a blog about photography by Sofia Silva
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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As is becoming ever more often, another student’s work sets ground @ Nihilsentimentalgia. Carlos was my student for the past year and the selection of work featured here, about his family, caught my attention. These images are part of a larger project about Carlos’ grandmother, Engrácia, with 84 years old, who lives with her husband, Alexandre, 81,…
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When I come across artists that lack ethics or artworks that scream opportunism I get very irritated, sometimes even a bit angry. Often the art world is just so perverse that I wish I didn’t know about that artist or artwork. I usually debate whether or not to write about these extreme situations, not because…
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How does art critic work in other countries? I don’t know. In Portugal, it’s changing. The online magazines and blogs have created platforms where different people write about art and publish critics on exhibitions, publications and short stories on art events overall. So yes, there’s a lot more time spent of the activity of writing…
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I came across this project while reading Pete Brook‘s Prison Photography, one of my favorite blogs out there. Photo Requests from Solitary became part of a larger project, but was initially founded by Tamms Year Ten, a grassroots coalition of artists, advocates, family members and men formerly incarcerated in Tamms Correctional Center in southern Illinois. Photo requests from Solitary consists…
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The first group of images featured below is part of a project entitled What’s love got to do with it. Here’s Paula Riff‘s statement about that project: I believe in love but it comes and goes. Like the falling of leaves, love often falls gently to the ground; at least that’s my experience. Marbling paper…
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I met Iñigo Sánchez‘s work because he was part of Hélice‘s comprehensive training program 2016/2017. Hélice’s team is the one behind Propeller, the magazine I became involved with, and it was just a matter of days before I ended up meeting the author of some of the photographs that used to be featured in a…
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The biggest problem I see in addressing the question of the objectification of men (or the representation of men as objects of desire) is that we can’t really avoid comparing it to the objectification of women and that is such a heavy burden to carry… Having said this, I’ll try and take the boat through…
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All that is to know about Aleksandra Vajd’s project “Friends of friends are friends” (featured below) can be find in a text by Laura Amann, here. I see, I smell, I feel and hear these photographs reaching me. In Laura Amann’s words: The abstract nature requires us to focus on the process, materiality and technique.…
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What’s wrong with a purple sun? It’s been challenging to write about Belgian photographer Sanne de Wilde‘s The Island of the Colorblind. I mentioned the project here once before, but at the time the book was about to be published (by Hannibal Publishers) and I waited for further information, for there was a lot about the…
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Here is a selection of Akihiko Miyoshi’s profound, complex and beautifully coloured work. Photography’s impulse to depict in its most utilitarian tendencies (for example photo-journalism as art) creates, to use the artist Jeff Wall’s words, the “most problematic kind of photograph” which anchored itself through social validity. This to me is an insufficient condition for…
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On average, I enter a shopping mall once a year, and only if I can’t avoid it. I hate everything about them. This year, I already had my share. I went accompanied by my partner, who noted he was surprised by how well I was behaving, containing my typical anti-capitalist swearing about consumerism and so…
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Eduardo Martins is no Wolfgang Beltracchi, but the truth is he managed to turn himself into a heroish-like-photojournalist. Regarding the substance of what was being created, there’s no similarities between Beltracchi and Martins, as the first was and is an extremely gifted technician and Martins just sounds like a sociopath, verging on the psychopath. No…
Read MoreI came into this video when it was already 30 minutes in. I recognized the photographer but didn’t know about the series and for a couple of minutes I thought he was joking and this was some kind of absurd take on ethical photojournalism. After five minutes I realized it was for real. I went…
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Half a dozen years ago I was a romantic. Everything bordered on being overwhelming. As I started to understand what that dark romantic feeling was all about, I feared I might become a cynic. Luckily, I’ve managed to keep my distance from such a corrosive approach to life, but sometimes not to photography. As I…
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Some years ago I was having a discussion with a friend about going to visit animals in enclosed spaces and as my friend was arguing for his position, he stated: how else can I see them? Somehow, I’ve never forgotten his argument, so maybe there’s something to it. At fist, it seems just a very…
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Most people have a very special layer around their bodies (non-scientifically described as a second-skin) that protects them from the outside menaces. I’m sure if we dove into a biological take on this subject, there would be a lot to talk about. However, this second-skin I’m referring to is not that kind of verifiable layer.…
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There’s something about a photograph of a corner that intrinsically relates to the essence of photography. Although I don’t pretend to know what that essence is, it’s clear to me that it somehow has to do with how we, as subjects, come to understand ourselves as beings. In that sense, it relates to memory and,…
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I came across Jordan Gale‘s project It is what it is @ Lenscratch. At first, it was a darkness that grabbed my attention, but then something else triggered a different engagement with his work. In what seems like a statement about It is was it is, Gale mentions that the project “acts as a form…
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Before today, I didn’t know Terje Abusdal’s work and I confess I fell for it. I’m not exceptionally good at anything, except at falling in love at first sight and that’s what happened here. Sometimes, when I first encounter an author’s work, things look pretty clear. Specifically, what an author excels at seems to becomes…
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Soham Gupta‘s statement: Angst is my reaction to the trials through which some people must pass in our society. This work has its roots in my childhood riddled with severe asthma attacks and in my troubled growing-up years spent trying to come to terms with the world’s expectations. Deep within Angst runs my anger, my…
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I once wrote a brief post about the effects of the Düsseldorf school, following Grant Scott‘s article Has the Düsseldorf school killed photography? (which I can no longer find available online). At the time, I hadn’t given much thought to the scientific nature of photography, because I tend to deviate from that approach. However, as I’m…
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Knowing about my fixation with the ethics of photography, particularly when it comes to documentary images, a friend suggested I might be interested in a portuguese edition of Marie-José Mondzain‘s ‘Can images Kill’. As I went searching online, I came across an article, with the same title, that she had published back in 2009, @…
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Breuer has been making abstract photographs since the early 1990s. However, in contrast to Aaron Siskind, whose black-and-white photographs of walls were linked to the gestural paintings of the Abstract Expressionists, particularly those of his friend Franz Kline, Breuer works with sheets of chromogenic paper, which, as the label for “Untitled (C-1773)” (2016) informs us, has been “exposed/…
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Still regarding the fires in Portugal and the choices made by the media, a well known Portuguese historian, Pacheco Pereira, said overall the journalists had entered into a sort of “pain masturbation”. In cases of tragedy, where human drama in incommensurable, is not unusual to use or hear expressions that relate to sex or to…
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