Aperture

Aperture 242

New York

"Vision & Justice" Addresses the role of photography in the African American experience, guest edited by Sarah Lewis, distinguished author and art historian.

Vision & Justice

Pilar Tompkins Rivas

This winter, Aperture magazine presents an issue that celebrates the dynamic visions of Latinx photography across the United States. Guest edited by Pilar Tompkins Rivas, chief curator at the Lucas Museum of Narrative Art in Los Angeles, "Latinx" spans a century of image making, connecting historical and contemporary photography, and covering the themes of political resistance, family and community, fashion and culture, and the complexity of identity in American life. In "Latinx," Carribean Fragoza traces Laura Aguilar's influence on queer artmaking. Joiri Minaya remixes postcards from the Dominican Republic to unveil the fantasy of tourism. Christina Catherine Martinez profiles Reynaldo Rivera, who chronicled 1990s-era Los Angeles nightlife. Yxta Maya Murry considers three Latina curators and writers influencing how photography canons are made today. "Collectively, their images cast a greater net for the multiple ways of seeing Latinx people," Tompkins Rivas notes of the issue's photographers, "creating a visual archive whose edges are yet to be defined."

Aperture 245

Latinx

If the year 2020 has resembled a disquieting sci-fi plot or a sinister speculative work, this year has also shown us that other ways of living are possible-if the collective will exists. But is it naive to speak of utopia today? In this issue, artists, photographers, and writers envision a world without prisons, document visionary architecture, honor queer space and creativity, and dream of liberty through spiritual self-expression. They show us that utopia is not a far-fetched scheme, or a "no place" (the literal meaning of the word utopia), but rather a way of reconsidering the everyday.Salamishah Tillet considers Tyler Mitchell's portraits of Black people resting in open green space, while Sara Knelman shows the liberatory possibilities of feminist collage work of Lorna Simpson, Mickalene Thomas, Sara Cwynar, and Alanna Fields. From Afro-Futurist aesthetics to the eco-idealism of Biosphere 2, "Utopia" issue explores the role of photographs in shaping our future.

Utopia

This fall, as debates around nationalism and borders in North America reach a fever pitch, Aperture magazine releases "Native America," a special issue about photography and Indigenous lives, guest edited by the artist Wendy Red Star. "Native America" considers the wide-ranging work of photographers and lens-based artists who pose challenging questions about land rights, identity and heritage, and histories of colonialism. Several contributors revisit or reconfigure photographic archives--from writer Rebecca Bengal's look at the works of Richard Throssel and Horace Poolaw, to artist Duane Linklater's intervention in a 1995 issue of Aperture, "Strong Hearts," the magazine's first volume devoted to Native American photographers. "I was thinking about young Native artists," says Red Star, "and what would be inspirational and important for them as a road map." That map spans a diverse array of intergenerational image-making, counting as lodestars the meditative assemblages of Kimowan Metchewais and installation works of Alan Michelson, the stylish self-portraits of Martine Gutierrez, and the speculative mythologies of Karen Miranda Rivadeneira and Guadalupe Maravilla. "Native America" also features contributions by distinguished writers and curators, including strikingly personal reflections from acclaimed poets Tommy Pico and Natalie Diaz. With additional essential contributions from Rebecca Belmore and Julian Brave NoiseCat, as well as a portfolio from Red Star, the issue looks into the historic, often fraught relationship between photography and Native representation, while also offering new perspectives by emerging artists who reimagine what it means to be a citizen in North America today.

Aperture 240

Native America

Portfolios and Essays from Patti Smith, Adam Broomberg, Oliver Chanarin, and David Campany, Caroline Mangez and Alexandra Boulat, Philip Gefter, Gail Albert Halaban and Jori Finkel, Marilyn Bridges and Gail Buckland, Eirik Johnson and Dalia Azim, Joshua Mack and Jessica Dimmock.

Aperture

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