“And in silence, where time seems to stand still, they ponder what life may have been… ‘What happened to the time, where we chased our dreams? ’ ‘When we were young, what did we know about fulfilling a life together?’ Love comes and goes like the ebb and flow of the ocean” – Annabel Oosteweeghel.
Annabel Oosteweeghel was walking near her house in Noordwijk, a small coastal town in the Netherlands, when she stumbled upon a perfectly-maintained bungalow from the 1960s. “It seemed as though time had stood still there” she writes. In her mind she imagined the story that had taken place inside behind those walls, envisioning it as the lifelong home of an elderly long-married couple.
Her Everlasting is a melancholic, poetic reimagining of what might have taken place there.
A two-minute walk from the beach, “the bungalow was the perfect filmset”. The interior too was still furnished as it was in the ‘60s. The location inspired her to write and storyboard with the idea of creating a staged series of images using her own narrative.
The story that the artist dreamed up centres on unfulfilled dreams, loneliness and dwindling communication in long-term matrimony. “The couple are ending life together here, but in their minds still feel quite lonely” she explains. “They wonder whether life could have been different had they chosen another path”.
All the images here are carefully staged. The protagonists in this series are the older husband and wife—Oosteweeghel hired models to interpret these characters in staged scenes, but the models are also a married couple in real life. The photographer also hired a stylist to ensure that everything fit in with the period style of the bungalow.
“I support the idea that all photography is fiction” writes Vilnius-based photographer Simas Lin, “Every image is a visual expression of one’s philosophy and experience so it can never be absolutely true or objective. And I love to use fiction to create photography”. His series Been there traces the sensual experience perceived by the photographer while journeying into the city’s atmospheric, eerie peripheries.
‘I’m reclaiming my blackness, which I feel is continuously performed by the privileged other. My reality is that I do not mimic being black; it is my skin, and the experience of being black is deeply entrenched in me. Just like our ancestors, we live as black people 365 days a year, and we should speak without fear.’ -Zanele Muholi
Photojournalists and editors know it—some consumers do too—exoticism sells. People in the west are fascinated by images that reinforce their preconceived ideas of what a culture “out to look like”, seeking poverty, isolated traditions and stereotypes such as African women adorned with cowrie shells and color. Their quest for “authenticity” is so narrow in scope that its seekers often ignore the complex, modern realities experienced by black people in different regions of the world.
Visual activist photographer Zanele Muholi has her first solo exhibition opening this month at the East London gallery Autograph ABP. For more than a decade, she has focused on documenting black LGTBQI people in South Africa. Her ongoing portrait series Somnyama Ngonyama was inspired by her experiences on the road and the socio-political events she encountered along the way. Using her body as a canvas, her psychologically driven portraits confront the politics of race and representation.
Nature is beautiful, though also capable of arousing fear in those who have settled in densely populated areas where comfort is found in numbers and light. Many of us have gotten used to a more restrained nature in fields and city parks, a far cry from impenetrable dark forests and wildernesses where only animal cries and running water break the silence. We’ve severed ties with what shaped us.
No, these are not withered flowers or unearthed minerals, nor masterful brushstrokes.
“Each one of these images is of a bullet—the vast majority of which were collected from a local gun range” explains Kentucky-based photographer Garret O. Hansen, discussing his series The Bullets, from a larger body of work entitled HAIL.
Despite the universal appeal of freedom, acclimatising to life post-incarceration is no easy task. Some might question whether ex-prisoners are really freer beyond barbed wired fences, their lives forever changed, their minds often haunted by recollections of their pasts. Many ex-prisoners struggle when thrust back into the ‘real’ world’ and expected to resume, or construct, a normal life.
While in Kazakhstan for another project, Swedish photographer Mikael Halleström met a number of individuals who had been given parole and their families. Curious about their pasts and equipped with conversational Russian language skills, with time he was able to gain their trust.
Like many, London-based photographer Gillian Hyland was initially drawn to Cuba for its nostalgic appeal. With the lack of internet and iconic 1950s cars, it can really feel like being transported back in time—bar the peeling paint on Spanish-built façades that serves as a reminder that time has passed.
Those who reside in the Brooklyn neighbourhood that is Bushwick may or may not be familiar with its original 17th century Dutch name ‘Boswijk’, which can be translated as “little town in the woods”. Israeli Artist Niv Rozenberg’s bold, graphical series of the same name highlights the diversity of architectural form that he has come to appreciate in this locality.
First snow at Plan du Lac (2,385 m) and on the Grande Casse (3,855 m), September 2016
House and cheese-making workshop of the Bantin family, Chavière, September 2016
An appreciation of cheese might sound like a strange point of departure for a photo project, but sometimes it’s the ‘little’ things that really define our lived experiences. Annecy, France based photographer Nicolas Blandin was eating in a fancy restaurant in Annecy-le-Vieux in 2010 when he first tasted the Termignon blue cheese, a rare variety that is largely unknown in France.
Close to 75,000 refugees are still living in a state of limbo between the Balkans and Greece, unable to enter the EU due to reinforced border control. Their living conditions are often deplorable, their prospects bleak. “Around 1000 on these refugees are sleeping rough in abandoned warehouses, train wagons and shacks in the central station of Belgrade, the capital of Serbia” reveal Danish photographers Ulrik Hasemann and Mathias Svold, discussing the focus of their project The Lost Boys of Belgrade.
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