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
This is a post about a photobook, namely A Zona, by Diogo Simões, published by Pierre von Kleist in 2022, in the context of a national competition promoted by Arte deste Século Association Book Prize (1st edition). But before going into it, I’d like to make a couple of statements: First and foremost, although I recognize…
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Last week José, an enthusiastic student, brought several photobooks to class. As he put the first one in front of me, I was immediately stroke by its grotesqueness. I was unfamiliar with the author’s work and asked to borrow it. Back at home with the book and struggling to find words to make sense of…
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caption (image above): © Riccardo Angei, from Glue and Souls. I’d like to state, with a certain amount of certainty, that the only thing that sets men and women apart is that we’ll never be able to explain to men what it feels like to be a woman in a men’s world. They know, they empathize,…
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THE MAN COMES AROUND 2015- The Man Comes Around explores a crucial turning point in the history of humanity; a point where climate change, overpopulation and a rapid decline in biodiversity threaten the whole of Western civilization. In the photographs of Hurskainen, this crisis comes to be represented by the ageing, white heterosexual male, a man…
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Caption (image above): Digital offset reproduction of an instant portrait of my mother and her best friend Lena, painted with crayons; 1 of many tests. (by Sofia Silva, 2018). Starting this series of posts about therapeutic photography and authors working with it, I’d like to make some very brief distinctions between phototherapy, therapeutic photography, art…
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caption: detail from Dioso Simões’ booklet in Propeller Propaganda. Deisgn by Paulo Arraiano. When we asked Diogo to collaborate with Propeller Propaganda, there was a lot of possibilities in the air and no pre-established idea of what he could publish. After some options were dropped, the series of photographs we then published was suggested, but…
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Thinking about photography inevitably makes us wonder what is consider truthful. Fiction is not only part of art (and truth); it is perhaps the privileged space of art, in which it reveals itself as an autonomous entity, apart from what we commonly understand as “real life.” However, if art creates new possibilities, photography fights a very…
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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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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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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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I’m just another lover of the art of moving pictures, so the Oscars, being about the movie industry, are usually not a place to look for references. Yet, I’m always aware, and I end up finding one or two things worth watching (usually the documentaries). This year, things couldn’t be weirder. Not only is Moonlight an originally brave movie,…
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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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A portrait of me taken by my 5 years old niece forced me into this theme. As I stared into the photograph I wondered “do I really look like that”? The question is as simple as it is complex. I’m aware that the word “really” in this sentence is just a figure of speech, so…
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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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I © Marina Rosso, Untitled, from the series Elephant, 2010-12. © Marina Rosso, Untitled, from the series Elephant, 2010-12. © Marina Rosso, Untitled, from the series Elephant, 2010-12. © Marina Rosso, Untitled, from the series Elephant, 2010-12. II © Marina Rosso, Untitled, from the series Mutants, 2014. © Marina Rosso, Untitled, from the series Mutants,…
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My love for the Hyères Festival is known. I’ve written about it and have featured a great deal of the authors shortlisted each year. The judging panel has been responsible for issuing a statement about what they want to see in contemporary photography and it has been bold and exciting, for Hyères always awards an…
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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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Street Level Photoworks‘ upcoming exhibition is called Common Ground: New Documentary Photography from Scotland & Wales and is promoted as a show that brings together “diverse themes and ideas associated with distinctive national and cultural visual inspiration, this collective exhibition welds them together into a cohesive narrative, at times overlapping and continuously referencing and complementing…
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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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N I H I L S E N T I M E N T A L G I A, 