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
I’ve been writing this post for weeks. Adding, editing, proofreading and questioning the intention to publish it. Obviously, I write because I want to, but mostly because I feel the urge to express myself and words are always my place of solace. In my mouth, words taste raw; often too dramatic and erratically poetic. As…
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A couple of weeks ago I joined some colleagues of the university I teach at to present work to our students. It’s an annual event, created by the director of the course with the intent of allowing professors to share their own experience with the process of image-making and research in the visual field (something…
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photo caption (above): Sofia Silva, ‘Ego support #2’, from the project ‘The Orchestra’, 2011. Fine Art print, 60x70cm. I started teaching soon after finishing an MFA in Glasgow. Since then, I’ve often remember something one of my tutors told me before I came back to Portugal. He warned me that choosing to teach could be…
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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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A lot has been said about the value of Ren Hang‘s artwork following his recent death, at the age of 29. Hang committed suicide. From what I can understand, he jumped from a building in Berlin, last Friday. Author Wendy Syfret took the opportunity to talk about the myth that connects genius and madness (the title of…
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Somehow Max Pinckers‘ work has never excited me much. I though it was too neat, too contrived, too pretty, too arranged, too controlled… After coming across a feature of Magnum Photos Now about Finding Your Documentary Photography Style and reading the words he chose to describe his approach to documentary photography, I went back to some…
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One Paula Riebschläger writes about photographer Arnaud Ele‘s work: Far away from orchestrated photo shoots, Ele’s pictures are filled with authenticity expressed in pictures of dreamy landscapes and intimate portraits. He graduated from film school in Geneva and was recently commissioned by Urban Outfitters to create an ad campaign. Although, Ele is already a successful…
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In Culture and Authenticity (2008), discussing the semiotics of tourism and authenticity, Charles Lindholm talks about the sexual tourist who ventures “seeking out forbidden pleasures in foreign locales”, hoping to “discover his or her own natural uncivilized being” (p. 42). As Lindholm suggests, that sexual tourists who goes to Thailand, for instances, looking to have…
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excerpt from CLAUDE CAHUN: The Extreme Point of the Needle in: Michael Löwy’s MORNING STAR: surrealism, marxism, anarchism, situationism, utopia During 1936, Claude Cahun took an active part in Surrealist activities: she was present at the Surrealist exhibitions in Paris and London and signed the collective appeal “No Freedom for the Enemies of Freedom” (written…
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My dearest aunt passed away last week. Her name is Maria, but she was always nameless to me. She was always the aunt. She was one of my grandmother’s two sisters. But I never met my grandmother, Francelina, and the aunt sort of occupied that place: the place of mother, for my mother, and the…
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Everything’s wrong with this sort of competitions, yet they’re necessary to keep the art market alive. There are very few art prizes in Portugal and they tend to promote the most conceptual approach to contemporary art practices, one of the reasons the results are always controversial. This week (or the week before, it’s fuzzy) Fnac…
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printscreen from iGNANT’s FB There are several photographers traveling to “remote places” with the aim to capture “human nature”, at its wildest form. One of these so-called explorers is British photographer Jimmy Nelson (b. 1967). Having spent his childhood in Africa and his teen years in England, Nelson started working as a photojournalist at the…
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page from the K-Hole report. The end of authenticity is near. Apparently, the post-authenticity movement is coming and it seems to have found its motto: embrace the fake. To quit the rhetoric of authenticity, a discourse that argues for the importance of being different and unique, and to embrace this new attitude would presuppose the…
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James Frey photographed in 1994, shortly after coming out of rehab. In an article by Anna Iatsenko published in Paradoxes of Authenticity (2012), the author speaks about what came to be known as The James Frey Controversy, a situation involving the writer and the TV tycoon Oprah Winfrey. The story concerns Frey’s book A Million…
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Author Busisiwe Deyi writes about Cultural Appropriation in Africa is a Country, in the context of the SPUR restaurant chain. Although the text is about this specific brand, the arguments go for other situations. What the fuck is happening in the fashion world these days that everyone wants to be Native American? Or do they? Of…
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Dear Siri, I read What I Loved while riding the train to work and listening to Bowerbirds, 16 Horsepower and Eddie Vedder. Needless to say, the experience had a great impact and I still dream about Matt’s and Bill’s artworks, wanting to see them come to life. I don’t think it had ever happened to…
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Trailer for Arne Birkenstock‘s documentary Beltracchi: The Art of Forgery about Wolfgang Beltracchi’s work and how he managed to fool the art world. Excerpts from the CBS interview with Bob Simon Bob Simon: Could you do a Rembrandt? Wolfgang Beltracchi: Yeah, sure. Bob Simon: Could you do a Leonardo? Wolfgang Beltracchi: Yeah, yeah, sure. Bob…
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It’s a given than when writing a statement about your work, you should explain what the process entailed and what you were trying to achieve. But should the artist explain to us what the project is really about? Isn’t that pretentious? © Jamie Diamond, 7.11.11, from the series I Promise To Be a Good Mother.…
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Susan Sontag died in 2004 and that was a tough year for photography. One difficult to forget. In 2004, the images of Abu Ghraib got out and with them started a revolution in photojournalism. From then on, authenticity, a ‘quality’ so dear to documentary photography, changed hands. Legitimacy and believability were no longer available to…
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In the lecture showed above (TED, 2009) photographer Taryn Simon talks about the quest for hidden truths. She starts by explaining how the majority of her work “is, in fact, not photographic. It involves a campaign of letter writing, research and phone calls to access my subjects”. She then goes on to explain how, unexpectedly,…
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N I H I L S E N T I M E N T A L G I A, 