Aperture - Böcker

This edition of Aperture relaunches the magazine under the title “Hello, Photography,” a playful nod to Daido Moriyama’s seminal project Bye, Bye Photography. Now divided into two distinct sections, “Words” and “Pictures,” the issue offers a broad sweep of key issues for photography today.The new “Words” section brings readers the sharpest ideas on photography: Charlotte Cotton asks if institutions are stifling innovation; Geoffrey Batchen teases out what social media means for photography; Arthur Ou confronts the challenges of photographic education; and Robin Kesley investigates the key questions driving new scholarship today. Conversations round out this issue’s “Words” with Jeff Wall and Lucas Blalock, Mark Westmoreland and Akram Zaatari, and Virginia Rutledge and Penelope Umbrico.“Pictures” is the magazine’s superbly printed new visual showcase. Featured for Spring are portfolios from the Gary Winogrand Archive, with curator Leo Rubinfien explaining his new edit to photographer Philip-Lorca diCorcia; Jason Evans' street photography; Eva Respini introducing Michele Abeles; new work by Adam Broomberg and Oliver Chanarin; a dispatch from Magnum’s latest road trip with Alec Soth, Zoe Strauss, Jim Goldberg and Mikhael Subotzky; an introduction to Christopher Williams by Matthew Witkovsky; Andrew Norman Wilson’s project on Google Books; James Welling speaks with Phil Chang; and more. Accessible new columns include The Collectors (with writing by novelists Sam Lipsyte, Teju Cole, Sheila Heti and Heidi Julavtis); Dispatches (Jason Fulford walks readers through San Francisco’s photo scene); and Redux (David Campany on a lost book by Victor Burgin).

Between science and art, revisiting photography’srole in discovery and experimentation.This edition of Aperture focuses on "Curiosity." Taking its name from the Mars Rover, which has reminded us that a fundamental purpose of photography is to show us something new, the articles and portfolios ask: what can we learn by revisiting photography's role in discovery, experimentation and exploration? The issue toggles between past and present, and between science and art, and features Jennifer Tucker on Victorian science photography, spectacle and rational amusement; Kelley Wilder on what it means for photography to make visible the invisible; Brian Dillon on the cosmic and the mundane; a conversation between artist Trevor Paglen and the eminent science historian Peter Galison; a selection from Harold "Doc" Edgerton's lab books; David Campany on photographic abstraction and perception; curator Joel Smith's guide to "photographic nothing"; and portfolios by British photographer Stephen Gill, Amsterdam-based artist Eva-Fiore Kovakovsky, curator Lynne Cooke on Horst Ademeit's mysterious annotated Polaroids and much more.

In role-play and sex-play, illuminating theater,jokes, leisure, and fantasy.This edition of Aperture focuses on "Playtime." Taking its name from the 1967 film by Jacques Tati, the articles and portfolios explore how photography illuminates, facilitates, and participates in the many definitions of play-from role-play and sex-play to theater and jokes to leisure and fantasy.The issue features an interview with artist Chrisian Marclay about improvisation and the relationship between images and sounds; a conversation with Erwin Wurm about the possibilities and risks of using humor in contemporary art; and new, never-before-published work by Sophie Calle. Additionally, writer Eric Banks visits Saul Leiter's studio; Tim Davis examines the art of the photographic one-liner; Robin Kelsey surveys the artists who turned to games, whimsy, and clowning around in the 1960s and '70s; and Aveek Sen considers Italo Calvino's short story "The Adventure of a Photographer." Plus portfolios from Jo Ann Callis, Kauyoshi Usui, Bruno Munari, James Mollison, a little-known group of Cambridge University students who scaled campus buildings in the 1930s, and more.

Revisiting ten photographers who deserverenewed contemporary attention.This edition of Aperture, titled "Photography as you don't know it," leading curators, historians, writers, and publishers introduce ten photographers they believe have been overlooked or are undervalued, and deserve more attention today. Why are some figures remembered and others forgotten?In the Pictures section, Paul Trevor is introduced by Chris Boot; Seichi Furuya by David Strettell; Maria Sewcz by Britt Salvesen; Len Lye by Geoffrey Batchen; Ken Pate by Carole Naggar; Marianne Wex by David Campany; Ricardo Rangel by Bronwyn Law-Viljoen; Horacio Coppola by Sarah Hermanson Meister; and Rosângela Rennó by Thyago Nogueria.In the Words section, Joel Smith considers the ever-expanding domain of photography history; Katrina Sluis speaks with Christiane Paul and Julian Stallabrass about how new technologies may shape future histories of photography; Brian Dillon considers London's Archive of Modern Conflict; Philip Gefter interviews Quentin Bajac, MoMA's new head of photography; and four writers reflect on exhibitions due for reconsideration. This issue presents many new names, underscoring how many stories of photography are just beginning to be told.

How socially minded storytellers adapt toa new terrain of image making.The ground for documentary storytellers has radically shifted over the last decade. How can socially-minded storytellers adapt to this new terrain? Created in conjunction with Magnum Foundation and guest editor Susan Meiselas, this edition of Aperture, "Documentary, Expanded," explores a cross-section of critical questions for practicing documentarians today, when the old models for producing and disseminating work have disappeared. Meiselas, in an interview with Chris Boot, Aperture's executive director, discusses the need for photographers to adapt and embrace new technologies, tools, and strategies; Ariella Azoulay, in conversation with Creative Time's Nato Thompson, reflects on the important role of collaborative ways of working in the history of photography; Ethan Zuckerman considers the benefits and pitfalls of citizen journalism and image aggregation, while Lev Manovich presents his work with big data and social-media visualization. The essay section is rounded out by additional pieces by photojournalism experts Fred Ritchin and Stephen Mayes, and a dialogue between artist Hito Steyerl and theorist Thomas Keenan.The magazine's portfolio section presents new projects that use social media, data mapping, or collaboration to engage on current social-political themes. Thomas Dworzak documents Instagram’s role as a political or news mouthpiece; Daniel Traub collaborates with local photographers to document African laborers in southern China; Wendy Ewald, Eric Gottesman, and members of Canada’s Innu people build a community archive; Emily Schiffer shares her photography and mapping project on Chicago's underserved South Side; artist James Bridle documents an invisible war with Dronestagram; Mari Bastashevski explores the global arms trade; and Teru Kuwayama discusses Basetrack, a social-media reporting project connecting Marines with their families.

The best photography and critical writingproduced in Brazil today.This edition of Aperture features some of the best photography and critical writing being produced in Brazil today, as seen through the prism of the dynamic city of São Paulo. Working in collaboration with guest editor Thyago Nogueira, editor of Brazilian photography magazine ZUM and head of the Contemporary Photography Department at Instituto Moreira Salles in São Paulo, this timely issue features portfolios of great photography and writing by Brazilian curators, critics and historians, as well as highlights from the leading institutions and galleries of the largest city in the largest country in South America.In the Words section, Sérgio Burgisurveys the city's artistic activity across the twentieth century; Natalia Brizuela tells the story of Hercule Florence, who pioneered an early form of photography; Ronaldo Entler presents five politically engaged photography collectives; Cassiano Elek Machado reviews one record of the city's nuances and conflicts as preserved in photobooks; and Silas Martí looks at a new network of independent exhibition venues, residences, and galleries.The Pictures section features Christopher Phillips on Caio Reisewitz's lush imagery; Heloísa Espada on Geraldo de Barros's post-modern photographs; Agnaldo Farias on Bárbara Wagner's alternate version of Afro-Brazilian performance groups; Tobi Maier introduces conceptual artist Hudinilson Urbano Jr.; Rodrigo Moura on Mauro Restiffe’s photographs of Oscar Niemeyer’s funeral; Ana Maria Maia on Jonathas de Andrade's subtly subversive Education for Adults posters; Sarah Hermanson Meister on Regina Silveira's 1970s photograms; a portfolio of recent work from emerging photographer Sofia Borges; and Claudia Andujar explores the experience of Eastern European immigrants fleeing the Second World War.

In collaboration with Inez & Vinoodh, anexploration of visionary fashion photography.The theme for Aperture's Fall 2014 issue is "Fashion," produced in collaboration with the groundbreaking fashion-photography duo Inez & Vinoodh. The issue explores the role of image quotation and reference, and showcases contemporary and historical work from both inside and outside the field of fashion, as well as key touchstones, including breakthrough magazines and advertisements. In the Words section, Donatien Grau considers Inez & Vinoodh's long-standing collaboration; "Vogue Paris" editor-in-chief Emmanuelle Alt in conversation with Penny Martin, editor of The Gentlewoman; curator Charlotte Cotton on the State of Fashion; Alistair O'Neill considers how the documentary tradition has influenced the work of many fashion photographers; and Marketa Uhlirova looks at how contemporary fashion films reference still photography. The Pictures section presents Tamara Berghmans on the influential Dutch photographer Ed van der Elsken; Jason Evans on Shiseido's beguiling vintage ads; Inez & Vinoodh on photographs that have served as references for painting, plus notes on the icons of fashion photography; Phil Bicker on pioneering fashion magazines i-D, The Face and Jill; and emerging fashion photographers Margaret Durow and Daniel Arnold.

At a cultural moment when images are arguably placing increased pressure on the written word, Aperture's "Lit" issue looks at the many relationships between photography and writing by considering photography projects that take cues from works of literature, play with image-text pairings and poetics, or were in fact produced by prominent writers, such as William S. Burroughs, Kobo Abe and Herve Guibert, who all moonlighted as photographers. The issue features an impressive line up of contemporary writers offering their views on photography, including Teju Cole, Tom McCarthy, Mary Gaitskill, Heidi Julavits, Geoff Dyer and Janet Malcolm, as well as Pulitzer Prize winning poets John Ashbury and Richard Howard, among many others.

A dynamic mix of photographicwork exploring questions ofqueer identity. This edition of Aperture presents a mix of new photographic work exploring questions of queer identity, as well as past figures and projects that are the subject of new research and curatorial work.In the Words section, Critic Vince Aletti, art historian Richard Meyer, and photographer Catherine Opie reflect on the term queer and its relationship with photography; Hal Fischer discusses his project Gay Semiotics with Julia Bryan-Wilson; Sophie Hackett revisits Joan E. Biren’s seminal “Dyke Show”; Shannon Michael Cane on queer independent publishing and zine culture; Philip Gefter on his discovery of Sam Wagstaff’s never-before-seen photography and what it reveals about his storied relationship with Robert Mapplethorpe; and South African photographer Zanele Muholi speaks with Deborah Willis about her ongoing project to make her country’s LGBTQ community visible.The Pictures section features William J. Simmons on Jimmy DeSana’s work from the late 1970s; Senam Okudzeto on Lyle Ashton Harris’s projects addressing colonial history and homophobia in Ghana; Stephanie H. Tung on Ren Hang, a rising star of contemporary Chinese photography who creates provocative imagery; Kevin Moore on the queer dimension of David Benjamin Sherry’s colorful images of the American landscape, which reference icons of modernist photography; Andy Campbell on K8 Hardy’s performance-based photography; Sophie Mörner on trans photographer Nitzan Krimsky’s poignant self-documentation; Ana Finel Honigman on Dean Sameshima’s images created with appropriated vintage pornographic imagery; Dean Daderko on A.L. Steiner’s antic and political photo-collages and installations; and Eva Respini considers Mark Morrisroe’s fervent self-portraiture made during the 1980s.

The vital role of Tokyo at the center ofJapanese photography.This edition of Aperture, researched on-site in Tokyo, features a selection of vital contemporary work, while exploring Tokyo’s role in narratives of Japanese photography. The issue includes interviews with established Japanese photographers, articles on the history of photography in Japan, and portfolios by contemporary artists whose work is unknown in the United States.In the Words section, critic Noi Sawaragi and novelist Hideo Furukawa consider the unique character and history of the city in relation to image-making; Ivan Vartanian looks through the pages of popular technical and erotically minded magazines of the ’60s, ’70s, and ’80s to reveal some of the most significant photography produced during those decades; curator Yasufumi Nakamori examines how artists in the late 1960s, working against a backdrop of social upheaval and anxiety about the future, began to experiment with photography and make radical shifts in the art of the period; and scholar Franz Prichard introduces Takuma Nakahira, a key figure in the story of Japanese photography whose contributions remain relatively unknown outside Japan.In the Pictures section, curator Matthew S. Witkovsky revisits Takuma Nakahira’s landmark 1971 Paris Biennale photo-installation; Nobuyoshi Araki’s new Polaroid collages; Takashi Homma’s new camera obscura urbanscapes; Cozue Takagi’s vibrant, collaged images; Dan Abbe on rising star Daisuke Yokota’s enigmatic photographs that focus on the image’s tactile surface; curator Niwa Harumi on Issei Suda’s documentation of traditional folk traditions and stylish characters in 1970s Tokyo; Mayumi Hosokura’s formal studies of nudes and natural forms; Lesley A. Martin on Rinko Kawauhchi’s never-before-published series of landscapes made in Japan and abroad; Andrew Maerkle on Naoya Hatakeyama’s Tracing Lines series, focusing on one of Tokyo’s major thoroughfares; and historian Ryuichi Kaneko in conversation with Kikuji Kawada, the celebrated octogenarian post-war photographer.

Must-read conversations with nine of theworld’s most influential photographers.The Interview Issue features in-depth conversations with a selection of influential photographers of an older generation, who continue to produce and publish, about their lifelong engagement with photography. What compels someone to become a photographer? And what drives someone to continue to be one, for as many as seven decades? How does a veteran photographer describe years of questioning politics, personal experience, social unrest, landscape, and history through the camera?For this issue, Aperture offers nine in-depth interviews, firsthand accounts that underscore the generosity and intelligence of their speakers. Born between 1928 and 1947, the nine photographers featured―Bruce Davidson, Paolo Gasparini, David Goldblatt, Guido Guidi, Ishiuchi Miyako, William Klein, Bertien van Manen, Boris Mikhailov, and Rosalind Fox Solomon―are still active today, adding to their already unparalleled bodies of work. In these pages, the medium is considered from various points of view, offering a range of philosophies, values, and perspectives, yet for all the differences within this group, they share a fundamental curiosity about the human experience.

Envisioning the intersections of photographyand performance.This issue, a collaboration between Aperture and Performa, the nonprofit organization dedicated to exploring the critical role of live performance in visual art, takes a capacious approach to considering the intersections of photography and performance.In the Words section, Tate curator Simon Baker traces the impulse to perform for the camera throughout photographic history; New Museum curator Lauren Cornell looks at how artists such as K8 Hardy, Juliana Huxtable, and Amalia Ulman use social media to calculated effect; Performa founder RoseLee Goldberg and MoMA curator Roxana Marcoci discuss performance, documentation, and the ways in which performances are crafted for the camera; and Kaelen Wilson-Goldie explores the lecture-performance form in the work of Lebanese artists Walid Raad, Rabih Mroué, Lina Saneh, and Joana Hadjithomas and Khalil Joreige.In the Pictures section, Delfim Sardo considers the Portuguese artist Helena Almeida’s Inhabited Painting(s) and other works; Brian Sholis on the disquieting appeal of Torbjørn Rødland’s images; James Welling introduces his new series Dance Project; Olu Oguibe on Samuel Fosso’s recent Mao Zedong series; Brian Dillon on Dru Donovan’s recreations; Performa curator Adrienne Edwards on how Carrie Mae Weems animates minimalism; a look at the role of image research in the Hong Kong-based duo Zheng Mahler’s Performa 15 debut performance; and Kristin Poor explores two approaches to photographing dance, by looking at Barbara Morgan’s enduring images of Martha Graham, and Babette Mangolte’s photographs of Trisha Brown’s dance performances.

Voyages, journeys, and the captivating spellof wanderlust.This edition of Aperture magazine, “Odyssey,” features photography about voyages, journeys, and the captivating spell of wanderlust.In the Words section, Tacita Dean discusses her personal quests with writer Travis A. Diehl; Eric Banks traces the midcentury journeys of famed travel writer Wilfred Thesiger; Alexander Stille looks at Italian mountain-photography pioneer Vittorio Sella; writer Sean O’Toole profiles the documentary projects of the Invisible Borders Trans-African Photographers Organisation, a West African photography collective; and multidisciplinary artist Taryn Simon speaks with Kate Fowle, of Moscow’s Garage Museum of Contemporary Art, about an artwork set for completion in the year 3015.

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.

The summer 2018 issue of Aperture delves into the manifold intersections of photography and filmmaking. Features include in-depth interviews with leading filmmakers on the role of the still photograph in shaping their thinking on the moving image, as well as discussions of photography projects that take cinema as their subject. With content ranging across the history of both forms, this issue will underscore how still and moving images converge and diverge.

Virginia Woolf ’s prescient 1928 novel Orlando tells the story of a young nobleman who, during the era of Elizabeth I, mysteriously shifts gender, and lives on for three centuries without aging. Today, Orlando remains startlingly fresh for its playful imagining of gender fluidity. In 1992, filmmaker Sally Potter released an adaptation of the book with Tilda Swinton carrying the film as Orlando. Woolf ’s tale has continued to hold sway over Swinton, who describes the book’s ability “to change like a magic mirror. Where I once assumed it was a book about eternal youth, I now see it as a book about growing up, about learning to live.”This special issue of Aperture magazine, guest edited by Swinton, will draw upon the themes of the novel—gender, indeterminate space, and the passage of time—and offer readers a collection of images and writings that celebrate openness and curiosity, in contrast to a contemporary political moment of insurgent parochialism and divisiveness. “Woolf wrote Orlando,” Swinton notes, “in an attitude of celebration of the oscillating nature of existence. She believed the creative mind to be androgynous. I have come to see Orlando far less as being about gender than about the flexibility of the fully awake and sensate spirit: as Orlando him/herself so memorably remarks at the critical moment of transformation: ‘Same person, different sex: no difference at all.’ The issue of Aperture, then, will be a salute to indetermination. Peopled by voices and visions of artists and writers who are kaleidoscopically wired.”

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. From icons Lola Álvarez Bravo, Tina Modotti, and Graciela Iturbide to the most exciting figures at work today, the issue presents a range of photography as well as Mexican and Latin American writers—both veterans and newcomers—to an international audience.

In a time of hyperactive communication, unending consumerism, and political confusion, Wolfgang Tillmans guest-edits an issue of Aperture on the subject of spirituality and its connection to solidarity. “People are touched and moved by experiences of genuine solidarity,” Tillmans notes. “Solidarity describes a degree of selflessness, or experiences that remind people of values higher than the pure mate-rialistic culture we’re in.”This issue, featuring contributions by leading artists, scientists, novelists,and philosophers, will look at different ways of considering humanity’s longing for spiritual connection—from the shared sense of purpose behind global mass protests, to the collective spirit of the dance floor, to how image-makers have strived to visualize the intangible and the inexplicable. Key features include: a look at the role of spiritualism in the work of Minor White, Aperture’s founding editor; esteemed physicist Peter Galison on the recent landmark image of a black hole; David Swindells’s chronicle of underground rave culture in London; Siddhartha Mitter on images of protests in Hong Kong, Cairo, and Standing Rock; a collaborative project by Olivia Laing and Mary Manning; Sean O’Toole on Santu Mofokeng and South Africa’s spiritual landscapes; plus portfolios by Susan Hiller, Mare Nero, Harit Srikhao, and more

Published in 1986, Nan Goldin’s 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 their role in creating America’s opioid crisis. Goldin’s trenchant activism is a reminder of the artist’s power to effect social change. The Ongoing Ballad 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.

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.

This summer, Aperture presents a special issue focused on the relationship between photography, urbanism, and activist trajectories from Delhi. The issue explores multiple incarnations of the city’s photographic culture, from O. P. Sharma's 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.

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 winter, Aperture magazine presents an issue that celebrates the dynamic visions of Latinx photography across the United States. Guest edited by Pilar Tompkins Rivas, chief curator at the Lucas Museum of Narrative Art in Los Angeles, “Latinx” spans a century of image making, connecting historical and contemporary photography, and covering the themes of political resistance, family and community, fashion and culture, and the complexity of identity in American life.In “Latinx,” Carribean Fragoza traces Laura Aguilar’s influence on queer artmaking. Joiri Minaya remixes postcards from the Dominican Republic to unveil the fantasy of tourism. Christina Catherine Martinez profiles Reynaldo Rivera, who chronicled 1990s-era Los Angeles nightlife. Yxta Maya Murry considers three Latina curators and writers influencing how photography canons are made today.“Collectively, their images cast a greater net for the multiple ways of seeing Latinx people,” Tompkins Rivas notes of the issue’s photographers, “creating a visual archive whose edges are yet to be defined.”

Aperture magazine presents “Celebrations,” an issue that considers how photographs envision ceremonies, festivities‚ and allow us to discover euphoria in the everyday.Throughout the issue, photographers portray exuberance against a backdrop of political strife in Beirut, pursue the thrill of wanderlust, excavate family histories, and respond to the powerful, constant urge to gather. Whether in Kinshasa’s vibrant nightlife of the 1950s and ’60s or London’s sweaty dance floors of our era, jubilation carries on, despite an ongoing, and unpredictable, pandemic.In “Celebrations,” Lynne Tillman contributes a survey of landmark images of celebration through the years, by artists from Malick Sidibé and Peter Hujar to LaToya Ruby Frazier. Several profiles and essays—including Alistair O’Neill on Jamie Hawkesworth, Moeko Fuiji on Rinko Kawauchi, Tiana Reid on Shikeith, Mona El Tahawy on Miriam Boulos, and Anakwa Dwamena on Marilyn Nance’s views of Lagos, Nigeria during FESTAC '77—reveal the celebratory gestures embedded in vibrant portraiture, serene slants of light, unbound queer desire, and joyous cross-cultural exchange.

Guest edited by the acclaimed photographer Alec Soth, Aperture’s summer issue explores the dimensions and possibilities of dreams, journeys, and chance in photography.“Sleepwalking” covers a surprising array of images and stories from the Soviet-era Czech artist Emila Medová to Sophie Calle’s discovery of an abandoned Parisian hotel to Soth’s own photographs from his travels in the United States. In this issue, Jesse Dorris interviews Duane Michals about luck and fate, Marina Warner explores the enduring resonance of the figure of the sleepwalker, and artists including Etienne Courtois, Maja Daniels, and Elliott Jerome Brown Jr. present surreal and imaginative new series. The Summer 2022 issue also introduces The PhotoBook Review, a new section for lively engagement with photobooks, featuring reviews of recent titles by Nona Faustine, Samuel Fosso, Óscar Monzón, and others.

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 winter, Aperture magazine presents “Reference,” an issue that considers the role images play in the creation of something else.­ Spanning fashion design, architecture, film, and print, “Reference” includes a conversation between renowned British author and curator Ekow Eshun and rising fashion designer Grace Wales Bonner; an interview with South African artist William Kentridge on the images that undergird his sprawling output; critic Mimi Zeiger on the work of Los Angeles–based architectural studio Johnston Marklee; an essay by Jesse Dorris on the potential of handmade zines; and David Campany on the function and purpose of photographs today. Further, works by James Welling, Jojo Gronostay, Deborah Turbeville, Sheida Soleimani, Katrien de Blauwer, and Stephanie Syjuco highlight each artist’s unique use of source material. The Photobook Review for this issue opens with a sweeping interview with Ramón Reverté—the editor in chief and creative director at Editorial RM—and includes reviews of recent photobooks by Vince Aletti, Phyllis Christopher, Moe Suzuki, Nancy Holt, Richard Misrach, and N.V. Parekh.

This spring Aperture magazine presents “We Make Pictures in Order to Live” an issue that nods to the late, celebrated writer Joan Didion and looks at photography’s relationship to storytelling. “We live entirely, especially if we are writers,” Didion writes in her iconic essay “The White Album,” “by the imposition of a narrative line upon disparate images, by the ‘ideas’ with which we have learned to freeze the shifting phantasmagoria which is our actual experience.” Brimming with visual stories that excite, surprise, and illuminate daily life, this issue asks how photographers create and question narratives, and features new work by Bieke Depoorter, a profile of Nick Waplington by Alistair O’Neill, as well as features on Adraint Bereal and Charles “Teenie” Harris.

Following Aperture’s acclaimed city issues centered around photography in Delhi, Mexico City, Los Angeles, New York, Tokyo, and São Paulo, the magazine’s Fall edition considers Accra as a site of vivid photographic styles connected to visual culture in Ghana and West Africa. From the pioneering midcentury studio photography and photojournalism of James Barnor to the sensitive and experimental work of Eric Gyamfi, Accra is at the center of dialogues around Pan-Africanism and is a point of return for the African Diaspora. The Accra issue, edited in collaboration with Lyle Ashton Harris and Nii Obodai, may include contributions from Ekow Eshun, John Akomfrah, David Adjaye, Taiye Selasi, Lloyd Foster, Anakwa Dwamena, and Rénee Mussai.