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
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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© 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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© Christine Gensheimer, Hunde, 2007. Photo-collage. © Christine Gensheimer, Eberhards, 2010. Photo-collage. © Maria Kassab, Fauve. Paper collage. © Maria Kassab, Sans-titre. Paper collage. © Maria Kassab, Slow This Bird Down, 2013. Photo-collage. © Isabel Reitemeyer, Herr A. und Frau I., 2008. Collage. © Isabel Reitemeyer, Frau L.. Collage. © Isabel Reitemeyer, Auf dem Arm.…
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© Andreas Nitschke, from Black Beauties © Andreas Nitschke, from Pro Kopf It was Andreas himself who directed me to his work and I’m glad he did so. I’m always happy to help promote work I enjoy seeing and which manages to add something to the problems I’m dealing with at the moment. Andreas’ work…
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When I first met Isaac’s work, one of my immediate deductions was regarding his very deep use of blacks and whites. After some years, I now know that his work is not defined by the use of black & white, but rather by the absence of colour, which in turn leads to very defined areas/lines/figures…
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LUIS BUÑUEL: L’Age d’Or (1930)
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© Françoise Sullivan, Danse de la Neige (Dance in the Snow), 1948. 17 black & white photographs by Maurice Perron “[…] The society that was born of faith will die at the hands of reason… The fatal disintegration o f our collective moral strength into strictly individual and sentimental power has undermined the once formidable…
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Chance having been defined as “the encounter of an external causality and an internal finality,” we have to ascertain whether a certain kind of “encounter” – in this case the essential one, that is, by definition the most subjectivized one of all – can be considered under the angle of chance without our immediately seeming…
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all illustrations by Roland Topor “l’homme-citoyen est propriétaire parce que la faculté de posséder appartient à la sphère des libertés individuelles, mais il est libre dans la mesure où il a la propriété de sa pensée, et qu’il dispose en propre d’une capacité reflexive autonome. En conséquence, c’est la propriété intellectuelle, découlant de la théorie…
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photo caption (above) © Max Ernst, The Roaring of the Ferocious Soldiers (Le Mugissement des feroces soldats). 1919 “Indeed, the apparent sadism of the photographs raised the specter of surrealist misogyny; but it also pointed to an adjacent issue no less difficult: are these surrealist transgressions of the body related to actual transgressions of the…
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“As for Wilhelm Reich himself, upon whose ideas and career the film is largely based, today he seems less like a sex radical than like a crypto-conservative without knowing it. Reich’s glorification of the orgasm is actually quite heteronormative and prescriptive, as well as being entirely caught up within the discursive deployment of sexuality-as-liberation, described…
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© Kirsten Hoving, Birth of the star system, from the series Night Wanderers, 2010 © Kirsten Hoving, Music of the Spheres, from the series Night Wanderers, 2010 © Kirsten Hoving, Cassiopeia, from the series Night Wanderers, 2010 “Night Wanderers is a series of photographs envisioning the cosmos. I photograph objects and nineteenth-century photographs frozen in…
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© Robert Seydel, all Untitled, from Book of Ruth, collages, c. 2000-09 Robert Seydel’s “Book of Ruth is an alchemical assemblage that composes the life of his alter ego, Ruth Greisman—spinster, Sunday painter, and friend to Joseph Cornell and Marcel Duchamp. Through collages, drawings, and journal entries from Ruth’s imagined life, Seydel invokes her interior…
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© Bryan Lewis Saunders, under the influence of butane honey oil (left) and morphine IV (right) © Bryan Lewis Saunders, under the influence of 1/2g cocaine (left) and 1 “bump” of crystalmeth (right) “After experiencing drastic changes in my environment, I looked for other experiences that might profoundly affect my perception of the self. So…
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© Gemma Marmalade, from the series Animals, 2008 © Gemma Marmalade, from the series Animals, 2008 “Animal is a series of photographic portraits of a woman Gemma met on an internet dating/networking website in 2006. Without knowing anything of the artist or her motivations to make contact, the woman engaged in sending photographs of herself…
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@ Ting Cheng, Icy Yoga Lesson, 2012 @ Ting Cheng, Where is my home, 2009 excerpt from an interview by Alexandra Plesner, from Dazed Digital Dazed Digital: Your images give the impression of a dreamer, trying to escape this asylum called life. Why does this concept fascinate you so much? Ting Cheng: As human beings,…
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@ Jakob Hunosøe, Thermos placed on lamp , from the series Out of Order, 2012 framed, 46,5 x 46,5 cm, Archival Fiber Print, edition of 5 @ Jakob Hunosøe, Tin pot and ceramic pot touching electric kettle on plate , from the series On Things Ordinary, 2010 framed, 46,5 x 46,5 cm, Archival Fiber Print,…
Read More© Michel Medinger, chicken feet and striglithium, 2001 © Michel Medinger, aubergine albino “Working with a host of organic and inorganic shapes and forms, Medinger creates marvelously idiosyncratic tableaux that explore the dynamic interaction between object, form and meaning. Like a 19th-century cabinet of scientific curiosities, Medinger’s pictures of incongruous and decidedly Dadaesque juxtapositions of…
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© Janieta Eyre, Motherhood, from the series Motherhood © Janieta Eyre, Two pages from my diary, from the series Lady Lazarus “Speaking of photographs of racing horses, Rodin once said ‘It is the artist who is truthful and the camera that lies because, in reality; time does not stand still”. When Janieta Eyre states that…
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© Lien Botha, Inside the House the Mother did not Build, from the series White Stick for the Artic, 2008 © Lien Botha, Border Crossing, from the series White Stick for the Artic, 2008 “In the series, White stick for the Arctic, the female body — which one assumes is her own — is…
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N I H I L S E N T I M E N T A L G I A, 