This. Lying on a mattress, kissing. The poster on the wall trying to hold on. The uncertain installation, the importance of inclusion. There is so much in it. The statement of having the person portrayed on the wall. How this couple may or may not have discussed politics before they just had to lie down to get closer. At the top of the poster, a drawing. The face of a person looking down on them. The grapes in the corner, envious like me.
The Dove of Criticism. At drinks after an off-off-Broadway play with the playwright and director, the conversation turned to the critics. So-and-so from New York Magazine had been in the audience that night. The New Yorker critic had canceled. The New York Times piece was out already. The playwright felt the review had been blasé, lukewarm at best—and since this was his first play produced after eighteen months in COVID-19’s grip, lukewarm felt downright icy.
There is a face, I can see the eyes. The green and fragmented screenshot is divided into five. At the top I see a light switch. Then there is a green stripe covering the top of the face. Then I see the eyes looking back at me, before another green stripe. The bottom of the photograph shows the shoulders of the person the photographer is talking to. It looks like a woman in a halter top; it could be summer. Taysir Batniji’s book Disruptions shows screenshots of video calls with his loved ones in Gaza, taken between 2015 and 2017.
Sisaruus. Anna-Kaisa Rastenberger with Elif Erdogan: When we talk about feminism, let’s talk about love.
Let’s start with feminism and define it as a social and political movement that seeks equality and challenges the gender-based societal norms and expectations that can limit people. Feminism gets its power from the drive to create a society that is fair for people of all genders.
During the past four decades, the definitions of feminism changed frequently as feminist discourse and activism expanded. In the ’60s and ’70s, feminism prioritized issues like reproductive rights and women’s workplace equality. Since the ’90s, feminism has emphasized global diversity and intersectionality with other social movements, including those fighting for trans rights and sex- workers’ rights. This breadth and diversity is crucial to feminism today, which addresses issues of gender, race, class, ability and sexuality. Technology has played a significant role in this expansion, with the rise of feminist blogs and social-media activism allowing for wider dissemination of feminist ideas and lowering the barrier to organizing.
2. I am ‘here’ because I read Moby-Dick in 2007 and then—as a middling young, near 30, white North Carolinian, at odds with my body, psychically askew, still working in a restaurant, and trying to get out of a situation I felt I was never really meant to be in—I almost immediately moved back to New York from the US South.
I am ‘here’ because I loved that book, which surprised me. And I warmed up to the coincidence that photography had been invented not long before Moby-Dick was written.
One winter morning a few years ago, I left my home in the damp, icy cold for and tramped through the dirty sleet and snow to get on a plane to Copenhagen. The temperature was just around zero, that magical moment where hot and cold meet, my destination a city known for a raw winter cold immortalised by H.C. Andersen’s story about the little match girl, who froze to death in the streets. I was making a day trip to the Danish capital in order to view the first posthumous exhibition of Sandberg’s vintage prints, hitherto unseen.
I am thinking of the video work Voir la mer by Sophie Calle which I saw yesterday at the Musée national Picasso-Paris. Six videos of Istanbul residents seeing the sea for the first time in their lives. They are filmed from behind, looking at the sea. Then they turn around. One of them is very self-conscious in the beginning, looking into the camera.
During the ceasefire in Gaza, the Palestinians were told it was forbidden to go to the sea.
One of the books in my suitcase after my stint at the Polycopies book fair during Paris Photo was Our Pocketkamera 1985 by Seiichi Furuya. After clearing out his attic, Furuya found films from a Kodak Pocket Instamatic camera he had given to his wife Christine in 1978. She continued to take photographs until she took her own life in 1985. This book contains mainly pictures taken by Christine, Furuya and their son Komyo, together with texts written by Furuya.
Auction for Gaza !
We are pleased to announce that Hilde Honerud is offering this work from the 2009 series ‘What do you want to be when you grow up? ’for a joint auction to help the organisation Doctors without Borders which works with the people of Gaza.
You send me an old image of yourself somewhere in the West, near where I grew up. A squinting, grinning child, facing the sun, feeding a lamb, one hand holding on to a metal string fence. There is text written over the image. An invitation. But my mind is distracted by another image, and we text about it. I'm leaning on the hope that in our knowledge of the fickle status of images, of their bending, we still have a capacity that can help us think, even when we're distracted.
What is it, a naked woman painted in silver print, dancing in the empty halls of Palais de Tokyo? The world is sinking and everyone says that nothing matters except what's happening in Gaza, and I couldn't agree more. And yet I go to exhibitions because art tends to make a difference, art might matter, at least I hope so. I haven't read anything about in beforehand, and am met with a lot of hotel beds and screens above them with men talking, and videos of the artist dancing in the same hall that we're in.
In an envelope from the Asker photo service - dated 18 November (the year is unknown) - found in his study, there were a few strips of positive film that Peter Wessel Zapffe, or his wife Berit, had delivered to re-order some prints. The first photo on the film was taken from the second floor of the house in Asker, depicting the sun setting over Nordre Follo.
This is a photograph of a column on the West portico steps of Thomas Jefferson’s Monticello estate, just outside of Charlottesville, VA. On the November 2019 day I made this picture, I was at Monticello on assignment from The New York Times Magazine, working on photographs for ‘The 1619 Project’.
One of my personal highlights in 2018 was seeing Elle Pérez’s exhibition Diablo at MoMA PS1. The exhibition consisted of nine large-scale photographs and a collage board of images and written notes. Pérez’s way of portraying others clearly demonstrates that a respectful deal has been made with the sitter.
IT IS A QUIET and early summer morning here in the kitchen. Mari and the boys are still asleep, the girls watching the classic animated version of The Jungle Book in the living room. The sun has been up for a while already, a warm breeze coming through the open window, with the sound of birds. I drink my coffee by the table, watching the city landscape.
It is a meeting at a crossroads. A man walks towards a woman on the other side of the road. They sneak glances at each other as they pass, and keep on walking.