a blog about photography by Sofia Silva
I’ve started this post two months ago and since then Nihilsentimentalgia has been as slow as it gets. I’ve been wondering whether this blog should take a break. Being its tenth year, I thought I’d be motivated to write with a certain cadence, but the opposite has happened. I’m feeling overwhelmed by images and I’m…
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My understanding of one history of art is just not there. There are many reasons for that and no need to address any of them. Now I find myself discovering Ewa Kuryluk’s work (via books and internet) and I fail to make sense of this late encounter. Why not sooner? I arrived at Kuryluk’s work…
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While updating some info on Nihil’s early posts I came across a post featuring an image by Alex Kisilevich. It seemed weird to have a post with a single image and as I went looking for more, I found not only that I made a second post a year after that but, and that’s the…
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I first cross paths with Jordan Baumgarten‘s Good Sick at bjp online and one of the photographs stroke me, not for the best of reasons. I kept thinking about it. As I went back to have a proper look at the project, I came across Pete Brook’s writing on that same work and that finally…
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nãooriginais Igor’s statement nãooriginais proposes a quasi-purist exercise of photography (realism), to the point of expanding Duchamp’s proposal of readymades – taking into account that his work is fundamentally photographic, analyzing through photography as a trait of a real and the pragmatic of the index of R.Barthes – and to make the image of the…
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STILL… Philip’s statement The girl has a question for the boy: “How much do you love me?” He thinks for a moment, then quietly replies, “As much as a train whistle in the night.” She waits in silence for him to go on. Obviously there has to be a story there. – Murakami Haruki, Feb…
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SATELUCO Dante’s statement A self-referential photographic analysis of middle-class suburban Mexico City, based on past relationships with people and urban space, that seeks to establish a visual dialogue with them in the present day. I examine social stratification of the Mexican culture in Sateluco. This project, which received the acquisition prize of the XII Photography…
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ZONA – An Investigation Report Fabio’s statement After the housing crisis caused by the economic and political power, the housing authority decided to open an investigation to assess its consequences. Given that previous reports were ambiguous, fieldwork was needed. Thus an investigator was sent to ZONA with the specific aim of preparing a visual report on…
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By now, those who follow ASX will have probably come across Brad Feuerhelm’s passionate article about the femicide and drugs in Mexico and d’Agata’s Codex: Mexico 1986-2016. It’s a strong piece of writing, you won’t regret taking the time to read it. When I first saw the title I suspected I would end up writing about…
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Ever since I left Glasgow, I”ve tried to keep up, at a distance, with what artists are doing there and by this time of the year, with the Degree Show happening at GSA, there’s always something worth seeing. The last degree show I saw in Glasgow I remember being very impressed with a particular work…
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Everything is workshopable these days. It’s an amazing thing. We can either learn to do things watching youtube videos or we can learn pretty much every technique attending workshops about this and that. As I see it, there’s clearly something weird about this. I’m not sure what it is, but somehow it affects the way…
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photo: Palestinian mourners carry the body of eight-month-old Palestinian baby Leila Anwar Ghandoour, who died from tear gas inhalation in Gaza City on 15 May 2018 [Mustafa Hassona/Anadolu Agency] As of Sunday, a succession of events has once again reanimated a question that often comes to mind, namely: what would make me go into exile? Throughout…
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I met Duarte and Valter when doing my undergrad in photography. Both were my teachers and tutors and for quite some time that was the role assigned to them. In September 2008 brief notes were made about both of them. At the time, Valter was working with José Nuno Lamas, exploring landscape, performance and play. Duarte was finding his…
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Before advancing, I feel I must apologize for this confessional note. Really, if you haven’t been a reader of Nihil, do yourself a favor and stop reading; this exposure of the private life of Nihil will make little sense in any case. I’ve been suffering from a strange set of headaches that bring along an…
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What happens inside our homes, in the domestic environment, is something that truly fascinates me, particularly when considering how that intimate environment can be brought into the public sphere, with integrity and respect. In the first months of Nihilsentimentalgia that was pretty obvious. I shared artwork by Esko Manniko, Holly Lynton, Tina Barney, Melissa Ann…
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Dating from mid 90’s, Richard Billingham‘s project Ray’s a Laugh is still a reference to me and I always show it to students whenever we address the art of documenting intimate stories and domestic environments. Ray’s a Laugh is a project about Richard’s father Ray and his mother Liz and their life indoors. If what Billingham…
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As Nihilsentimentalgia’s early readers know well, at the core of this platform is an interest for the idea of phototherapy and, consequently, different approaches to the idea of self. Throughout the years, I’ve done my experiments using photography as a personal therapeutic tool and I’ve come to the conclusion that it doesn’t really work for…
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One of my earliest posts featured a couple of photographs by Malerie Marder and ten years later I am very surprised to go through her work and see that she has been seriously addressing intimacy, not only thematically, as core object of her compositions, but also in what the photographic camera, as a technological medium, does, within…
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Some of my early posts were about the body (its modification, mutilation and sexual dimension). At the time I did a lot of performative photography and self-portrait, so these were pressing issues. It’s difficult to structure the line of thought that arises from revisiting these posts, but three main questions keep lingering in my mind:…
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In June a decade will have passed since I first started Nihilsentimentalgia, so I thought for the next few months I could make an effort to revisit some of my early posts, which were very poorly done. As fate would have it, it’s now confirmed that my obsession with the idea of authenticity is also…
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Bellow Cindy Steiler‘s words: My favorite childhood memories center on spending time with my great-grandmother, Mary Steiler. She taught me to sew, quilt and embroider, all while sharing amazing stories about her life. What she passed to me had been passed to her along a long line of women, inspiring in me a lifelong passion…
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Yesterday, a friend told me that to avoid a cynic approach to life, you just had to choose to live it. I couldn’t agree more. On the other hand, every year, when the world press photo nominees start to invade the visual arena, I get a little consumed with anger and frustration. It’s a waste…
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Thinking about photography inevitably makes us wonder what is consider truthful. Fiction is not only part of art (and truth); it is perhaps the privileged space of art, in which it reveals itself as an autonomous entity, apart from what we commonly understand as “real life.” However, if art creates new possibilities, photography fights a very…
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Some years ago, while attending a PhD class, I was introduced to the artwork of Terike Haapoja and the impact of that encounter led me to a post here. Last year, I ended up having a conversation with that same lecturer, Rogério Taveira, and he told me her recent work was very different, probably closer…
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I’d like to say the separation of the arts according to the specifications of the medium is a thing of the past, but is it? The multidisciplinary artists who graduated from the academy often see their works labeled as “installations” given the amalgam of techniques presented and the rigidity of a certain History of Art,…
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For our second edition, we chose to address the idea of fiction: (fictĭō, fictiōnis) Modeling, shaping, creation; Act or effect of faking, imaginary thing, fantasy; Fable, invention; Dissimulation, pretense, artifice; Falsehood, conjecture, hypothesis. ʘ Send your proposals to propeller@propeller.pt containing: Name (both of author and project) minimum 7 images (with 1500px largest side) Statement (optional)…
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When one is constantly batteling death or other destructive forces, it all seems very transient and it can be very easy to experience happiness, for every sign of life appears extremely beautiful and spectacular. Photographs that try to represent that place of experiencing light (after darkness), are often done in the form of portrait, as…
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In chapter XI (Courtly love as anamorphosis) of Lacan‘s Seminar VII (The Ethics of Psychoanalysis), Lacan suggests the term “extimacy” (extimité) to talk about the “intimate exteriority” that is at the core of the Thing. The Thing (das Ding) is a concept that Lacan develops from Freud to identify a primordial element that has been lost and…
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I cannot trace this back to its origins, but I remember reading an interview by someone who started a magazine about artistic content saying you had to be crazy to do so. I now realize you really have to. About a year ago, I joined Hélice to found Propeller and during this year we launched…
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The misguided parallel between spontaneity and authenticity is often mentioned here. We, in general (and students in particular), not knowing how to address the issues of photographic representation, tend to evoke “spontaneity”, “purity”, “genuineness”, “naturalness”, etc. to qualify the truthfulness of the images. These words are part of the lexicon of authenticity, whether or not…
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Nature often makes us question whether we deserve her generosity. She’s so marvelous, so compassionate, so warming… Yes, she can also be deceiving and violent, but that’s what makes her so sublime. The fact that in this country, always socially and politically adrift, we manage to stay calm and collected, must be somehow related to…
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David Nebreda’s work changed my life. It’s no mystery. I remember the first time I encountered his photographs (or they encountered me): it was in a sort of catalog – David Nebreda: Autorretratos (2002) -, that followed one of the author’s rare solo exhibitions, curated by Javier Panera, during the celebrations of the European Capital…
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