Issue 105: Points of View
Perspective changes everything. Seeing and looking are two completely different acts. How we understand the world around us depends on our experiences and willingness to be open to new ideas. This creates a free flow of concepts, and in turn, this leads to innovation. This issue is about idea generation and a developing a greater sense of perspective.
In As We Rise, a new collection of Black photography, we take a look at images that celebrate the lives and stories of Black people through the careful curation of Kenneth Montague. He recounts a transformative trip to the Detroit Institute of Arts at the age of 10, seeing James Van Der Zee’s The Couple in Raccoon Coats, Harlem (1932): “They were in front of their home, a Harlem brownstone in the 1930s, and they were just impossibly sophisticated. I just had never seen African Americans depicted like that. It changed my life.”
Next, we speak with Mandy Barker about her photography of plastics. The works are extraordinarily beautiful until you realise the atrocity behind them. Barker communicates the extent of the waste age.
In photography, we bring you inspiring images across fine art, photomontage, portraiture and digital rendering, with practitioners. Ellen Jantzen stretches, cuts and pastes an array of organic samples, drawing attention to the vast editing processes that define 21st century media.
Sticking with rural landscapes, Thomas Jordan’s Instant Honey series offers a glimpse of the Midwest at sunset. Lilacs blend seamlessly into burnt oranges and inky blues.
Elsewhere, Glenn Homann explores the developments of iPhone cameras, producing abstract snapshots that turn Brisbane into a saturated wonderland.
Previously showcased in Aesthetica New Artists, German engineer and tech founder Tobias Schnorpfeil utilises data sets to build up colour, texture and material.
We also spotlight Taiwanese photographer Zhang Ahuei’s alluring take on contemporary portraiture. Compositions include unexpected elements that are both unsettling and alluring, blending the real and surreal; fashion and fine art.
In an interview with Senegalese photographer Omar Victor Diop, we explore his series of conceptually rich and emblematic images. Diasporic legacies, historical figures, baroque designs and contemporary fashion unite in a series of studio portraits.
Our cover photographers, Laura Perrucci and Matteo De Santis, play with intervention in image-making. The duo demonstrates a fresh take on collage. Bubble wrap and printed words lie over cloudless blue skies.
Finally, the last words go to the new Yorkshire Sculpture Park Director Clare Lilley about a Robert Indiana exhibition.