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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I’ve got a ton of shit to do and a multitude of voices controlling my every thought, writing stories that will one day be told, but not now. The only match I can seam to operate today, between what’s going on between the public and the private sphere, is to write, once again, about war…
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Speaking from Portugal, a poor country that happens to have a magnificente geographical location, this may sound dramatic and nonsense. After all, we’re all safe here. We have some wheat, potatoes, cows, sheep, milk and sunshine, ocean surfers and couch surfers, though definitely less crowd surfing than needed. Basically, nothing with global significance is happening…
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caption (image above): A photograph from Alphonse Bertillon’s photo album from his exhibition at the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago. Mental Illness and depression, in particular, have been the talk of the month, given that the confinement has sparked new conversations about social interaction, human kindness and wellbeing and, of course, the lack of…
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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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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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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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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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So much has been said about Leif Sandberg‘s project Ending that words fail me. Still, the quality of his work and the importance it has for those, like me, who embrace photography both as a means of artistic expression, but also as a therapeutic tool, brought me here. At Lenscratch, Aline chooses to stick to…
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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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Warning: most of the links have extremely violent imagery. I gave myself a task: to look at photographs of violent events for a period of more or less a month and to chose a photograph per day (which wasn’t manageable after all). I realized from this experience that I haven’t really been looking at photographs…
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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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photo caption (above) © Christian Boltanski, Odessa Monument, 1991. Four gelatin silver prints, lights and wiring “Since the late 1960s, Christian Boltanski (b. 1944, Paris) has worked with photographs collected from ordinary and often ephemeral sources, endowing the commonplace with significance. Rather than taking original photographs to use in his installations, he often finds and…
Read More@ Bernardo Sassetti, ascent @ Bernardo Sassetti, ascent
Read More© Vincent Cordebard, Untitled, from Etudes pour Les attentats à la pudeur © Vincent Cordebard, Untitled, from Etudes pour Les attentats à la pudeur © Vincent Cordebard, Untitled, from Etudes pour Les attentats à la pudeur It’s one of those rare, and thus special occasions, when I find a body of work I completely connect…
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© KayLynn Deveney, Untitled, from the series Edith and Len, 2000 © KayLynn Deveney, Cat on Bed, from the series Edith and Len, 2000 “I began photographing Edith and Leonard Crawshaw shortly after they moved from their flat into a Welsh nursing home. Following a broken hip and an extended hospital stay, Len required…
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© Wim van Ophem, Untitled, from the series Doodgewoon (Death Normal) © Wim van Ophem, Untitled, from the series Doodgewoon (Death Normal) Wim’s website here
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© Jaret Belliveau, Untitled, from the series Familial Endurance © Jaret Belliveau, Chicken Soup and Crackers, from the series Familial Endurance © Jaret Belliveau, Place of Rest, from the series Expect Delays “This body of work began as an attempt to clarify and understand the internal workings of family. I began by photographing my…
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© Nobuyoshi Araki © Helmut Newton “Identity is untenable: it is death, since it fails to inscribe its own death. Such is the case with closed, or metastable, or functional, or cybernetic systems, which are all eventually waylaid by laughter, instantaneous subversion (and not by a long dialectical labor), because all the inertia of these…
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N I H I L S E N T I M E N T A L G I A, 