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
caption: © Elizaveta Porodina, portrait of Lily D. Moore, for Radical Beauty Project. I came across this project through a very complimentary review in the Guardian. The Radical Beauty Project is about “challenging opinions”, questioning perceptions about beauty. It brings together people with down’s syndrome and “40 renowned fashion and art photographers”. In creative director…
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caption: image illustrating an article @ Time.com, entitled TIME’s 25 Best Photobooks of 2018. The first sentence of the article reads: “As an antidote to your unyielding Instagram feed, consider the photobook.” I’ve been thinking about photography’s relationship with digital design in the twenty-first century. After some considerations and discussions with colleagues and students I…
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Annie Leibovitz is responsible for creating such an iconography, that her authority (meaning legitimacy as an author) is unquestionable. Having said that, and although her work is always in trend (or so my students’ tell me), for the past decade or so I’ve been failing to find any originality in her photographic work. Seeing her…
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Inspired by the echos of the migrant crisis in his home country, hungarian photographer Norbert Baska has made a fashion shoot called “Der Migrant” with models in luxurious clothes posing as refugees in fake camp set-ups with barbed wire. ‘Lovely‘, some say. ‘What’s the problem‘, others ask. But the majority of us will immediately recognize…
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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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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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Excerpts of Brendan Cormiers’s essay No Interest in Reality, written for The New Institute’s exhibition, 1:1 Sets for Erwin Olaf and Bekleidung, Nov 11th 2013 – March 30th 2014. Full text here. “In the documentary, On Beauty and Fall, celebrated Dutch photographer Erwin Olaf states that he has no interest in reality. He laments the…
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Broomsticks, circa 1960. Tipalet, circa 1970. Badeda, circa 1970. «The demands of fashion for women reveal sexism, for men experience much less pressure to conform to clothing trends. While they are not totally immune, the basics do not change for them – suit and tie, pants and a shirt. Casual clothes can be very simple…
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Trying to make a point with digital cut and paste, here are excerpts of reviews and interviews with collage artist Kalen Hollomon, accompanied by images of his playful work. © Kalen Hollomon © Kalen Hollomon NYMAG: […] Hollomon claims it’s been “embarrassing” to take the iPhone photos that garner him thousands of likes each day…
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© Aisha Zeijpveld, Thomas Rosenboom. Portraits of writer Thomas Rosenboom for Volkskrant Magazine. I find Aisha Zeijpveld’s work undeniably captivating but what first caught my attention was the particular way I found it being promoted at Ignant. Here’s an excerpt: Aisha does all her editing by hand. No photoshop, no easy tricks, just scissors and…
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© Stacey Page, Charlotte. © Stacey Page, Paula, 2011. © Stacey Page, Todd, 2011. Embroidered photographs have been a trend for some time now and Nihilsentimentalgia has featured examples of such work, like Maurizio Anzeri, Melissa Zexter, Julie Cockburn or David Catá. It so happens that the technique keeps coming up and their makers are…
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© Peng & Chen , from the series Face-kini © Peng & Chen , from the series Face-kini In China, it’s the height of the tourist season for Qingdao’s famed beaches. But while many of the town’s visitors want to enjoy the sand and water, they’re not so wild about sunbathing. So they often resort…
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© Bruce Weber, Trevon & Maxie, from the commissioned project Brothers, Sisters, Sons & Daughters, for Barneys (Spring 2014). © Bruce Weber, Edie Charles, from the commissioned project Brothers, Sisters, Sons & Daughters, for Barneys (Spring 2014). I was always at odds with my gender. When I was very young, my preference for typically feminine…
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Hester Vlamings, in Amsterdam’s Fur Free Exhibition, 2011 Fur free events took place this past Friday worldwide. The video below is from a “performance” (aka bleeding fashion event) that took place in Tel-Aviv. During the rally, people used slogans such as “Fur is a dead fashion,” “we don’ t want furs in Israel!” and “Unethical,…
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More of his work can be seen here
Read More© Tim Walker, Tilda Swinton, Alien Lands Photoshoot based on David Bowie’s The Man Who Fell to Earth (W Magazine), 2011 “The day of your death I put a 50-mg dose of Testogel on my skin, so that I can begin to write this book. The carbon chains, O-H3, C-H3, C-OH, gradually penetrate my epidermis…
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hyper-formal-aesthetic-overlyexplicit-inyourface-photography… all photographs © Mustafa Sabbagh Mustafa’s site is here
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© Yayoi Kusama, Silver Squid Dress, 1968-9 © Yayoi Kusama, Self-Portrait, 1962 © Yayoi Kusama, Horse Play © Yayoi Kusama, Self-Obliteration By Dots, 1968. Photo © Hal Reiff © Yayoi Kusama, photography copyright © Harrie Verstappen “Rather than confirming the ontological coherence of the body-as-presence, body art depends on documentation, confirming-even exacerbating-the supplementarity of the body…
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all images © Austin Young, from Machine Project, Hammer Museum. “Tranimal…Young’s new endeavor – a collaboration with Squeaky Blonde and Fade-Dra, is infused with the artist’s high voltage underground creative energy. Tranimal is a big and bold project. It incorporates video, photography, and interactive sound design. And its taking performance art to an operatic level.…
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© Mark Peckmezian, Untitled, © Mark Peckmezian, Untitled, chromogenic print >© Mark Peckmezian, Untitled, fiber gelatin silver print >© Mark Peckmezian, Untitled, @ G20, fiber gelatin silver print © Mark Peckmezian, Untitled, fiber gelatin silver print “I was thinking that the “straight” or naive approach to the theme would be to just play to popular…
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N I H I L S E N T I M E N T A L G I A, 