Dark mirrors
By: Stanley Wolukau-Wanambwa
Edition: First edition.
Publisher: MACK; Mackaware
Published: 2021
Place of publication: UK]
Language: eng
Number of pages: 285
ISBN-13: 9781913620394
Subjects: Photographic criticism; History; Photobooks; Art and photography; Criticism and interpretation; Critique photographique; Histoire; Livres photos; Art et photographie
Description: Dark Mirrors' assembles sixteen essays by photographer and critic Stanley Wolukau-Wanambwa focusing on contemporary fine art photographic and video practices that are principally, though not exclusively, rooted in the United States, written between 2015 and 2021. Wolukau-Wanambwa analyses the image's relationship to the urgent and complex questions that define our era, through the lens of artistic practices and works which insightfully engage with the ongoing contemporaneity of disparate histories and the ever-changing status of the visual in social life. The book sets out an argument that one of the most dynamic sites of artistic invention in photographic practice over the past decade has been the photographic book, and thus many of the essays in the volume assess artistic works as they are bodied forth in that form. Among the recurrent themes that emerge from these rigorous, probing essays are the complex interrelationship of anti-blackness and visuality, the fragility and complexity of embodied difference in portraiture, the potency of verbal and visual media as social forms, and the politics of attention. With essays on Deana Lawson, Dana Lixenberg, Paul Pfeiffer, Arthur Jafa, Katy Grannan, and Robert Bergman among others.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references.
Table of contents: title: Introduction: times like these; title: Between immersion and interpretation / Charlotte Cotton: Photography is Magic; title: TEXTING / Joel W. Fisher: Agapage; title: An object of black study / Arthur Jafa: A Series of Utterly Improbable, Yet Extraordinary Renditions; title: Word and image / Rabih Mroué: The Pixelated Revolution; title: Re(al) reflection / Daniel Shea: 43-45 10th Street; title: The discipline of modern economic life / Katy Grannan: The Ninety Nine & The Nine; title: Wanting to be held / Robert Bergman: A Kind of Rapture; title: The projects / Dana Lixenberg: Imperial Courts; title: The play of freedoms / Rosalind Fox Solomon: Liberty Theater; title: Memory hole / Ron Jude: Lago; title: Ruinous Silences / Jason Koxvold: KNIVES; title: Into the abyss / Mark Ruwedel: Pictures of Hell; title: World-less / Kristine Potter: Manifest; title: Spectacular opacities / Paul Pfeiffer: Caryatid (Broner); title: Black stars / Deana Lawson: 'Deana Lawson' at Huis Marseille; title: Epilogue: in Memoriam. In Baltz's Wake: A Thought of Landscape in Contemporary Photography.