1936 and 1956, nearly 4,000 people were executed at this site […] More
An exhibition of some 200 of Luigi Ghirri’s photographs, curated by James Lingwood of Artangel, comes to the Jeu de Paume this February (12 February–2 June). The Italian photographer, who was an early adopter of colour, trained as a surveyor and an interest in maps and models runs throughout his many series of work. Ghirri […] More
When Ara Güler, for many the greatest photographer of modern Turkey, died last month at the age of 90, the city he devoted his life to photographing came to a standstill. Thousands of admirers, young and old, gathered to pay respects before the funeral service of a man historians and fellow photographers have called the […] More
Peter Hujar is one of those artists who remained relatively unknown to the larger art world in his own lifetime yet achieved much recognition from other artists of his generation – among his better-known peers are Diane Arbus, Robert Mapplethorpe and David Wojnarowicz (with whom Hujar shared an intense relationship). His reputation has, however, grown […] More
The German film-maker was a prolific photographer in the 1970s and ’80s – he claims to have taken more than 12,000 photographs – often on location and sometimes of his cast and crew. In recent years he has recovered some of the Polaroids he gave away to friends, and scanned, reprinted and exhibited them. I […] More
In an age increasingly plagued by the overuse of the word ‘iconic’, it is salutary to be reminded of what makes an image truly deserve the tag. Dorothea Lange’s Migrant Mother, Nipomo, California (1936) is one of those photographs in which the combination of compositional brilliance, human empathy, and political significance makes for something simultaneously […] More
In 1815 Mount Tambora in Indonesia erupted. It is considered one of the largest volcanic eruptions ever – bigger than Krakatoa and Vesuvius. Twelve thousand people were killed directly by the volcanic activity, but the fallout was felt far beyond the immediate area and resulted in tens of thousands more deaths. The poet Li Yuyang […] More
An index is a list of names or subjects to be cross-referenced; it is a symptom, or an indicator which measures scale, value or success. Our index fingers are termed as such because they are our ‘pointing fingers’ – the fingers with which we single out, select, warn, admonish, unify and praise. In photography, the index is […] More
