LensCulture’s editors revisit 26 of the most popular recent articles that feature black-and-white photography – portfolios, essays, interviews, exhibitions and book reviews
LensCulture’s editors revisit 26 of the most popular recent articles that feature black-and-white photography – portfolios, essays, interviews, exhibitions and book reviews.
I can’t remember where I first came across the work of Epiphany Knedler, but I was so knocked out by the installation of her MFA show that it was hard to forget. She created an immersive space that forced us to reconsider the selling of the West, romantic
I can’t remember where I first came across the work of Epiphany Knedler, but I was so knocked out by the installation of her MFA show that it was hard to forget. She created an immersive space that forced us to reconsider the selling of the West, romanticized, commodified, and sanitized for happy family outings. As Smithsonian writer Stephen Aron states, “Dismantling cherished fables about the Old West and stripping the romance from the history of “Westward Ho,” newer studies have exhumed the human casualties and environmental costs of American expansion. Offering little glory, these interpretations of how the West was lost have accented the savagery of American civilization.” With all American history, it’s critical to acknowledge the truth.
Out on her partner’s ranch in remote Montana, Lauren Grabelle documents her surroundings with a bite, picturing life as it is lived in wilderness, bordered by mountains and shared with a variety of beasts
Out on her partner’s ranch in remote Montana, Lauren Grabelle documents her surroundings with a bite, picturing life as it is lived in wilderness, bordered by mountains and shared with a variety of beasts.
Reimagining portraiture as a playful practice of deconstruction, Karen Navarro’s visual puzzles remind us that identity is a fluid and multifaceted process
Reimagining portraiture as a playful practice of deconstruction, Karen Navarro’s visual puzzles remind us that identity is a fluid and multifaceted process.
Photographer Cornell Watson’s recent vacation with his family to Martha’s Vineyard showed him what seemed like a fantasy: Black people living life seemingly free of the anxieties and stresses that life normally holds.
Photographer Cornell Watson is sharply aware of these inequalities. He’s seen it his whole life. And a recent vacation he took to Martha’s Vineyard made him reflect on that. While there, he was able to put aside some of the anxieties thrust upon Black people to the side for just awhile.
A 25-year-old Romanian photographer appropriates the same tools of the former Securitate secret police to try to come to grips with her parent’s and their generation’s apparent inability to embrace 21st century freedom
A 25-year-old Romanian photographer appropriates the same tools of the former Securitate secret police to try to come to grips with her parent’s and their generation’s apparent inability to embrace 21st century freedom.
A Hundred Stories | By Michelle Ma Qinglian, who worked as a chemistry professor in southern regions of China, suffered under cancer caused by radiation. She passed away when my father was 18 years…
In my project, A Hundred Stories, I photographed dwellers, strangers, and family relatives living in Southern China to regions of north bordering Russia. I also intertwined modified images with family archives. Taking photographs of my hometown has given me a chance to reflect on people whom I have not valued. I found that these people, who lives in a different time from the real world, and those who live in a fast-developing city, share the same mind-set. The silent wind of time has continued to blow. The process brought me a strange feeling of satisfaction, which only a hundred stories can reveal.
A new exhibition and book celebrate the extraordinary legacy of American photographer Ruth Orkin, one of the most influential women photographers of the twentieth century.
A new exhibition and book celebrate the extraordinary legacy of American photographer Ruth Orkin, one of the most influential women photographers of the twentieth century.
A famous, bikini-clad model reclines on the crystalline shore of a beach in Jamaica. The corpse of an SS prison guard floats down a river. Three boys play, chasing each other with sticks in an empty lot in the Bronx. What do these images have in common?
Matter and Time | by Ivan Kardashev My name is Ivan. I was born in Moscow in 1992. “Matter and Time” is a personal documentary project narrating about my military service in the Russian army. The s…
My name is Ivan. I was born in Moscow in 1992. “Matter and Time” is a personal documentary project narrating about my military service in the Russian army. The story began when I was 20 years old. I grew up in a conservative and patriarchal family. For my parents, there was no question of whether a man is obliged to serve, and I couldn’t make a move in this regard myself. Until now, the military service in Russia is mandatory for all men from 18 to 27 years old, who don’t have a health or study exemption, or (in most cases) the opportunity to give a bribe to buy off. The service lasts one year.
Black Diamonds is a personal endeavor to connect with the Appalachian region photographer Rich-Joseph Facun now calls home. As a person of color, he d…
Black Diamonds is a personal endeavor to connect with the Appalachian region photographer Rich-Joseph Facun now calls home. As a person of color, he defines his community based on personal experience, which diverges from the stereotypes of race, religion, gender, and politics that are often attached to the region by outsiders. His images hint at life as it once was, sharing the hyperrealism of what it is today and the uncertainty of what it is to become in the coal-mining boomtowns of bygone days. Life in Appalachia is fraught with mystery and mischaracterization. Yet, in all his interactions, the simple needs of day-to-day survival loom larger than the abstract issues of politics. The images strive for an understanding of people and place in these rural, isolated foothills pocked with poverty; where a heritage of hospitality, not hate, is an unspoken psalm.
Love’s Labors: Labor is often described as being of the body, and economists have spent centuries calculating formulas to explain its value. But there is a lacuna in all of these calculations, the invisible and the ephemeral—love. How do we calculate the
Osamu James Nakagawa transforms image making into a ritual, participating in the cyclical experience of life and death. He becomes a bridge between generations, using a visual language to reunite his ancestors with his daughter. In this way, he outlines the meaning of his own life while acknowledging its passing—he is never more than a shadow while his family is rendered in careful hues, lines, and shapes. Kai I and II is an ongoing series that began at the intersection of his father’s death and daughter’s birth. Eventually, he photographed the death of his mother as well. Dying is not easy. Nor is growing up or growing old. As his mother lay dying, he photographed her last breath—the exchange was a gift: her last labor and his love.
Over the past two years, photographer Anouk Masson Krantz has travelled tens of thousands of miles across the United States to document the daily lives of cowboys and ranching culture.
Over the past two years, photographer Anouk Masson Krantz has travelled tens of thousands of miles across the United States to document the daily lives of cowboys and ranching culture.
Jacob Ehrbahn spent five years traveling the roads of exile. From 2015 to 2020, the photographer followed migrants who came to Europe in search of the European dream. A combination of hope, misery and disillusion, the book A Dream of Europe is a powerful
Jacob Ehrbahn spent five years traveling the roads of exile. From 2015 to 2020, the photographer followed migrants who came to Europe in search of the European dream. A combination of hope, misery and disillusion, the book A Dream of Europe is a powerful photographic and written account of that search.
