Kim Thue from Lode Image is contained in the press pack.
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I also believe artists should be open to dialog. Not every conversation is an inquisition, and if your intentions are not poor, we all gain in you underscoring your thoughts instead of hiding from them or our questions. Many artists will argue this point, and there will be knee-jerk rebuttals. I expect that, but I do not believe we can further the discourse of creation, art, or society without agreeing on some ideas that define or castigate a (Azoulay) civil contract. If we do not have these discussions, the artists do not get the right to feel discouraged if their work is misread or branded as exploitative. We live in a world where tolerating work that can be deemed exploitative is a must, but we also live in a world with increased responsibility when producing images. We can no longer hide behind the myth of creative license to absolve us of our place and our work in society’s more extensive remit if we are public with our work.
Kim Thue from Lode Image is NOT contained in the press pack.
Three things could occur to make this work as a quasi-contract (only suggested).
1) We must first roundly champion freedom of speech and understand that there cannot be an oppression of creativity simply because we disagree with work outside the two golden rules outlined above (Hate speech or Indecent imagery of children). We must assume intentions to be neutral or reasonable in the production of work before dialog begins. We cannot create a hostage agreement in which the artist must prove themselves as well-intentioned before they are brought to dialog. There can be no arrangement by harangue or trial. All parties must be good-faith actors.
Kim Thue from Lode Image is contained in the press pack.
2) Artists and institutions/the public must actively participate in dialog surrounding their work and the concrete issues that do not rely on boundaries of the past or future. We must assume the pretext is of the present. Suppose artists are to be vulnerable and allow their work to be in a dialog. In that case, critics and institutions must encourage dialog, ESPECIALLY WHEN IT IS DIFFICULT without judgment, condescending behavior, and any absolute authority implied. Platforms must be created in which moderation is vital. These dialogs must be widely available, and a wide range of voices should be involved, not just those that the market or cultural forces favor. In the end, the artist must participate if they wish to forgo attack or misunderstanding.
3) We can assume the author’s identity to be a mitigating factor in creating a work. However, we cannot compel our arguments for or against a project based solely on this manifestation as it assumes too much and self-categorizes recklessly. It is to be handled as circumstantial if acknowledged. It should also be noted that the reader must also approximate, even if undeclared, their own position regarding the privileges of reading said book and author.
Kim Thue from Lode Image is NOT contained in the press pack.
Original Press Release and Specifications
During the 2020 pandemic-imposed lockdown and subsequent loss of his job bordering a paralysed music industry, Kim Thue grabbed the rarely presented opportunity away from everyday distractions to re-engage with his otherwise neglected photography. Drawers full of previously unseen negatives and contact sheets generated from extensive travels from his home in London to far flung corners of China, Iceland, Spain, and Sierra Leone had become an unresolved issue sitting in stalemate at the back of his mind for years. Feeling the need to confront and draw a line under the existing work to move forward, Thue took a deep dive from an unregimented platform, undergoing an editing process that was intuitive, personal and experimental in nature. The result of his efforts is the gritty, multi-layered collection of works now defined as the photographer’s astounding second monograph, Lode.
In some respects, Lode can be regarded as a logical follow-up to Thue’s acclaimed and long out-of-print debut Dead Traffic (2012) while still being a project isolated in its own right. It is a continuation of his uncompromising photographic style, yet Lode takes further steps away from documentary traditions towards a broader, more poetic and open-ended experience. At its core, it is a book devoid of classic narrative conventions that confidently speaks to viewers while consciously allowing room for resonance and interpretation. In the words of Edward Dimsdale, whose perceptive essay closes the book, the experience of Lode “is as much registered in the guts as it is processed through the visual cortex.” What emerges from its 248 pages is not an “easily assimilated travelogue. Rather, it is an introspective, complex meditation on inequality, configured by broken links and restlessness, which, once carefully digested, reveals traces of doubt within the journeying photographer himself.”
Lode
Published by Skeleton Key Press, November 2022
ISBN 978-82-692410-4-4
20 x 27 cm (7.8 x 10.6 in)
Silkscreened hardcover, 248 pages, 140 duotone plates
Edited by Kim Thue and Martin Andersen/Andersen M Studio
Book design by Martin Andersen/Andersen M Studio
Cover design by Kim Thue
Essay by Edward Dimsdale
Text in English
First Edition limited to 500 copies