Editorial
Issue 95 Autumn 2018
Of all the outrages of contemporary political life perhaps the greatest is the apparent disregard for truth, for which we have the new coinage, 'posttruth'. What can we use to oppose this tendency? Facts? That's something photographs should be able to help us with. But are facts the same as the truth? And are photographs a way to provide them? David Bate disentangles this confusing subject with the help of an anteater and a shelf of china.
Victoria Dean's work The Illusion of Purpose is a series of images taken on the coast of Britain and Ireland. They show obsolete structures that were part of communication systems but are now redundant. Resembling symbols of a forgotten language they were obviously built for some purpose that is now inscrutable to us. Introducing the work, Garrett Carr notes these landmarks 'have remained the same, it is just that the world has changed'.
Eamonn Doyle's previous work i, On and End involved him candidly photographing individuals in Dublin city centre, exploring how the forces of the city and the movement of its people continually shape each other. With K he moves to a landscape that loses its detail and locality and works with a simplified human form to contemplate more elemental forces that have 'driven us into being'.
Claire Masters is interested in the idea of the landscape as being composed 'not only of what lies before our eyes but what lies within our heads'. We are invited to see her photographs, of solitary rock formations on the shoreline, as a symbol of the passage of time and our place in it, with sand, sea and cloud, fleeting and ephemeral, pitched against the deep geological time of stone.
Noémie Goudal's Les Amants and Haven Her Body Was involved constructed imaginary landscapes with trompe-l'oeil sculptures photographed in natural settings. Her new work is also the result of deliberate staging and continues her interest in landscape as an illusory concept, this time involving an installation of mirrors in the landscape that 'brings real and theoretical geographies into coexistence'. Playing with this idea further Goudal installs the work in an elaborate 'maze like' wooden framework inspired by the skeletal structures underpinning fake manmade landscapes.
Contents
Issue 95 Autumn 2018
- K - Portfolio by Eamonn Doyle
- Personhood and Landscape - Feature by Colin Graham
- The Illusion of Purpose - Portfolio by Victoria Dean
- Retire to the Sea - Feature by Garrett Carr
- Slippage - Portfolio by Claire Masters
- Soulevèments - Portfolio by Noémie Goudal
- Interview with Matt Packer
- The Nature of Facts - Feature by David Bate
- John Kippin: Based on a True Story Works 1984-2018 - Northern Gallery of Contemporary Art 28 June - 23 September - Review by Eve Forrest
- Hot Mirror - Viviane Sassen - Hepworth Wakefield 21 June - 7 October - Review by Sarah Eyre
- Dorothea Lange: Politics of Seeing - Barbican Art Gallery 22 June - 2 September - Review by Mick Gidley
- Vanessa Winship: And Time Folds - Barbican Art Gallery 22 June - 2 September - Review by Sunil Shah
- Idea of North Women by Women - Sirkka-Liisa Konttinen - Baltic 11 May - 30 September - Review by Vanessa Longden
- Women in Focus Part One: Women Behind the Lens - The National Museum, Cardiff 5 May - 11 November - Review by Jesse Alexander
- Fashion Photography: The Story in 180 Pictures - Eugénie Shinkle Thames & Hudson - Review by Joseph McBrinn
- Icons of Style: A Century of Fashion Photography - Paul Martineau - Getty Publications - Review by Joseph McBrinn
- The Migrant Image Group, Lampedusa: Image Stories from the Edge of Europe - Spector Books - Review by Jennifer Good
- Nonhuman Photography - Joanna Zylinska - MIT Press - Review by Daniel Jewesbury
- The Wing: HMP Prison Photos - V.Blocc. - Review by Anna Lawrence
- My Shadow's Reflection - Edmund Clark Here - Press / Ikon - Review by Anna Lawrence
- Sculptural Photographs from the Calotype to Digital Technologies - Patrizia Di Bello - Bloomsbury Visual Arts - Review by Colin Darke
- Waffenruhe - Michael Schmidt - Walther Konig - Review by Ian Walker
- St Kilda: The Silent Islands Alex Boyd Luath Press - Review by Roberta McGrath
- Duelos y Quebrantos - Sebastián Bruno - Ediciones Anómalas - Review by Christopher Clarke
- Looking Up Ben James, A Fable - John Gossage - Steidl - Review by Sarah White
- TTP - Hayahisa Tomiyasu - Mack Books - Review by Christopher Clarke
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