Pierre Verger – “Black Gods in Exile”

The picture-taking nomad was so awed by the charm of Brazil’s former capital and its citizens that, over the next 50 years, he chose it as the center of his life and as his base and starting point for countless trips to Africa.   Introduction to Pierre Verger – Black Gods in Exile By Manfred […]

PETER HUJAR & DAVID WOJNAROWICZ: “Some Sort of Grace” (2010)

David Wojnarowicz, 1981 Some Sort of Grace – David Wojnarowicz’s Archive of the Death of Peter Hujar By Emily Colucci In his essay, “Living Close to the Knives,” on the death of his lover and artistic mentor Peter Hujar, a renowned New York photographer, David Wojnarowicz explains, “and his death is now as if it’s […]

Peter Magubane – Rhodes University Ceremony (2006)

Public Orator: Paul Walters Rhodes University Graduation ceremony, Grahamstown, 7 April 2006 Mr. Chancellor, I have the honour to present to you Dr Peter Magubane for the award of the degree of Doctor of Laws, honoris causa. The distinguished novelist Joseph Conrad wrote in a famous preface: “My task which I am trying to achieve […]

Photography in Düsseldorf

Photography in Düsseldorf By Douglas Eklund Bernd and Hilla Becher began their collaborative project in 1959 (and were married shortly thereafter), at a time when German photography was mired in the same collective paralysis as the culture at large. The most prominent photographer at that time was Otto Steinert, whose Subjective Photography movement attempted to […]

Paul Graham: “A Shimmer of Possibility” (2009)

New Orleans (Woman Eating), 2004 Collectively, the Shimmer books describe a chronicle of American experience circa 2004–2006, and the world presented, by and large, is a world of isolated figures, near-anonymous strangers moving past one another without much connection. By Michael Almereyda Arranged on a shelf, or stacked flat, the twelve slender books comprising Paul […]

Paul Graham – “Photography is Easy, Photography is Difficult” (2009)

“It’s so difficult because it’s everywhere, every place, all the time, even right now. It’s the view of this pen in my hand as I write this, it’s an image of your hands holding this book, Drift your consciousness up and out of this text and see: it’s right there, across the room – there… […]