Aperture

Aperture's winter issue considers the handmade in photography by assembling artists who use novel printing processes and techniques that forefront the physical materiality of the medium or explore its relationship to adjacent traditions, including ceramics, glass, textiles, design, and other forms of object making.

For fifty years, Robert Adams has made compelling, provocative, and highly influential photographs that show us the wonder and fragility of the American landscape, its inherent beauty, and the inadequacy of our response to it. American Silence: The Photographs of Robert Adams examines Adams's reverential act of looking at the world around him and the almost palpable silence of his photographs. It includes works that capture the sense of peace and harmony that the beauty of nature can instill in us, created through what Adams calls "the silence of light" of the American West (as seen on the prairie, in the woods, and by the ocean), as well as pictures that question our moral silence to the desecration of that beauty by consumerism, industrialization, and lack of environmental stewardship. The book features some 175 works from Adams's most important projects and includes pictures of suburban sprawl, strip malls, highways, homes, and stores, as well as rivers and skies, the prairie and the ocean. While Adams's photographs lament the ravages that have been inflicted on the land, they also pay homage to what remains.

Ten years after publishing Illuminance in 2011, Aperture is delighted to bring this beloved book back into print, retaining Rinko Kawauchi's original sequence and signature melding of keenly observed gestures, quotidian detail, and a finely honed palette. On the book's original release, Alec Soth declared Illuminance "an exquisitely produced monograph [that] should make Rinko a household name." An expanded edition with additional texts by curator David Chandler; philosopher Masatake Shinohara; and Aperture's creative director, Lesley A. Martin, this reissue contributes new context to and perspective on Kawauchi's influential work. Extraordinarily poetic, brimming with imagination and sensibility, and following international acclaim, this exquisite ten-year anniversary edition will entice lovers of photography once again.

Alone Street brings together two major bodies of work by Gregory Crewdson, Cathedral of the Pines (Aperture, 2016) and An Eclipse of Moths (Aperture, 2020), in a single, elegant, and affordable monograph. Both series expand on the artist's obsessive exploration of the psychogeography of small-town, post-industrial New England and underscore the precision and depth of Crewdson's unique mode of photographic storytelling. In each image, light, color, and carefully crafted scenography evoke the feeling that, as art historian Alexander Nemerov has astutely described, "all that ever happened in these places seems crystallized in his tableaux, as if the quiet melancholy of Crewdson's scenes gathered the unruly sorrows and other little-guessed feelings of people long-gone who once stood on those spots." In addition to the full set of images from each series, Alone Street, presents a selection of behind-the-scenes images and storyboards, revealing the extensive preparation and planning that went into the making of each work.

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.

At turns humorous and absurd, heartfelt and searching, Photo No-Nos is for photographers of all levels wishing to avoid easy metaphors and to sharpen their visual communication skills. Photographers often have unwritten lists of subjects they tell themselves not to shoot--things that are cliché, exploitative, derivative, sometimes even arbitrary. Photo No-Nos features ideas, stories, and anecdotes from many of the world's most talented photographers and photography professionals, along with an encyclopedic list of more than a thousand taboo subjects compiled from and with pictures by contributors. Not a strict guide, but a series of meditations on "bad" pictures, Photo No-Nos covers a wide range of topics, from sunsets and roses to issues of colonialism, stereotypes, and social responsibility. At a time when societies are reckoning with what and how to communicate through media and who has the right to do so, this book is a timely and thoughtful resource on what photographers consider to be off-limits, and how they have contended with their own self-imposed rules without being paralyzed by them.

Compiled by Magnum photojournalist Susan Meiselas, Eyes Open is a sourcebook of photography ideas for kids--to engage with the world through the camera. Twenty-three enticing projects help inspire a process of discovery and new ways of telling stories and animating ideas. Eyes Open features photographs by young people from around the globe, as well as work by professional artists that demonstrates how a simple idea can be expanded. Playful and meaningful, this book is for young would-be photographers and those interested in expressing themselves creatively.

With its vibrant street life, vast media industry, and influence on the fashion world, New York has long been considered the capital of photography. Since last March, though, life in the city has been altered in unthinkable ways due to the Covid-19 health crisis and the protests in support of Black lives. Aperture's New York issue will be released on the one-year anniversary of the city's shut down due to the Covid-19 crisis. The issue will honor community and public space in the city and highlight the distinct ways in which this city has fostered a vital image culture. Contributions will include Jamel Shabazz's decades-long chronicle of Black life in the city; Deana Lawson's distinct vision of Brooklyn; Vince Aletti on the tradition of the "New York issue" in magazine publishing; a conversation between Philip Montgomery and Kathy Ryan, Director of Photography at The New York Times Magazine; as well as highlights from a range of unique photo archives in the city. Additional contributors may include An-My Le?, Farah Al Qasimi, Ari Macropolous, Ryan McGinley, Irina Rozovksy, Olivia Laing, Jim Jarmusch, among others.

In the sixth installment of The Photography Workshop Series, Richard Misrach-well known for sublime and expansive landscapes that focus on the relationship between humans and their environment-offers his insight into creating photographs that are visually beautiful and contain cultural implications. Aperture Foundation works with the world's top photographers to distill their creative approaches to, teachings on, and insights into photography-offering the workshop experience in a book. Our goal is to inspire photographers at all levels who wish to improve their work, as well as readers interested in deepening their understanding of the art of photography. Through images and words, in this volume Misrach shares his own creative process and discusses a wide range of issues, from the language of color photography and the play of light and atmosphere, to transcending place and time through metaphor, myth, and abstraction.

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. "Utopia" 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.

Ming Smith's poetic and experimental images are icons of twentieth-century African American life. One of the greatest artist-photographers working today, Smith moved to New York in the 1970s and began to make images charged with startling beauty and spiritual energy. This long-awaited monograph brings together four decades of Smith's work, celebrating her trademark lyricism, distinctively blurred silhouettes, dynamic street scenes, and deep devotion to theater, music, poetry, and dance--from the "Pittsburgh Cycle" plays of August Wilson to the Afrofuturism of Sun Ra. With never-before-seen images, and a range of illuminating essays and interviews, this tribute to Smith's singular vision promises to be an enduring contribution to the history of American photography. Copublished by Aperture and Documentary Arts

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 America" 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 America" 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.

Published by Aperture in 1986, Nan Goldin's The Ballad of Sexual Dependency, with its fresh, unflinching portrayal of the photographer's circle of friends, dramatically changed the course of photography. Decades on, the series retains its searing power, influencing new generations of artists. Goldin herself remains a bold, singular force in our culture. Recently, she has taken on the Sackler family, shining a light on its role in creating America's opioid crisis. Goldin's trenchant activism is a reminder of the artist's power to effect social change. 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.

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.

In the fifth installment of The Photography Workshop Series, Dawoud Bey--well known for striking portraits that reflect both the individual and their larger community--offers his insight on creating meaningful and beautiful portraits that capture the subject and speak to something more universal. Aperture Foundation works with the world's top photographers to distill their creative approaches to, teachings on, and insights into photography--offering the workshop experience in a book. Our goal is to inspire photographers at all levels who wish to improve their work, as well as readers interested in deepening their understanding of the art of photography. Through images and words, he shares his own creative process and discusses a wide range of issues, from lighting and location to establishing relationships with subjects, and practical strategies for starting a larger portraiture project.

The latest in a series of city-based issues, Mexico City profiles the dynamic photographic culture of Mexico's capital, home to a thriving contemporary art scene, revered photography institutions, and world-class museums.