Alejandro Acin The Rest is History ICVL Studio and supported by Sala Kursala Programa Cultural The machinations of history are in constant flexes of exchange. They are impermanent, their concept a flux, or are often a mess of contradictions. We are taught history as if it were permanent, an established and often binary set of […]
This conversation was recorded as a podcast and then translated into text. With this in mind, familiarity becomes more apparent. Simon Bray is a British artist working on his first photobook, tentatively titled Dear Kairos. Simon is part of the Nearest Truth Year-Long Photobook Program. He has also attended several NT workshops with Raymond […]
“When I graduated from CalArts with an MFA in 1993, I moved to New York City. It’s never an easy time to launch as an artist, but that was a particularly bad time. It was pre-internet, of course, so there were fewer ways to get work seen, and the gallery system was very small […]
“The photobook is a balance, at least its the intention, between this utopia (or maybe call it heterotopia, a concept made up by Foucault) and a life experience…” Fordlândia is an incredible book. IT is an imagined place where the 20th Century’s technological and capitalist utopian visions collide with the reality of the […]
It was the best of years…. Once again it is that time of year where I try to drum up some sort of edit from all of the incredible work the photography book world offers up. This year is difficult as I felt it has been one of the strongest years in recent memory […]
“In very broad terms, it seems that the work made in the West during the 20th century portrays a prolonged event – a disaster, you could say – that unfolded as modernity overtook the landscape and ideologies were instilled in American culture”.
“My initial desire to make this work was my connection and fascination with the language. A language that has existed in my family for hundreds of years but that I do not speak”.
“A friend familiar with what I do suggested I have a look at Bachelor & Spinsters Balls – rural gatherings originally designed to overcome distance and loneliness in the bush.”
“In comparison to film, where a whole instrumentation is at ones disposal to gain and keep a viewer’s attention and involve him or her into an emotional state and consequently within the story, photography and how it is exhibited formed a pretty stark contrast”. -IS
“At some point during that time I was painting inside an abandoned factory and I came across the body of a guy who hung himself. I remember my teacher in painting saying that I should have made a painting of the dude hanging. This teacher later suicided as well. I had several friends kill themselves during that period, maybe a Belgian thing?”
“The facades of shops, the techno-utopias of the call centers or mobile phone sales point bleed into boarded-up strip mall windows and the implications of a plastic and temporary commercial culture begin to appear”(BF).
“However hard I tried to ‘illustrate’ an aspect of the urban environment, to unmask and present how this sleepy, suburban environment ‘functioned’ and fitted together somehow it always failed”.