Charlotte Cotton – författare

In the 21st century photography has come of age as a contemporary art form. Almost two centuries after photographic technology was first invented, the art world has fully embraced it as a legitimate medium, equal in status to painting and sculpture. This book provides an introduction to the extraordinary range of contemporary art photography, from portraits of intimate life to highly staged, ‘directorial’ spectacle. The vast span of photographers whose work is reproduced includes established artists such as Isa Genzken, Jeff Wall, Sophie Calle, Thomas Demand, Nan Goldin and Sherry Levine, as well as emerging talents such as Sara VanDerBeek, Rashid Johnson, Viviane Sassen and Amalia Ulman. This new edition revitalizes previous discussion of works from the 2000s through dialogue with more recent practice. Adding to the wide selection featured of work, Cotton celebrates a new generation of artists, who are shaping photography as a culturally significant medium for our current socio-political climate.

An evocative photographic homage shot by renowned image-makers that celebrates the iconic archival fashion designs of Francisco Costa for Calvin Klein.From 2003 to 2016, Francisco Costa was the creative director and women’s collections designer for the American fashion house Calvin Klein. It was a time of creative abundance, one that simultaneously supported both fashion design experimentation and its traditional crafts. In 2020, Costa revisited his fashion collections archive and invited twenty-one photographers to receive a box containing hand-selected prototype and runway clothing from Costa’s Calvin Klein women’s collections that could be used either as inspiration or directly as props and costumes within photographs. 555 is a collaborative project that celebrates the iconic collection’s reanimation and visual transformation by an extraordinary congregation of participating artists and image-makers. Moody, contemplative, and provocative images featured range from observational and documentary photography to self-portraiture, evocative nude editorials, fashion photography, and visual records of artistic performances.Housed in a beautifully crafted, limited edition clamshell box, twenty-one unbound booklets, printed on various tactile paper stocks, feature photographic stories by Diego Villarreal, Marcelo Gomes, Nick Waplington, Jamie Hawkesworth, Hugh Lippe, Alessandra Sanguinetti, Joel Meyerowitz, Lea Colombo, and Collier Schorr.

Words Without Pictures was originally conceived by curator Charlotte Cotton as a means of creating spaces for discourse around current issues in photography. Every month for a year, beginning in November 2007, an artist, educator, critic or curator was invited to contribute a short unillustrated essay about an aspect of emerging photography. Each piece was available on the Words Without Pictures website for one month and was accompanied by a discussion forum focused on its specific topic. Over the course of its month-long "e;life,"e; each essay received both invited and unsolicited responses from a wide range of interested parties. All of these essays, responses and other provocations are gathered together here. Previously issued as a print-on-demand title, we are pleased to present Words Without Pictures to the trade for the first time as part of the "e;Aperture Ideas"e; series. The contributors are Amy Adler, George Baker, Christopher Bedford, Walead Beshty, Sarah Charlesworth, Charlotte Cotton, John Divola, Shannon Ebner, Jason Evans, Harrell Fletcher, Paul Graham, Leslie Hewitt, Darius Himes, Soo Kim, Sze Tsung Leong, Miranda Lichtenstein, Sharon Lockhart, Allan McCollum, Kevin Moore, Carter Mull, Marisa Olson, Arthur Ou, Anthony Pearson, Michael Queenland, Allen Ruppersberg, Alex Slade, A.L. Steiner, Penelope Umbrico, James Welling, Charlie White, Mark Wyse and Amir Zaki.

Public, Private, Secret explores the roles that photography and video play in the crafting of identity, and the reconfiguration of social conventions that define our public and private selves. Consciously framed by our present era, this collection of essays, interviews, and reflections assesses how our image-making and consumption patterns are embedded and implicated in a wider matrix of online behavior and social codes, which in turn give images a life of their own. Within this context, our visual creations and online activities blur and remove conventional delineations between public and private (and sometimes secret) expression; in fact, they multiply and expand the number of potential selves in the contemporary image-centric world. The writings address the various disruptions, resistances, and subversions that artists propose to the limited versions of race, gender, sexuality, and autonomy that populate mainstream popular culture. In so doing, they anticipate a future for our image-world rich with diversity and alterity, one that can be shaped and influenced by the agency of self- representation.

What does love look like when womxn photograph it? This black-and-white volume brings together international artists who use the lens as a site of tenderness, power, loss, desire, and care. From staged intimacy to spontaneous encounters, from resistance to romanticism, these works show that love is not one image, but many. The third publication by femxphotographers.org, this book continues their feminist and collective approach to photographic discourse and the disruption of the male gaze. Including poetry and text, it expands the field of visual storytelling to embrace the personal and political, the utopian and the everyday.

Mert Alas, born in Turkey, and Marcus Piggott, born in Wales, met in 1994, at a party on a pier in Hastings, England. Piggott asked Alas for a light, the pair got talking, and rapidly discovered they had plenty in common, not least a love of fashion. Three years later, the duo now known as Mert and Marcus had moved into a derelict loft in East London, converted it into a studio, and had their first collaborative photographic work published in Dazed & Confused.These days, Mert and Marcus shape the global image of such renowned brands as Giorgio Armani, Roberto Cavalli, Fendi, Miu Miu, Gucci, Yves Saint Laurent, Givenchy, and Lancôme, and public figures including Lady Gaga, Madonna, Jennifer Lopez, Linda Evangelista, Gisele Bündchen, Björk, Angelina Jolie, and Rihanna. Their photographs encompass a wide range of styles and influences but are renowned particularly for their use of digitized augmentation of images, and a fascination for strong, sexually charged, confident female subjects: “powerful women, women with a meaning, a you-don’t-have-to-talk-or-move-too-much-to-tell-who-you-are kind of woman.”Bringing our best-selling Collector’s Edition to an affordable, compact format, this collection explores the unique vision of a creative partnership that has defined and redefined standards for glamour, fashion, and luxury. Approximately 300 images from the megawatt Mert and Marcus portfolio are accompanied by an introduction by Charlotte Cotton.

Photography Is Magic draws together current ideas about the use of photography as an invaluable medium in the contemporary art world. Edited and with an essay by Charlotte Cotton, this critical publication surveys over eighty artists, all of whom are engaged with experimental ideas concerning photographic practice, as the contemporary landscape is currently being reshaped through digital techniques. We are shown the scope of photographic possibilities in the context of the contemporary creative process. From Michele Abeles and Walead Beshty to Daniel Gordon and Matt Lipps, Cotton has selected artists who are consciously reframing photographic practices using mixed media, appropriation, and a recalibration of analog processes. Photography Is Magic provides the reader with an engaging physical experience and is designed for younger photo aficionados, students, and anyone interested in gaining a deeper understanding of contemporary photography.