Aperture Foundation Inc. Staff

Aperture 248 - Fall 2022. 70th Anniversary Issue
Anniversary issue features seven original commissions by leading photographers and artists, and seven essays about Aperture's legacy by award-winning writers and critics This 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.… (meer)

Aperture magazine presents an issue exploring the idea of cosmologies—the origins, histories, and local universes that artists create.
Front
Agenda
Liz Johnson Artur, Tokyo: Art & Photography, Gillian Wearing, Mimi Cherono Ng’ok

Day Jobs
Kerry Manders on Catherine Opie’s industrious work ethic

Viewfinder
Lou Stoppard on visions of nightlife, from Nairobi to Ibiza

Curriculum
Geoff Dyer on Fred Eaglesmith, Dayanita Singh, and the pleasures of rereading Middlemarch

Words
Deana Lawson: The Conjurer
The great portraitist reimagines the world by revealing mystic truths
A Conversation with Greg Tate

Berlin Stories
How the divided German capital became Michael Schmidt’s life’s work
Gesine Borcherdt

Theo Eshetu: Infinite Screens
A prolific video artist considers identity and belonging
Emmanuel Iduma

The World of Judith Joy Ross
Through empathic portraits, individuals form a collective citizenry
Rebecca Bengal

Pictures
Return of the Light
For Anne Hardy, the River Thames yields ethereal photograms
Lena Fritsch

Galaxies
Batia Suter reinvents scientific books as lyrical assemblages
Brian Sholis

Mystic Parallax
Awol Erizku’s surreal visions of Africa and its diaspora
Ashley James

Carnival
In Colombia, Jim C. Nedd reflects on the visual codes of mythology
Daniel Berndt

Grayscales
Tom Sandberg’s meditations on absence
Pico Iyer

Cosmic Atlas
Tavares Strachan’s assemblages of colliding histories
Kaelen Wilson-Goldie

Good Night
Feng Li’s absurdist dramas on the streets of Chinese cities
Xuan Juliana Wang

My Grandfather Turned into a Tiger
Between Laos and Minnesota, Pao Houa Her’s memories and dreams
Kong Pheng Pha

True North
Dionne Lee’s intricate collages portray the poetics of survival
Shiv Kotecha

Southern Journeys
In the 1980s, Baldwin Lee made stars of his Black subjects
Casey Gerald

Genesis
Juan Brenner chronicles the glitter and gold of Guatemala’s youth
Suleman Sheikh Anaya

Back
Endnote
5 questions for Akwaeke Emezi… (meer)