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
Photo above, as shared by Khaled Beydoun and Wissam Nassar: sourced from israeli media which published a picture of displaced civilians who were arrested from shelter schools in northern Gaza, abused and stripped of their clothes. I’ve not stopped writing posts here at Nihil, I’ve just been unable to finish and/or publish them. Social reality…
Read More
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…
Read More
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…
Read More
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…
Read More
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…
Read More
Caption (photo above: image from Kollar’s book Field Trip. Source: STET Photography Editions. More of Kollar’s work here. I’d say this is the exception and not the rule: sometimes authors’ statements about their work really add to it. I think this is the case: a brief and sincere text about the emotional experience that results…
Read More
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…
Read More
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…
Read More
On January 28th 2011 I attended a lecture by Anthony d’Offay, held at the Glasgow School of Art. d’Offay is an art dealer, collector and curator who is famous not only for the huge monetary funding of Joseph Beuys’ work (the thing for which I remembered him the most), but for the huge impact in the…
Read More
Yesterday, after watching the documentary about the work of Sebastião Salgado I found myself trying to give an answer to the question then asked: does it matter if we cry? I think it does, the same way I think that actions need to be taken even when consequences are unknown, the same way I think…
Read More
© Sebastião Salgado, part of Mondrel Media press kit. © Sebastião Salgado, part of Mondrel Media press kit. The Salt of the Earth (‘Le sel de la terre’/’O sal da terra’) is a documentary by WIM WENDERS and JULIANO RIBEIRO SALGADO about the brazilian photographer Sebastião Salgado. Sebastião’s work for the past 40 years or…
Read More
I had never heard of this kind of illustration until I came across it in Juan Cole’s blog Informed Comment. As Cole explains, there is a new trend called Smoke Art Photography: “[a] Palestinian blogger from Gaza, Refaat Alareer has been collecting digital altercations of photos of Israeli airstrikes exploding over their communities. Within the…
Read More
© Andrei Liankevich, all photographs from the series Goodbye, Motherland, 2011 The “Goodbye, Motherland” project explores the attitude to WWII in Belarus. Belarus has only one ideology – war ideology. Belarus Independence Day is the day when the capital was freed from the Nazi occupation. The main streets in the capital are named after war…
Read More
from Eugene Richard‘s series War is Personal Days after the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, 2001, Tomas Young, then a 22-year-old from Kansas City, Mo., made a decision repeated by many other Americans around the country: He was going to enlist in the military in hopes of getting even with the enemies who had helped…
Read More
“…Israeli soldiers’ use of social media has given a unique insight into an “army” that functions more like a rabble – with soldiers misusing weapons, breaking laws, and expressing violent and extreme views and posting images of themselves doing it online. A case in point is Osher Maman, another 20-year-old Israeli soldier currently enlisted in…
Read More
photo caption (above): FP/Getty Images: ISSOUF SANOGO How deceiving pictures can be. This is: Two young fighters of the Islamist group Movement for Oneness and Jihad in West Africa (MUJAO) walk in the streets of Gao on July 17, 2012. A group of armed youths has arrived in Gao from Burkina Faso, joining hundreds of…
Read More
all photos © Adam Hinton in Gaza, 2012 all drawings © Joe Sacco, taken from Footnotes in Gaza, 2010. An interview with Joe Sacco about the book and the massacres reported in it here Articles about the Palestine/Israle conflict can be accessed via Stop the War Coalition
Read More
© Sara Rahbar, Untitled, from the series Love arrived & How red, photography, 2008 © Sara Rahbar, Trapped in Dark Night with Nowhere to Run, I Have Died a Million Times Every Night in this Bed (left) + Kurdistan Flag #5 (right), from the series Flags, mixed media + textiles, 2005-2010 © Sara Rahbar, Solitary…
Read More
© David Monteleone, Daghestan, Russia, 2009. Ghimri, during a bull sacrifice © David Monteleone, Republic of Ingushetia, 2010. Nazran, during a wedding “At first there was the Russian Empire, Saint Petersburg’s splendour, nobles’ dynasties set against commons far and distant, scattered on an unlimited country. Later on came communism’s turn, with its pyramidal hierarchy, its…
Read More
© Paul Seawright, Map, from the series Hiden: Afghanistan, 2002 © Paul Seawright, Mounds, from the series Hiden: Afghanistan, 2002 “An Imperial War Museum, London commission, to make a new artwork in response to the attacks on Sept 11th and the war in Afghanistan for the museums permanent collection. The exhibition HIDDEN has toured…
Read More
N I H I L S E N T I M E N T A L G I A, 