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 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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Everyday, I wake up, hear the news, see some photographic registers of the previous events in Ukraine, get nauseated, shed a few tears and then re-fuel the level of frustration. It’s masochism, but I can’t avoid it. My irritation regarding what photography has been doing in relation to this particular war has been escalating to…
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While WWIII isn’t officially declared, we just go about our days, or we don’t. I’m writing in anger and frustration, sick to the guts, thinking the best way to deal with this is to write and, in doing so, prevent students from having to hear me talk about this non stop for the rest of…
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I’ve been following Nihilsentimentalgia for the past six years or so. I visit the blog every two or three months and read an entry or two. It’s an open but stable relationship. It seemed that every time I read the blog there are texts exactly matching the issues I currently grapple with, like a creepy…
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photo: Palestinian mourners carry the body of eight-month-old Palestinian baby Leila Anwar Ghandoour, who died from tear gas inhalation in Gaza City on 15 May 2018 [Mustafa Hassona/Anadolu Agency] As of Sunday, a succession of events has once again reanimated a question that often comes to mind, namely: what would make me go into exile? Throughout…
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The Documentary Which Way Is the Front Line from Here? The Life and Time of Tim Hetherington, directed by Sebastian Junger, full str**ming here
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(continuation. part I here) PROXIMITY AND IMMEDIACY With regard to war photography, we can isolate several major criteria of authenticity that have prevailed over the course of the last 60 years. Most prominent is the impression of spatial proximity and temporal immediacy with respect to the events depicted. Photographs satisfying these criteria create the impression…
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What follows are excerpts from a very interesting article by Thomas Susanka, published in “Paradoxes of Authenticity”, pp.95-113, edited by Julia Straub and published by transcript Verlag, Bielefeld, 2012 In the context of the following paper, as Susanka clarifies, ‘authenticity’ should be understood “as one strategy to achieve verification and hence persuasion, namely by demonstrating…
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N I H I L S E N T I M E N T A L G I A, 