N I H I L S E N T I M E N T A L G I A,
a blog about photography by Sofia Silva
© Wang Qingsong, Tramp, 2004 © Wang Qingsong, Night Patrol, 2005 ” I think it is very meaningless if an artist only creates art for art’s sake. For me, the dramatic changes in China have transformed China into a huge playground or construction site. Whenever I go into the city I feel suffocated by the…
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© Anthony Hernandez, #31, from Pictures for Rome, 1999 © Anthony Hernandez, #9, from Pictures for Oakland, 2000 Some people ask, “What’s so important or compelling about taking pictures of such unpleasant subjects like city dwellers?” . . . My work may be beautiful or it might not be, that just isn’t what I am…
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© Anne Hardy, Untitled I (cobwebs), 2003 © Anne Hardy, Cipher, 2007 “Anne Hardy’s interiors look aged, as if they were lived in or used for years and years in pursuit of some specific, perhaps obsessive aim, (…) and then photographed after everyone’s left. They are plenty of labeled cubby holes, cigarette butts, trophies, assorted…
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© Lauren Simonutti, Hallway, from Home series © Lauren Simonutti, Hallway, from Home series “A house, to which one expects to return but does not, becomes a relic. I stepped out the door one day for what I anticipated would be a moment and did not return for weeks. The impetus for the absence is…
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© Cig Harvey, Untitled, from The Impossible Tasks series, 2005 © Cig Harvey, Untitled, from The Impossible Tasks series, 2005 “Harvey’s photographs stream from two series: Eyes Like Disappointed Lemons and The Impossible Tasks, and each contains a lone female figure positioned in unidentifiable locales. Fruits, bodies of water and segments of skin are photographed…
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© Ali Mahdavi © Ali Mahdavi “The sexual tensions in my photographs are par excellence of an aesthetic and psychological nature. In my personal sexual life, I have rather primary tastes and practices. What one would call a certain perversion in my work, it is only the result of an aesthetic research for the ideal…
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© Hanna Liden, Lake With Fire, 2005 © Hanna Liden, Untitled, 2005
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© Barbara Nitke, Mitch and Tiffany Clark, 1983 American Ecstasy – 1982-1991 “For many years I shot stills on hardcore porn shoots in New York City. I thought it was the most exciting, stomach-turning, heart-warming subject I could ever hope to photograph, and I felt honored to be among the few who got to do…
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© Justine Kurland, Parade Across Dunes, 2001 © Justine Kurland, Cyclone, 2001
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© Anthony Goicolea, Boxtrap, 2004, from the Sheltered Life series © Anthony Goicolea, Dead Tree, 2005, from the Sheltered Life series “Sheltered Life” is a series of digitally constructed photographs that depicts fairytale-like, timeless places inhabited by contemporary characters. All of the landscapes are punctuated with alternative makeshift living spaces that are made up of,…
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© Helen Van Meene, Untitled (#77) © Helen Van Meene, Untitled (#141) © Helen Van Meene, Untitled (#119) “The central theme in my work is photographing girls who are at the point of budding into maturity. Girls who are in that stage of their lives in which they become a woman. This theme actually came…
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© Esko Mannikko, Kuivaniemi, 1993 © Esko Mannikko, Aldo, Batesville, 1997 Himself a 36-year-old northern Finn who lives in Oulu, Mannikko knows his people. He visits and often stays with them for a day or two to achieve the images that say what can be said about them. His portraits are overwhelmingly fact-filled and naked,…
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© Jo Spence, What 1991 felt like… (most of the time) © Jo Spence, Museum Specimens © Jo Spence, from: Narratives of Dis-ease, 1990 © Jo Spence, from: The Picture of Health, 1982-86 “I am continually asked, “what is photo-therapy?” [To me] it means, quite literally, using photography to heal ourselves. ..I have…
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