Writings & Talks
Here is a selection of some of my writings and talks from the last four decades, with short descriptions that I have added to put them in context. It will be updated from time to time.
Books > After Photography
(Aperture, 2009, translated into French, Korean, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Turkish)
This book argues for a profound reconsideration of the photographic medium as it no longer could be counted on as a credible witness, or what John Berger referred to as a “quotation from appearances.” In it this new, emerging medium is re-defined as more conceptually quantum than Newtonian, about potentials and probabilities rather than the logic of cause and effect, and as more invested in the code of the genotype than the phenotype of appearances, just as humans were re-defined as more code-based due to the discovery of DNA. While acknowledging the broken link with the real, it explores the photograph’s new architecture as a mosaic of pixels, and asserts the need for a rethinking of the medium in terms of the possibilities in a digital environment—going beyond “mouse,” “windows,” “Web pages,” and such language that is essentially nostalgic. What can we do differently and better with this new medium? What have we lost in the transition?
View a PDF of the preface and first chapter, “Into the Digital.”
To read
- The Lens Keeps on Looking: Guy Tillim in an interview with Peter Geimer
- Image & Peace
- ‘Glory to Ukraine!’ – photographers from the country put on a compelling show
- These Are the First 100% AI-Generated Stock Photos of People
- Witnesses: 50 years of Doctors Without Borders | Magnum Photos
- How photography and storytelling can turn apathy into climate action by Cristina Mittermeier
- A.I. Is Not A-OK by Maureen Down
To view
- VIDEO: Exiting the Photographic Universe
- VIDEO: Synthetic Media: How deepfakes could soon change our world
- EXHIBITION: In Ukraine
- EXHIBITION: The Protest and Recuperation
- EXHIBITION: Dawoud Bey An American Project
- VIDEO: Fascism in America
- EXHIBITION: David Goldblatt Strange Instrument Curated By Zanele Muholi In Collaboration with Yancey Richardson Gallery