Nina Strand 09/03/2026 Nina Strand 09/03/2026

NATHANIEL DORSKY

The films of Nathaniel Dorsky unfold silently through a series of delicate observations. His camera movements are subdued if not completely absent, moving images that are mostly made up of stillness. Instead there’s just a subtle gesture, the play of light and shadow, an image that hovers there for a moment before disappearing—each one like a prayer. I find it difficult to tell his films apart in memory. Those I’ve seen share a similar tone and structure, a succession of images that float by with the same lightness of touch, free from apparent hierarchy or heavy-handed concepts. Still, there are certain images that manage to stand apart from the slow procession. They linger in the mind a little longer or, inexplicably, imprint themselves only to reappear later, in the guise of another image. The finding of an object is always, in fact, a refinding, Freud taught us.

Afterimage by Alan Huck:

One such image appears about three quarters of the way through Dorsky’s 1998 film Variations—the first and, probably because of this, still my favorite of his films that I’ve watched. It’s an image of a lemon, framed on either side by shots that are little more than the gentle shimmering of light. Almost eerie in its perfect roundness, the lemon is pressed into the center of the frame looking as if it’s about to burst. Its shadow faces the camera but the rest of the image is aglow with a golden yellow, as though the lemon were radiating its own light, a brilliant sun filling the room with its hue.

Thirty years earlier, Hollis Frampton made a short film that feels as though it could be an extended study of Dorsky’s frame. Over seven minutes, the camera is trained on the tough, pockmarked rind of a single lemon as darkness slowly overtakes it, rendering it into a silhouette. Another luminous, lemony sun, one whose eclipse we witness in real time. In an interview for October, Frampton confesses that he spent over an hour at the grocery store searching for the perfect lemon, the one that was “most splendidly citroid.” Both a kind of deadpan lighting instructional and a scientific experiment in object perception, Frampton claims that the film was ultimately about a “painterly conundrum.” It apparently stemmed from a conversation he’d had with the artist Robert Huot about the extraordinary number of hapax legomena in James Joyce’s Ulysses, the thousands of words that appear in the book only once. One of those words was, of course, lemon.

This past November, I stood transfixed in front of a tiny painting at the Musée d'Orsay in Paris: Édouard Manet’s Le Citron from 1880. Of all the celebrated works in the museum, it was this meager still life, only fourteen by twenty-two centimeters in size, that held my attention the longest—because, rather than in spite of its modesty, its simplicity. It was only later that I learned Manet had begun painting these kinds of miniature studies as his health declined later in life, using mostly objects that were close at hand. Like both Dorsky’s and Frampton’s, Manet’s lemon is offset by darkness—in this case, the pitch black plate it sits on, touched by a glint of white at its curved edge. It reminds me of the philosopher and theologian Jakob Böhme who, upon seeing the sunlight reflecting off a pewter dish, lapsed into a profound mystical experience. There, he saw into the divine mystery of all things, the place where the visible and spiritual realms overlap.

In the poet Mark Doty’s short book about falling in love with a Dutch still life painting, he walks out onto the steps of the Metropolitan museum and is overwhelmed by “a sense of tenderness toward experience, of being held within an intimacy with the things of the world.” Looking around at people eating pretzels in the chilly afternoon, flocks of pigeons, and exhaust trails from idling taxis, the city seems to be accorded a perfect harmony. Still reeling from the effects of having this centuries-old image draw him into its magnetic field, he feels himself and everything around him “bound together, in the warmth and good light of habitation.”

This sentiment is at one end of a spectrum that, according to Doty, we are forever sliding along—between connection and individuation, intimacy and freedom. Art is one place that we might look to find ourselves momentarily suspended between these poles. In Doty’s newly discovered painting, “there is a spectacular spiral of lemon peel” which he connects to the appearance of so many others throughout Dutch painting of the same century. They are all linked in his imagination, while remaining undiminished in their particularity. This is the strange thing about images and the objects they depict. They can appear so utterly singular in a moment of heightened awareness and yet be drawn into correspondence with others like them, joining together to form a universal mesh of analogy and significance. In Doty’s mind, it may even be that this is especially true for a certain type of citrus: “only lemons, only that lovely, perishable, ordinary thing, held to scrutiny’s light, fixed in a moment of fierce attention. As if here our desire to be unique, unmistakable, and our desire to be of a piece were reconciled. Isn’t that it, to be yourself and somehow, to belong?”

Afterimage is an ekphrastic series exploring that one image you see when you close your eyes—the one that lingers in your mind. We invite different people to reflect on an image they can't shake. The column began during our time publishing the journal Objektiv and continues today under Objektiv Press.

Nina Strand 08/03/2026 Nina Strand 08/03/2026

ZOÉ AUBRY

Fotoboken #Ingrid peker på den digitale bevegelsen som videre oppstod blant reaksjonene mot publiseringen av bildene. Fotoboken er uten tekst, og med bilder printet på glossy papir av gjenkjennelige motiver — stock-fotos av blomster, solnedganger, skylines og strender; tilsynelatende lyse bilder, eventuelt også «bilde-spam» — langt fra de eksplisitte bildene som sirkulerte sammen med offerets navn. Ved første øyekast framstår #Ingrid som direkte overfladisk satt i kontekst av et kvinnedrap.

On International Women’s Day we’re sharing this essay by Sara Eliassen: Spammen som digital motstandsstrategi: #Ingrid

‘On February 9, 2020 in Mexico City, a 25-year-old woman named Ingrid E. V. was murdered by her companion. Grisly photographs of this femicide committed by Erik Francisco Robledo Rosas, taken at the scene of the crime by the authorities, were avidly circulated by Mexican tabloids….’

Teksten er hentet fra forsiden til fotoboken #Ingrid av kunstneren Zoé Aubry, og refererer til Ingrid Escamilla Vargas som 9. februar 2020 ble drept av partneren sin i Mexico by. Hvert år blir ca 3000 kvinner drept i Mexico, og boken #Ingrid tar utgangspunkt i dette ene drapet for å belyse sammenhengen mellom medias overeksponering av voldelige bilder og normaliseringen av misogynistisk vold.

Bilder av forbrytelsen og det brutale drapet på Ingrid Escamilla Vargas ble lekket til pressen direkte fra politiet som etterforsket drapet, og sirkulerte så umiddelbart i meksikanske tabloidaviser som kalles ‘nota roja’ (den røde pressen). Papiravisen Pasala! trykket et eksplisitt bilde av en lemlestet kvinnekropp som forsidebilde, med teksten: «Det var Amors skyld».

Medias brutale sensasjonalisme, og politiets medvirkning som muliggjorde den, utløste en bølge av demonstrasjoner og i februar 2020 tok kvinner til gatene i Mexico by. De gikk fysisk til angrep på biler og utstyr tilhørende mediehusene Pasala! og La Prensa, som begge hadde publisert bildene av Ingrid Escamillas døde kropp.

Fotoboken #Ingrid peker på den digitale bevegelsen som videre oppstod blant reaksjonene mot publiseringen av bildene. Fotoboken er uten tekst, og med bilder printet på glossy papir av gjenkjennelige motiver — ‘stock-fotos’ av blomster, solnedganger, skylines, strender, tilsynelatende lyse bilder, eventuelt også ’bilde-spam’— langt fra de eksplisitte bildene som sirkulerte sammen med offerets navn. Ved første øyekast framstår #Ingrid som direkte overfladiske satt i kontekst av et kvinnedrap.

I kolofonen står det at boken er gjort i samarbeid med Delia Citlalin, og på baksiden av fotoboken står følgende utsagn:

“Amigas, una vez vi un caso de un feminicidio a una chica de EEUU en el que filtraron las imagenes de su cuerpo y sus familiares y amigos compartieron fotos de cosas bonitas para que cuando buscaron su nombre no aparecieran las desafortunadas fotos. Así que aqui les va un spam.”

Teksten er en tweet av @delia, venninne av Ingrid Escamilla Vargas. Tweeten refererer til et tidligere kvinnedrap i USA, der bilder av den døde kvinnen også hadde sirkulert i etterkant av drapet. For å unngå at bilder av liket skulle dukke opp i sosiale medier når folk søkte på offerets navn, begynte familien og venner av offeret i stedet å dele bilder av vakre ting. Tweeten til Delia oppfordret brukere av sosiale media til å følge samme strategi og ‘spamme’ emneknaggen IngridEscamillaVargas.

Fra hele verden begynte folk å poste bilder av blomster, innsjøer og solnedganger under #IngridEscamillaVargas, og iløpet av våren 2020 ble over 400 bilder delt. Den sveitsiske kunstneren Zoé Aubry fulgte bevegelsen som oppstod, og bestemte seg for å samle bildene og organisere dem etter dato-rekkefølge i det som etterhvert ble til fotoboken #Ingrid. Boken til Aubry framstår som en strøm av lignende motiver, og man nærmest scroller seg gjennom de fargerike og glossy bildene idet fingrene blar raskt fra side til side. Det er vanskelig å la blikket feste seg ved ett enkelt av bildene. Mange av fotografiene er av dårlig kvalitet, til tider piksellerte, og motivene oppleves som mindre viktige enn ansamlingen av dem.

I et intervju til RTS (Radio Télévision Suisse), uttaler Zoe Aubry at “Bildene fungerer som motbilder, signifikante i sin banalitet. Det som gjør at de interesserer meg, er at de opprinnelig ikke ble lagt ut for å bli sett, men for å adressere algoritmene for å få andre bilder til å forsvinne. Fotografiet brukes som et våpen." På websiden sin, beskriver kunstneren at hun bruker egen kunstnerisk praksis til å avdekke dominerende mediers mekanismer for eksponering og usynliggjøring, og hun gjør dette ved å vrenge på oppmerksomhetøkonomiens logikk gjennom bruken av såkalte ‘poor images’.

I essayet In Defence of the Poor Image fra 2009, skiver Hito Steyerl at essensen til ‘spam’ er sirkulasjonen av den, i motsetning til motiv og innhold. ‘Spammens’ funksjon handler sjelden om det den representerer, men om flyten som bildene (eller teksten) inngår i, og bidrar til; en strøm av informasjon, der elementer oppstår i ulike konfigurasjoner uten en nødvendig kobling til opphavet sitt (og det de representerer).

‘Spammen’ som @Delia oppfordret til i etterdønningen av sirkulasjonen av de voldelige bildene av Ingrid Escamilla, hadde den praktiske funksjonen av å fylle emneknaggen med navnet til offeret, og dermed drukne de voldelige bildene. Istedenfor å bidra til en ytterligere gjentakelse av volden som Ingrid Escamilla hadde blitt utsatt for, pekte bildene av solnedganger og stjernehimler på et fravær, og et tomrom.

Idet jeg blar gjennom boken, er det egentlig bare ett bilde som får meg til å stoppe opp. Bildet viser en plakat som holdes opp i et urbant bymiljø, gjenkjennelig som Mexico City’s sentrum med Torre Latinoamericana i bakgrunnen. Plakaten viser et portrett av Ingrid Escamilla Vargas, med teksten: “Hermana: Tu muerte NO FUE EN VANO. Nosotras seguimos en la lucha!!! Somos tu voz!!! #JusticiaParaIngrid.” (“Søster: Din død VAR IKKE FORGJEVES. Vi fortsetter kampen!!! Vi er din stemme!!! #JusticiaParaIngrid.”) Bildet er mest sannsynlig tatt under en av protestene som spredte seg i kjølvannet av hendelsen i 2020, og bryter med den ellers flytende strømmen av bilder i boka. I motsetning til de andre motivene tilfører dette bildet en festing av tid, og knytter oss til virkeligheten utenfor det digitale.

Zoé Aubry beskriver måten bildene av offeret ble spredt på i pressen som et uttrykk for strukturell kvinnefiendtlighet: “Kvinnedrap, eller feminicid, og i dette tilfellet drap på ektefelle, er et sosialt fenomen og voldelig representasjon av disse drapene bidrar til en normalisering, og blir dermed også en form for usynliggjøring av fenomenet.”

Ingrid Fadnes, som har skrevet mye om kjønnskamp og femicid med et Latin-Amerikansk fokus, skriver om begrepet Femicid i etterordet av den norske oversettelsen av Selva Almadas bok Døde jenter: “Begrepet femicide, som senere ble til femicidio eller feminicidio på spansk, ble først tatt i bruk på Den internasjonale domstolen for forbrytelser mot kvinner, et folketribunal som fant sted i mars 1976 i Brussel. Det var den nå avdøde feministiske forfatteren og aktivisten Diana Russell som lanserte begrepet. I første omgang ble femicide brukt for å skape bevissthet mellom forskjellen på voldelige drap på kvinner og det kjønnsnøytrale homicide. I følge Russell var det en eksplisitt forskjell i det at en kvinne blir drept fordi hun er kvinne, mens en mann kan bli drept av mange ulike årsaker.”

Femicid utviklet seg etterhvert til begrepet feminicid, som også omhandler strukturene og kulturen rundt kvinnedrapene og som muliggjør en normaliseringen av dem. Marcela Lagarde som definerte begrepet feminicid mente at det bedre innkapslet den sosiale konstruksjonen som ligger bak kvinnedrap, og straffefriheten som ofte omgir dem. Mexico har den andre høyeste andelen drap på kvinner i Latin-Amerika, med ca. ti drap på kvinner hver dag, hvorav 3% blir kriminelt undersøkt og 1% ender i domfellelse. Sosiolog Anne Ryen ved universitetet i Agder har forsket på vold mot kvinner, og sier at i løpet av perioden 2003-2023 har 160 kvinner i Norge blitt drept av sin partner, mot rundt tjue menn.

I fotoboken #Ingrid’s flyt av tilsynelatende behagelige motiver søker jeg etter mønstre, gjentakelser og sammenhenger. Fargen på innsiden av permene til publikasjonen er lilla, en farge som går igjen i boken. Lilla er også fargen til Ni una menos bevegelsen som startet i Argentina i 2015 og som har spredt seg til hele Latin-Amerika. Ni una menos kan oversettes som ‘ikke uten en til’, eller: vi vil ikke miste en til, og fargen lilla gikk også igjen i gatene i Mexico city våren 2020 og 8.mars-toget bare noen uker etter at Ingrid Escamilla brutalt hadde blitt drept. Rundt 800 000 kvinner gikk samlet langs Reforma avenyen med bannere og plakater, ikledd lilla t-skjorter. Toget beveget seg ned mot Zocalo-plassen foran Palacio Nacional i sentrum av byen, der et stort bål ble tent midt på plassen og kvinner danset rundt bålet. Dette var bare noen få dager før den globale covid-pandemien satte inn for fullt, og gatene ble tømt for folk.

Jeg befant meg midt i samtalene rundt feminicidios og kjønnskamp i Mexico våren 2020, som på dette tidspunktet hadde spredte seg vidt i befolkningen og langt utover den feministiske og transfeministiske bevegelsen. Så kom pandemien, og bevegelsen som hadde oppnådd et fornyet momentum i Mexico avtok brått. Lorena Wolffer, meksikansk kunstner og feministisk aktivist, fortalte meg i et intervju, at: ‘Mars 2020 var det siste øyeblikket av feministisk kamp i all sin kraft, da vi endelig hadde klart å sette det som skjer i dette landet i senter av den nasjonale samtalen. Og dette varte i nøyaktig én uke, før krisen var en annen. Pandemien kom og oppløste den.’

Lorena fortalte meg videre om en gruppe kvinnelige studenter som hadde okkupert instituttet for filosofi og litteratur ved UNAM (Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México). Jeg bestemte meg for å oppsøke dem, og etter å ha hengt rundt en stund på utsiden av det barrikaderte inngangspartiet, ble jeg sluppet inn av en ung kvinne som hadde vært ute og handlet mat. Veggene i det tomme universitetsbygget var nedsprayet av graffiti, og jeg ble møtt av ti-tolv kvinner i starten av tjueårene som anonymt ville fortelle meg om bakgrunnen for okkuperingen av instituttet og bevegelsen de hadde startet. Kvinnene hadde tatt over bygget og bodd der i nesten ti måneder da jeg møtte dem, for å protestere mot kjønnsbasert vold på universitetet. Daglig, sendte de sendte en av dem ut for å handle mat og andre nødvendigheter, og ellers barrikaderte de seg inne i bygningen. Undervisningen hadde for lengst stoppet opp.

“Hvordan kunne all den seksualiserte volden fortsette å skje inne på universitetets område, uten at universitetets lederskap gjorde noe? Sanksjonene deres var ikke nok og prosedyrene deres var mangelfulle, så vi bestemte oss for å streike for å protestere mot alt dette. (…) Vi tok over instituttet, approprierte bygningen, og ga rommene en ny verdi. Fra å være et sted som var voldelig og utrygt for oss i tiden vi hadde undervisning, har dette nå blitt et trygt og godt sted for oss å være.”

Intervjuet med de unge anonyme feministene ble del av det som etterhvert utviklet seg til et essayistisk filmprosjekt, med utdrag fra samtaler og møter tatt opp over flere år i Mexico. Prosjektet omhandlet medias medvirkning til systemisk vold i en meksikansk kontekst, og undersøkte hvordan medieaktivister, uavhengige journalister og politisk engasjerte kunstnere jobbet for å motarbeide normaliseringen av volden. Iløpet av årene jeg jobbet med undersøkelsen, dreide materialet og samtalene seg mer og mer over til kjønnskampens (gjen-)oppblomstring i Mexico.

Prosjektet startet opprinnelig som research til en artikkel etter forsvinningene av 43 studenter fra Escuela Normal Rural de Ayotzinapa, i delstaten Guerrero i Mexico i september 2014. Studentene hadde vært på vei til Mexico City i busser og til en minnesmarkering for studentmassakeren som skjedde på Tlatelolco-plassen i 1968, da bussene med studentene ble angrepet på ulike steder i byen Iguala. Det tragiske utfallet av natten var at seks mennesker ble funnet døde, 40 personer såret og 43 studenter var forsvunnet. Motstridende fortellinger om hva som skjedde den natten i Iguala sirkulerte umiddelbart, og selv om ulike detaljer har blitt avdekket iløpet av årene, er saken fortsatt uløst og har blitt del av et nasjonalt traume.

Jeg reiste med et journaliststipend fra Fritt Ord til Mexico i 2015, for å undersøke regjeringens fortelling om hva som hadde skjedd den natten studentene forsvant, også kjent som den såkalte ‘historiske sannheten’ (la verdad historica). Prosjektet utviklet seg fra intervjuer og research til en artikkel, til å bli en bredere undersøkelse som spant fra mediedekningen rundt de 43 studentene og til dominerende medias medvirkning til å spre frykt og desensitivisere vold i en meksikansk kontekst, og til medieaktivister og uavhengige journalisters motsvar. Iløpet av perioden 2015-2022 gjorde jeg intervjuer og samtaler, dokumenterte reiser, og samlet inn dokumentasjon fra filmer og annet uavhengig medieamateriale som diskuterte forsvinningene, og relaterte hendelser.

For å oppsummere prosjektet, inviterte jeg våren 2022 noen av nøkkelpersonene jeg hadde snakket med iløpet av årene til en visning av materialet og til en avsluttende kollektiv dialog: en gruppe medie-aktivister, journalister, feminister og kunstnere. Vi møttes i Centro Cultural Universitario de Tlatelolco i Mexico by, og sammen så vi utdrag fra filmer og intervjuer. Vi snakket om bildene vi så, og diskuterte hvilke strategier vi som jobber med bilder, film og diskursive prosjekter kan ta i bruk for å motvirke feedback-loopen av vold i en meksikansk kontekst, og videre i en global digital sammenheng. Dette ble det sentrale motivet i det essayistiske filmprosjektet med tittelen Images [and Talking Back to Them], og som ble vist i 2023 på Kunstnernes hus i Oslo, og i 2024/25 på Laboratorio Arte Alameda i Mexico City.

Den meksikanske filosofen, poeten og transfeministen Sayak Valencia skrev i boken Gore Capitalism (eng. 2018) blant annet om medias aktive rolle i en feedback loop av systemisk vold i Mexico. Hun beskriver hvordan mediene forbereder tilskuerne på voldens nærvær, noe som gjør at det stadig blir vanskeligere å skille mellom virkelighet og fiksjon, hvilket bidrar til en ukritisk og passiv holdning i befolkningen. Det Valencia kaller for «gore-praksiser» normaliseres gjennom mediene, og bidrar til “la normalization de la muerte.”

Sayak Valencia var en av bidragsyterne til den kollektive samtalen på Tlatelolco-senteret, og i en diskusjon rundt montasjens funksjon i dagens mangefasetterte mediabilde, reflekterte hun rundt hvordan den konstante insisteringen på umiddelbarhet i vår digitale virkelighet jobber for å tilsløre, og også fjerne, minnene våre:

«... Dominerende medias montasjer handler om å fjerne våre kollektive minner ved å skape superlineære fortellinger. Sosiale medier gjør det samme, de fjerner minnene våre, ved å skape øyeblikk og øyeblikk og øyeblikk… gjennom en overproduksjon av bilder.»

«... når du først har blitt dratt inn i et bilde kan du ikke slutte å se på det, men i virkeligheten er det det motsatte som skjer: den digitale kapitalismen jobber for at vi skal slutte å se — for å sørge for at vi ikke har en aktiv minnesproduksjon. For hadde vi hatt det, ville vi alle nå vært ute i gatene.»

Tilbake til tweeten fra @delia som oppfordret folk til å fylle emneknaggen med Ingrid Escamilla Vargas sitt full navn, overkjøre algoritmene, og slik bygge et digitalt arkiv som motarbeidet tabloidpressens overeksponering av misogynistisk vold. Bevegelsen hadde en helt reell funksjon, og i kjølvannet av hendelsen, protestene, og kanskje også denne bevegelsen, ble det gjort en tilføring i meksikansk straffelov som fikk tilnavnet Ingrids lov. Denne loven rammer personer, inkludert offentlige tjenestemenn, som «uberettiget sprer, avslører, publiserer, distribuerer, fotograferer, filmer, reproduserer, markedsfører, tilbyr, bytter til eller fra seg, bilder, videoer, lydopptak eller dokumenter fra åstedet».

Dette kan anses som en viktig seier for en bevegelse som #IngridEscamillaVargas, men samtidig nevner organisasjonen Articulo 19, en internasjonal organisasjon nedsatt for å beskytte journalister, at loven er formulert slik at den også har en bakside. Loven kan føre til at informasjon tilbakeholdes, og i et land som Mexico der 9 ut av 10 kriminalsaker opplever straffefrihet, har det nettopp ofte vært pressen som har bidratt til at saker har kommet fram i lyset og blitt etterforsket.

Dagens digitale virkelighet gjorde bevegelsen #IngridEscamillaVargas og #JusticiaParaIngrid internasjonal og ga en ny dimensjon til motstanden mot misogynistisk vold og normaliseringen av den, men hva vil det si å arkivere en bevegelse som fant stede i en digital virkelighet og lage en analog fotobok som #Ingrid?

Den analoge distansen til media som sirkulerte bildene av blomsterenger og solnedganger gjør fotoboken #Ingrid til en form for arkivering av en digital strategi. Boken tar bevegelsen tilbake til en ikke-digital virkelighet, away from the keyboard (AFK, som Legacy Russel beskriver i boken Glitch Feminism), og idet man browser gjennom boken oppstår det en kobling til det digitale og #IngridEscamillaVargas. Og slik rettes kanskje det bruddet opp som har oppstått mellom ‘spammen’ og dens manglende forbindelse til et opphavet, og gjør boken til et lite bidrag til å motvirke den digitale kapitalismens arbeid med å fjerne våre kollektive minner i en digital virkelighet, som Valencia nevner.

Det er også umulig å tenke rundt digital distribusjon av bilder og vold i dag, uten å nevne det vi har vært vitner til i Gaza siden oktober 2023. I over to og et halvt år (og det fortsetter), har mange av oss, avhengig av personlige preferanser og påfølgende algoritmer, daglig vært avstandsvitner til digitale montasjer i sosiale media som blant annet har inneholdt grafiske bilder av ofre for umenneskelige krigsforbrytelser på Gaza—et live-streamet folkemord. Blant disse bildene og informasjonen som har blitt delt har vi også fått essensiell informasjon og vitnesbyrd— resultat av borgerjournalistikk fra et område som i lange perioder har vært stengt for internasjonal presse— i en krig som også handler om informasjonen som deles og ikke deles, og der journalister er aktive mål. Og nettopp her tenker jeg at en selektiv arkivering av bildene vi har observert og vitnesbyrdene vi har hørt kan bli avgjørende i videre kamp mot politisk amnesi og mot straffefriheten for de som utøver disse krigsforbrytelsene. Hvilke bilder vi velger å beholde og hvilke etiske retningslinjer vi velger å følge blir avgjørende for at verdigheten til ofrene blir ivaretatt inn i framtiden, samtidig som de digitale strategiene til journalister og aktivister som fortsatt formidler livsnødvendig informasjon fra Gaza må opprettholdes, både i sanntid og videre. Dette, så det viktige arbeidet til Bisan Owda og andre ikke ties og når oss— med bilder og vitnesbyrd som bidrar til at et kollektivt minne blir opprettholdt og at vi ikke slutter å gå ut i gatene.

The essay is based on a lecture and a close reading of the photobook #Ingrid by Zoé Aubry, presented at the Oslo Fotobokfestival at Munchmuseet in autumn 2024. The festival was curated by Marte Aas and Line Bøhmer Løkken.

Nina Strand 02/03/2026 Nina Strand 02/03/2026

DANH VÔ

There’s something about this image and my relationship with it, from a photographic and representational point of view, but also in the sense of reproduction, that really fascinates me. It is a photograph of photographs, printed as a photogravure, which has then been digitised, and I view it through my computer screen. Three figures, three photographs on the wall. Multiple picture planes, intentions and techniques, all operating in tandem. I adopt the same position as the young men in the image, almost as if I am standing behind them, facing the same direction, becoming a part of their group. I feel invited into the scene, like a safe and benign presence. On the other hand, I am isolated from them entirely. I feel the weight of cultural difference between Carrier and these young men, the impossibility of touch, as well as the vast gulf of years and geographies.

Danh Võ, *Archive of Dr. Joseph M. Carrier 1962-1973*, 2010.

Afterimage by Lillian Wilkie:

This is the photograph I look at perhaps more than any other. Or rather, I see it multiple times a day, but perhaps I don’t always look at it so well. I didn't really know very much about Danh Võ when I went to see his show Danh Võ: Untitled at South London Gallery in 2019. I’d recently been with the photographer Jason Evans, who had loved it and encouraged me to go. This series really stayed with me, and when a little while later I happened to buy a new computer, and was wondering what to use as a desktop image, this one came to mind. All these years—and a second computer—later, I still have it. Now, it's just so part of the architecture of my workspace, and typically scattered with folder icons and screenshot thumbnails. It’s become the furniture, in a way. Considering it for Afterimage has forced it back into the foreground, and given me the opportunity to kind of fall in love with it again.

Danh Võ is not known as a photographer, although photographs are very functional in his practice. He’s more widely known for installation, sculptural and object-based works, reappropriating or co-authoring the work with others. He was born in South Vietnam during the American war, but his family escaped when he was about four, on a handmade boat. They were picked up by a Danish container ship, and Vo ended up growing up in Denmark.

The photograph is from a series called Archive of Dr. Joseph M. Carrier 1962–1973. Carrier was an American anthropologist, counterinsurgency specialist and closeted homosexual who was stationed in Vietnam from 1962–1973. His black-and-white photographs depict young Vietnamese men and boys in everyday moments of intimacy, within a culture where non-sexual, physical affection between men was much more normalised and accepted. Carrier had come from a very conservative American culture where such liberated tenderness felt impossible. These behaviors and gestures moved him, and perhaps produced a sense of longing or yearning, quietly mourning the lack of such tenderness in the place he grew up.

Carrier never showed these photographs to anybody until he met Võ. Apparently, he just came up to Võ after a talk the artist had given in LA, and told him about his experiences in Vietnam around the time of Võ’s birth. They developed a friendship, and even visited Vietnam together, leading Carrier to show Võ these photographs, and eventually giving him permission to make work with them. Võ was in touch with a master printer in Denmark who was reviving a historical photographic etching process, and Võ eventually worked with him to print a selection of Carrier’s images as photogravures.

So much is concealed in this image. We can never be sure what exhibition these young men, or boys, are visiting. Their ages are ambiguous. One, in the white shirt, could be smiling, but it could be a grimace. The contrasting tones of the two central figures’ shirts contributes to the image’s brilliance; our eyes dance between the two shirted backs, the cotton crisp and cool-seeming, and down to their interlocked hands. You notice that they are holding hands in quite an unusual way, with the figure on the right grasping two outstretched fingers of his white-shirted friend. Who knows, maybe this kind of configuration is more normal than I realise.

Maybe the image reminds me of all the ways that cultural difference can manifest, from small gestures and inflections, to the ways homosexuality can be deeply problematised, criminalised and brutalised. It also makes me think about the significance of photography to the war in Vietnam, and the ways in which it both challenged and reinforced dominant narratives. Whilst much photography from Vietnam ultimately held up a mirror to the American psyche, I also think about the broader use of photography as an anthropological tool, and its colonial underpinnings.

I also just really love photogravure, it’s so romantic, so alluring, so rich and deep. I love Jack Davison’s portrait work with this technique. But when used to render street photographs it gives the work a really cinematic quality, they feel like film stills. There's something about this series that reminds me a lot of the essay films of Chris Marker, and the cinema of Alain Resnais, a decade before. There’s a stylisation and poise, a real sensitivity to silhouette and the form of the body. The texture of skin against wood, water and masonry. And the implication of the viewer in the scene, the sense of quiet complicity. I can’t help but speculate if Carrier had watched something like Hiroshima Mon Amour or Last Year At Marienbad in the years before he left for Vietnam.

Nina Strand 22/02/2026 Nina Strand 22/02/2026

PHIL NOBLE

When I was a little girl, I cut out pictures of the Monaco sisters and Diana and Sarah. I collected old magazines from the neighbors and organized the clippings into folders. The weddings were the highlights; the princesses were so beautiful, I admired them deeply; the royal gowns with their impossibly long trains were really cumbersome to cut out, and I would sit for hours. The men, however, I observed with a sense of wonder. They were utterly uninteresting—so gray and charmless—almost paltry. I genuinely wondered how it could possibly add up. Nine years old, in my childhood bedroom in Sigdal, I knew little about the intricate connections between power, money, and gender.

The image of Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor, after being arrested on suspicion of abuse of office with regard to his involvement in the sordid and depraved world of Epstein, becomes the image he will be remembered for. I have looked at this image over and over. It is a striking shot, but unlike the kind we are used to. It is an image that gives us what we want; it satisfies us.

Afterimage by Hilde Honerud:
(English text followed by the Norwegian original.)

This image will be his legacy.

The contrasts in the image are stark: we peer into a luxury car with white leather seats, a driver and a guard (it seems), while the flash pierces the blood vessels of his skull, laying him bare. The way he holds his hands—withered, desperate—and his gaze—all of it makes us think of a deathbed. We see the fall, and we see that he sees that he has fallen; he stares into the abyss.

It has a distinctly paparazzi style, yet, as far as I understand, it was taken by a serious press photographer (Phil Noble). It is not, of course, the absence of other images from an exceptional event—the arrest of a high-ranking royal—that makes this image stand out. When I look at the images the photographer took just before and after, the others appear far less dramatic.

But this image tells the story we long for. A moment that exposes a life (an institution? a social class?) void of self-awareness, in disbelief. The recognition of a fall, of guilt—it is an image that, through its unequivocal testimony of downfall, also, in a strange way, contains the possibility of remorse and forgiveness. We just love it. It is an image that satisfies us, in which we see that he understands his fall—he and all that he represents. Whether the image truly shows us what we will eventually get, is another matter.

I have no doubt, however, that this image will endure as Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor’s legacy.

Dette bildet er hans legacy.

Da jeg var liten klippet jeg ut bilder av Monaco-søstrene og Diana og Sarah. Jeg fikk gamle ukeblader fra naboene, og organiserte utklippene i mapper. Høydepunktene var bryllupene, prinsessene var så vakre, jeg beundret dem dypt og inderlig, og kjolene med de enorme slepene, de var kronglete å klippe ut, jeg satt i timevis. Jeg registrerte derimot mennene med undring. De var helt uinteressante, så grå og sjarmløse, begredelige, og jeg lurte virkelig på hvordan dette kunne henge sammen. Ni år gammel på barnerommet i Sigdal visste jeg lite om makt, penger og kjønn.

Bildet av Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor, i baksetet av en bil etter å ha blitt arrestert for mistanke om misbruk av embetet og hans involvering i Epsteins usle og fordervede verden, blir et bilde han vil bli husket gjennom. Jeg har sett og sett på dette bildet. Det er et blinkskudd, men annerledes enn det vi er vant til. Det er et bilde som gir oss hva vi vil ha, det tilfredsstiller oss.

Vi ser inn i en luksusbil med hvite skinnseter, med det som framstår som sjåfør og vakt, og blitzen går rett inn til blodårene i hodeskallen, han er avkledd, motsetningene i bildet er slående. Måten han holder hendene, vissent, desperat, og blikket, alt dette får oss til å tenke på et dødsleie, vi ser fallet, og vi ser at han ser at han har falt, han stirrer inn i avgrunnen.

Det er i en tydelig paparazzistil, men likevel så vidt jeg forstår av en seriøs pressefotograf (Phil Noble). Det er naturligvis ikke mangelen av andre bilder fra en eksepsjonell hendelse (arrestasjonen av en høytstående kongelig) som får bildet til å skille seg ut. Når jeg ser på bilder fotografen tok like før og etter, ser de andre bildene langt mindre dramatiske ut.

Men dette er et bilde som forteller en fortelling vi søker. Et øyeblikk som blottlegger et liv (en institusjon? et samfunnslag?) uten selvinnsikt, i vantro.

Erkjennelsen av et fall, skyld, det er et bilde som også gjennom sin utvetydige bevitnelse av undergang på en underlig måte også rommer potensialet for anger og tilgivelse. Vi elsker det. Det er et bilde som tilfredsstiller oss, der vi ser at han ser fallet, han og alt han representerer. Om bildet egentlig viser oss hva vi kommer til å få, er noe annet.

Men at bildet vil bli stående som Andrew Mountbatten-Windsors legacy, det er jeg ikke i tvil om.

Nina Strand 16/02/2026 Nina Strand 16/02/2026

TOM SANDBERG

Afterimage by Nina Strand:

After looking through the twenty issues of the journal Objektiv, I notice that the images that speak the loudest to me, and about which I’ve continued to think long after the issue went to print, all stem back to one singular photograph, a sort of fulcrum image. Asked about his work, the late Robert Frank said: “When people look at my pictures, I want them to feel the way they do when they want to read a poem twice.” It is a photograph by Tom Sandberg, taken in the nineties. When I first saw this image in my early twenties, printed on a postcard sent to me by a friend, it seemed to sum up my interest in photography, both as a practitioner and as a writer. The black-and-white photograph depicts a man walking in the rain, taken through a window. He is blurry; the focus is on the raindrops. Before I knew anything about the photographer, the image simultaneously evoked both loneliness and authority; his oblivion to the rain was something that I later discovered says a lot about Sandberg. He was drawn to the darkness, and this darkness and longing are in the photograph.

He lived with a curiosity and a restlessness to understand the world he inhabited, a world that was black and white in his vision. He worked continuously throughout his life because, as he put it in our interview with him in our very first issue: “Without the pictures, things would not have gone well for me.” Some situations simply had to pass through the camera.

The moment he learned that he had incurable cancer in the late fall of 2013, he started working on what he knew would be his final exhibition, Photographs, at OSL Contemporary. The exhibition presents works from his forty-year career—pieces shown all over the world, some new—and it is difficult not to ascribe a particular symbolism to them, especially the photograph from January this year of two airplane fuselages meeting. The exhibition also includes an early work from his student days at Trent Polytechnic in England: a diptych of a boy with a tennis racket. It is an artistic exercise. The boy is practising, and the young photographer Tom Sandberg is practising. He insisted on completing it despite his failing health. Photography was, as he himself said, the only thing he knew how to do, and the 16 black-and-white photographs stood as a powerful testament. He selected the images with great care; they were reprinted and refined until the very end. In the years before he passed, it might have seemed as if he was chasing the dark, but he himself said he was in control. And with that exhibition, he ensured that it is the photographs we will remember.

Four days before his passing, he made one last adjustment to a photograph of a plane in the clouds. We don’t know where we end up when we die. But when we think of Tom, maybe we can picture him, camera in hand, on a plane making lasting vapour trails in the sky.

See the retrospective with Sandberg, Vibrant World, at Henie Onstad until March 1. Afterimage is an ekphrastic series exploring that one image you see when you close your eyes—the one that lingers in your mind. We invite different people to reflect on an image they can't shake. The column began during our time publishing the journal Objektiv and continues today under Objektiv Press. This one is drawn from a text in Objektiv #11 and a chapter in the first essay in our series, Perpetual Photographs, both written by Strand.

Nina Strand 09/02/2026 Nina Strand 09/02/2026

ESTHER HIEN

I was thinking again this morning about that image and the feeling it gave me: I felt at peace. In the village, I feel good, serene, without stress. Many people from the city are surprised that I love being in the village so much. The journey is long: a ten-hour trip, eight hours by bus and then two hours on the back of my cousin’s motorcycle.

Once there, everything is very calm, almost meditative. There is little or no network coverage, which allows me to disconnect and does me a lot of good. When it is time for me to leave, I always feel a kind of melancholy and a heaviness in my heart. Even though I know I will return a few weeks later, it is always difficult for me to leave this life and my family.

Afterimage by Esther Hien:

(English text followed by the French original.)

In your email, you asked me what the first image that comes to mind is when I close my eyes. I closed my eyes and was immediately transported to my father’s village in Burkina Faso. It is a small village called Malba, in the south-western region. I saw the banco house where I sleep and its patio. We are fortunate to have houses built with solid materials, as people say there.

The village is organized like a square. On each side of the square, there is a house: my cousin with his wife and children, my aunt, and the two houses built by my father. At the time when my grandparents were still alive, there were only huts—traditional houses made of earth and reinforced with cow dung. As a child, I was lucky enough to know my grandmother and her hut. Now, their graves are in the middle of the courtyard. Everyone sits on them; children often fall asleep on them in the evening. For us, this is a kind of blessing. Even though they are no longer here, they remain very present and watch over us.

I saw myself at six in the morning, stretching in front of my grandparents’ grave, almost like a form of greeting. In the village, people wake up very early, often to the sound of the rooster crowing. No one uses an alarm clock. At that moment—during that moment when I closed my eyes—I felt that it was not simply my mind that was traveling, but my soul.

These mornings are filled with sounds: the sound of pestles as, through the strength of their arms, women grind condiments into a fine powder in preparation for the meal; the comings and goings of motorcycles; children playing football; birds singing. Described like this, the village might seem as noisy as the city, and yet, paradoxically, it is calm.

I saw myself on those mornings when chickens run outside clucking, followed by their chicks after a night in the henhouse. The goats, too, are released and wander freely around the compound. My aunt, with her traditional basket balanced on her head, goes to gather leaves in the bush. She returns in the early afternoon, the basket filled with moringa and sorrel leaves. During the rainy season, greenery covers the paths traced by people; the sky is blue, the earth is ochre, sometimes even red. These mornings are slow, because in the village everything is much slower. Life is calmer, yet at dawn you can see people becoming active. Women, basins balanced on their heads, go to the water pump if they are among the luckier ones, or to the marsh for those who follow more traditional ways. They talk, laugh, and greet us as they pass through the house. In the village, the concept of gates or fences does not exist.

These mornings are filled with sounds: women preparing food, the sound of women pounding, the various noises of daily life, some people moving around by motorcycle. But it is not like in the city, where everything is loud and where one must constantly be on alert. These sounds are familiar, known, and not unsettling. It is truly this feeling of serenity that I wanted to share.

En français: Dans ton mail, tu me demandais quelle était la première image qui me venait à l’esprit quand je ferme les yeux. J’ai fermé les yeux et j'ai été tout de suite transportée au village de mon père, au Burkina Faso. C'est un petit village qui s'appelle Malba, dans la région du sud-ouest. J’ai vu la maison en banco dans laquelle je dors et son patio. Nous avons la chance d'avoir des maisons construites en dur, comme on le dit là-bas. Le village est organisé comme un carré. Sur chaque côté du carré, il y a une maison : mon cousin avec sa femme et ses enfants, ma tante, les deux maisons construites par mon père. A l’époque ou mes grands-parents étaient encore vivants, il n’y avait que des cases, maisons traditionnelles construites en terre et renforcées avec de la bouse de vache. J’ai eu la chance petite, de connaître ma grand-mère et sa case. Maintenant, leurs tombes est au milieu de la cour. Tout le monde s'assoit dessus, les enfants s’endorment souvent dessus le soir. Chez nous, c’est comme une bénédiction. Même s'ils ne sont plus là, ils restent très présents et veillent sur nous.

Je me suis vue à 6 heures du matin, m’étirer en face de la tombe de mes grands-parents, un peu à la manière d’une salutation. Au village, on se réveille très tôt et souvent grâce au chant du coq. Personne n'utilise de réveil. A ce moment-là, ce moment durant lequel je ferme les yeux, j’ai senti que ce n’était pas simplement mon esprit qui voyageait, mais mon âme.

Ces matins sont remplis de sons : le bruit pilons qui à la force des bras des femmes réduisent les condiments en fine poudre en vue de la préparation du repas. Les va et vient des motos, les enfants qui jouent au football, le chant des oiseaux. Décrit comme cela, le village semble être aussi bruyant que la ville et paradoxalement, c’est d’un calme !

Je me suis vue lors de ces matins où les poules courent dehors en caquetant suivies de leurs poussins après une nuit dans leur poulailler. Les chèvres, elles aussi sont libérées et se promènent librement autour de la concession. Ma tante, son panier traditionnel sur la tête, part chercher des feuilles dans la brousse. Elle reviendra en début d’après-midi, le panier chargé de feuilles de moringa, d’oseille. En saison des pluies, la verdure recouvre les routes tracées par les hommes, le ciel est bleu, la terre est ocre voire rouge. Ces matins sont lents, parce qu'au village, tout est beaucoup plus lent. La vie est plus calme, mais l’on voit à l’aurore les gens s'activer. Les femmes, bassines sur la tête s’en vont à la pompe pour les plus chanceuses ou au marigot pour les plus traditionnelles. Elles discutent, rient et nous saluent lorsqu’elles traversent la maison. Au village, le concept de grille, de barrière, n’existe pas.

Je repensais ce matin à cette image et à la sensation qu’elle me procurait : j'étais apaisée. Au village, je me sens bien, sereine, sans stress. Beaucoup de personnes de la ville sont étonnées que j’aime tant être au village. La traversée est longue. C'est un voyage de 10 heures dont huit en bus puis deux heures à l’arrière de la moto de mon cousin.

Quand on est là, c'est très calme, presque méditatif. Il y a peu ou pas de réseau, ce qui me permet de me déconnecter et me fait du bien. Lorsque le moment est venu pour moi de repartir, je ressens toujours une forme de mélancholie et une sensation de cœur lourd. Pourtant, je sais que je vais y retourner quelques semaines après mais c’est toujours difficile pour moi de quitter cette vie et ma famille.

Ces matins sont remplis de sons : les femmes qui préparent, le bruit des femmes qui pilent, les différents sons de la vie quotidienne, certaines personnes se déplacent à moto. Mais ce n’est pas comme en ville, où tout est bruyant et où l’on doit être constamment alerte. Les bruits sont connus, familiers, et n’inquiètent pas. C’est vraiment cette sensation de sérénité que je voulais partager.

Nina Strand 02/02/2026 Nina Strand 02/02/2026

SANLÉ SORY

Our work grew out of an ongoing research into the image, approached as a space for exploring Black and African visual cultures. Since 2010, we have been collecting photographs, videos, and other visual materials, guided by the intuition that images can function not only as documents, but as tools for knowledge, reflection, and transmission.

Afterimage by Aurélia Niat Toundji & Salwat Idi:

(English text followed by the French original.)

As this initial research resonated with a wider audience, we chose to structure and deepen our approach. In 2018, this process expanded into publishing, as a way of sharing our research and giving editorial form to our commitment to archives and visual thinking.

We are Aurélia Niat Toundji and Salwat Idi, founders of manufactoriel, a research studio working across four interconnected fields: research, publishing, design, and transmission. Our practice includes physical and digital archiving projects, critical research, collaborations with cultural institutions and brands, and public engagement through workshops, commissions, and curatorial projects.

Through our editorial platform, cahiers manufactoriel, we explore contemporary African and Black visual cultures, art, and style from a critical perspective. We approach research as an artistic process, where the relationship between content, the materiality of the book, and its spatial form is central. Publishing becomes a site for creation, experimentation, and critical inquiry.

At the core of our practice is the belief that knowledge can be conveyed through images — a form of visual epistemology.

In many African societies, knowledge has long been transmitted through orality, metaphor, and storytelling, as well as through visual and symbolic forms embedded in cultural practices. Our work continues this lineage by connecting visual research, symbolic thought, and knowledge production, in order to explore alternative ways of understanding and sharing ideas.

While building our curatorial database, we encountered numerous challenges: fragmented sources, vanished websites, inaccessible archives. These obstacles strengthened our commitment to collecting, preserving, and materializing images, in order to safeguard a tangible and lasting visual memory.

One emblematic example of this approach is a studio portrait taken by Sanlé Sory in Mali in the 1980s. The photograph shows two young men seated side by side. One wears a traditional boubou and holds a ngoni, an emblematic West African string instrument; the other adopts a hip-hop aesthetic, striking a b-boy pose while holding a boombox — a direct dialogue between local traditions and global influences.

The image speaks to musical transmission, dress, and the coexistence of tradition and modernity. It also opens onto broader sociological questions: how images make cultural and structural tensions visible, and how they allow us to understand ways of being, self-representation, and belonging.

Through this photograph, Mali Djeli (1984) by Sanlé Sory, we reflect on the image’s capacity to produce meaning around society, identity, style, and the body. It shows how cultural practices circulate and transform, shaping both individual and collective identities, while revealing generational differences and overlapping cultural temporalities.

In bookshops, libraries, and cultural institutions, we repeatedly encountered a lack of literature on contemporary African art and the visual cultures of the diaspora. This absence led us to produce this knowledge ourselves.

Our work engages with these visual cultures by affirming the image as a tool for critical and artistic research. Since 2018, we have been publishing books drawn from archival research, documenting, preserving, and valuing these images, so that visual and cultural memory remains accessible and continues to inspire new forms of research and creation.

En français: Notre travail est né d’une recherche autour de l’image, envisagée comme un champ d’exploration de la culture visuelle noire et africaine. Dès 2010, nous avons commencé à rassembler des photographies, des vidéos et différents supports visuels, portées par l’intuition que l’image pouvait constituer en elle-même un outil de connaissance, de réflexion et de transmission.

Face à l’écho rencontré par cette première phase de recherche, nous avons choisi de structurer cette démarche afin d’en approfondir les enjeux. En 2018, cette dynamique s’est prolongée par la volonté de publier le fruit de nos recherches et de donner une forme éditoriale à notre engagement pour l’archive et la pensée visuelle.

Nous sommes Aurélia Niat Toundji et Salwat Idi, et nous dirigeons manufactoriel, un bureau de recherche dont la pratique s’articule autour de quatre axes : la recherche, la publication, le design et la transmission. Nous développons des projets d’archivage physique et numérique, des recherches critiques, des collaborations avec des institutions culturelles et des marques, et activons notre travail à travers des ateliers, des commandes et des projets curatoriaux.

À travers notre plateforme éditoriale, cahiers manufactoriel, nous proposons une approche critique de la culture visuelle contemporaine africaine et noire, de l’art et du style. Nous concevons la recherche comme un processus artistique et poïétique, dans lequel le dialogue entre le contenu, la matérialité et la spatialité du livre est central. L’édition devient ainsi un espace de création, d’expérimentation et de pensée critique.

Notre démarche repose sur le constat que la connaissance peut se transmettre par l’image; ce que nous abordons comme une forme d’épistémologie visuelle.

Dans de nombreuses sociétés africaines, le savoir se transmet par l’oralité, la métaphore et la parabole, mais aussi par des formes visuelles et symboliques profondément ancrées dans les pratiques culturelles. Notre démarche s’inscrit dans cette continuité en articulant recherche visuelle, pensée symbolique et production de connaissances, afin d’explorer d’autres modes de compréhension et de transmission des idées.

Dans la constitution de notre base de données curatoriale, nous avons été confrontées à de nombreuses limites : sources fragmentaires, sites Internet disparus, archives inaccessibles. Ces obstacles ont renforcé notre volonté de collecter, conserver et matérialiser les images, afin de préserver une mémoire visuelle tangible et durable.

Un exemple emblématique de cette démarche est un portrait studio réalisé par Sanlé Sory au Mali dans les années 1980. La photographie représente deux jeunes hommes assis côte à côte : l’un, vêtu d’un boubou traditionnel, tient un ngoni, instrument à cordes emblématique d’Afrique de l’Ouest ; l’autre adopte une esthétique hip-hop, affirmant une posture de b-boy et tenant un boombox, dans un dialogue direct avec les traditions locales.

Cette image met en lumière la transmission musicale, les styles vestimentaires et la coexistence entre tradition et modernité. Elle interroge également des dimensions sociologiques plus larges : la manière dont l’image rend visibles des tensions culturelles et structurelles, et comment elle permet d’appréhender des façons d’être, de se représenter et de se situer dans le monde.

À travers cette photographie, Mali Djeli (1984) de Sanlé Sory, nous interrogeons la capacité de l’image à produire du sens autour de la société, des identités, du style et de la corporéité. Elle montre comment des pratiques culturelles circulent, se transforment et participent à la construction d’identités individuelles et collectives, tout en révélant des différences générationnelles et des temporalités culturelles multiples.

En fréquentant librairies, bibliothèques et institutions culturelles, nous avons constaté le manque de littérature sur l’art africain contemporain et les cultures visuelles de la diaspora. Cette absence nous a poussés à produire nous-mêmes ces savoirs.

Notre travail explore ces cultures visuelles en affirmant l’image comme outil de recherche critique et artistique. À partir des archives, nous éditons depuis 2018 des livres pour documenter, conserver et valoriser ces images, afin que la mémoire visuelle et culturelle reste accessible et continue d’inspirer de nouvelles recherches et créations.

Afterimage is an ekphrastic series exploring that one image you see when you close your eyes — the one that lingers in your mind. We invite different people to reflect on an image they can't shake. The column began during our time publishing the journal Objektiv and continues today under Objektiv Press.

Nina Strand 28/01/2026 Nina Strand 28/01/2026

BJARNE BARE

Once upon a time some Western-oriented theorists spoke of Platform Capitalism.
We know what a platform is.
The difficult question: What is capitalism?
Many different answers have been formulated.
The most comprehensive and pertinent of all answers is the following:
Capitalism is an attempt to attain eternity, the only attempt that has ever succeeded.

Afterimage by Franco “Bifo” Berardi:

Abstraction, eternity, and despair
A personal introduction to the poetical world of Bjarne Bare:

What was expected to happen has happened already.
What will happen next is inscribed in the intimate texture of what has already happened.
What we have long feared would happen, has happened since the beginning of time.
But we were not aware of the extent and of the depth of the damage.
Now we are obliged to acknowledge the truth, because oxygen is starting to run low.
What we want is irrelevant. And also what we are is irrelevant, at this point.
“We” is no more, and I don’t feel so well this morning, because quantum computers may solve in minutes what could take today’s supercomputers millions of years to calculate.

Capital is abstraction from life: life turned into abstract value. Abstraction is not in time. Therefore it is eternal.

Nothing human has been eternal so far. However in the quantum dimension we have now managed to complete the most coveted mission since the dawn of time: abstraction is not in time.
The eternity of our artifact has been made possible at the price of the death of our irrelevant souls.

Technically speaking what you see is a “cryogenic stack”. Some engineers call it “the chandelier”.
It doesn't matter what it looks like. It may seem archaic because it is eternal.
It may seem futuristic because it is eternal.
It is eternal because it is timeless.

Eternal ice is melting, as you know, so ice is no longer eternal, because ice was material and all that is material melts in the timeless air of abstraction.
Indeed, the (true) eternity of capital entails the melting of (falsely) eternal glaciers and the rapid extinction of the biosphere. The biosphere is dying, and it is largely extinct, at this point.
Also, the termination of human animals is approaching. Everybody knows, more or less, but nobody is noticing.

Nevertheless, a polar bear is slowly moving through eternal ice, because Art is immortalizing dead things, like ice and bears.
And the market is immortalizing dead Art, which in turn implies the eternity of Art.

What was expected to happen has happened already.
Do you see human beings around?
You don't see human beings because they have been exterminated by the biblical infection.
Do you hear human voices in the surroundings?
You don’t hear human voices because they have been drowned out by white noise.

Lucy in the sky with diamonds is not human, of course.
She’s cryogenic. Timothy Leary started thinking about cryogenic eternity thirty-five years ago, while preparing to die.
The cremated remains of the LSD aficionado, along with those of Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry and 22 other people, were blasted into orbit from the Canary Islands along with a Spanish scientific satellite.
Each person's cremains, as they are called, are socked in a lipstick-sized capsule expected to circle Earth. The flight cost is: $4,800 per ashtronaut. The price is "comparable to most conventional funeral services," according to Celeste Inc., the Houston-based firm that contracted to have the ashes sent space-ward.
But wait, there's more: Celeste says that the cremains, each of which weighed 7 grams at launch, should make at least 8,600 orbits before reentering Earth's atmosphere in a second, consummate cremation.
"Space remains the domain of a few, the dream of many," Celeste Vice President Charles Chafer said in a statement.
The Earthview space flight, on the other hand, he says, offers "a final chance to become part of the universe, by being one with the universe." A sentiment with which Leary would, no doubt, agree.

Lucy in the sky with diamonds is the implementation of that old dream.
The Erscheinung of Ex-istenz. And the becoming nothing of the Erscheinung.

Roughly 90% of all modern-day semiconductor devices use material derived from the Czochralski method, also Czochralski technique or Czochralski process, a method of crystal growth used to obtain single crystals (monocrystals) of semiconductors (e.g. silicon, germanium, and gallium arsenide), metals (e.g. palladium, platinum, silver, gold), salts, and synthetic gemstones.

Lucy in the sky with diamonds is the crystallization obtained from this process.

Lucy is located in France, Euro-Q-Exa is located in Germany.

Will they meet at some point in the future?

What a stupid question.

Why should they meet?
They do not feel sexual attraction, even if Lucy is quite sexy. She is as sexy as a piece of ice.

You can see her flying over the eternal ice already melted or in the process of melting.

What used to be solid melted in the air, while what used to be living is turning dead, and what used to be abstract has taken over all life.

This is my approach to the poetics of a crystallized (lucid, sparkling, translucent) artist called Bjarne Bare whose works are (eternally) exposed in a gallery in the city of Oslo.

In addition to our weekly Afterimage column, we share this text written by Franco “Bifo” Berardi for the exhibition Latent Eclipse with Bjarne Bare, currently on view at OSL Contemporary.

Nina Strand 26/01/2026 Nina Strand 26/01/2026

JAMES VAN DER ZEE

There are many aspects of this photograph that draw me to it. I like to think about the process of looking. When I look at something, I follow my feelings. I want what I see to move me, usually in a layered way. I also want complexity, because it makes me want to look longer and reflect. When I looked at this picture again, I understood why I loved it so much—it resonates with my subject matter. Looking at it now, with my 45-year-old eyes, in a world burning in many ways, and with a deeper understanding of myself and my work, I realize that this photograph makes me feel safe. In a time when everything feels confusing, this photograph feels clear—like a statement. I feel devoted to it. I admire it. I feel included in it, and I feel protected by it, with a sense of safety.

Afterimage by Nydia Blas:

I think it’s my all-time favorite photograph. When I was asked about Afterimage, this came straight to my mind. It feels like it’s been in my head forever, but I probably became more familiar with it during graduate school in 2013. By chance, I realized that I had taken a photograph that kind of spoke back to this one, without realizing they were in conversation. That moment of connection is one of the reasons I’m drawn to photography in general: its ability to speak across generations and time, still remaining relevant. Everything we’ve ever seen is somewhere in our minds, and we never know when we might reference it, be reminded of it, or recall it creatively. That’s one of the things I find fascinating about photography. I’ve never exhibited this photo.

I’m from New York, and in 2016, while visiting Atlanta—where I now live—I was at the High Museum. I turned a corner and saw this photograph in a frame. It surprised me to encounter it in person after having seen it so many times on a screen. That was a beautiful moment. The image doesn’t change, but we do in relation to it. I have changed and grown since I first looked at it. Even my worldview and thoughts are constantly expanding. It’s interesting to think about time: the photograph was taken during an important, powerful, and moving period, yet we find ourselves in similar moments again.

When I think of James Van Der Zee, a photographer popular during the Harlem Renaissance, I appreciate how he created a record, or counter-narrative, to the stereotypes about Black people at the time. In his photographs, the subjects—most often Black Americans—and the locations and clothing (what I like to call costumes) serve as markers for other things, like status. The car functions as a prop and feels powerful because it takes up almost the entire frame. It cuts through, making the subjects important. They feel safe. The light is very soft, and the car door is open just enough to welcome me into that space. These people seem to be inviting the viewer into an important space.

Afterimage is an ekphrastic series about that one image you see when you close your eyes, the one still lingering in your mind. We invite different people to reflect on an image they can't shake. This column has been a part of Objektiv since our very first issue in 2010.

Nina Strand 19/01/2026 Nina Strand 19/01/2026

JEAN ROUCH

Afterimage by Tiago Bom:

Images from the film Les maîtres fous by the French filmmaker and anthropologist Jean Rouch have been on my mind recently. I find Rouch interesting because he started as a documentarian making anthropological films but later began making ethno-fiction. In Les maîtres fous, as far as I know this film is documentary, participants enter trance-like states in ritual performances in Ghana, where they dress as colonial authorities, mimicking their gestures and violence, while also channeling spirits. They sometimes imitate dogs—crawling, barking, and howling—and actual dogs appear in the ceremonies, adding to the chaotic, transgressive energy. The performances are a mix of possession, music, dance, and symbolic reenactment, creating a visceral exploration of power, oppression, and ancestral memory.

The images I am thinking about are very context-driven, as I am currently preparing to go on a small residency in São Tomé e Príncipe to shoot a film, curiously, in part about dogs.

Portuguese sources from the time state that it was an uninhabited archipelago, and that the Portuguese used it to grow exportable crops and as a testing ground and base for the Trans-Atlantic slave trade. As with any colonial enterprise at the time, it became, I think for centuries, one of the biggest producers of coffee and chocolate in the world.

The people who were sent there were mainly from Angola (another former Portuguese colony), and in smaller percentages from places like the Congo. I read somewhere that in Haiti there was a similar Central and West African population. Maybe that is why you find similar African syncretism, akin to voodoo, in São Tomé e Príncipe, much like in Haiti. Coincidentally, alongside Haiti—and I don’t know which came first—these were the only two places in the world where there were slave revolts that managed to take over and form their own communes.

São Tomé e Príncipe also has a unique cultural tradition called Tchiloli, a public theatrical performance combining music, dance, and drama, rooted in a 16th‑century Portuguese play about Charlemagne, adapted and creolized over the centuries. Performers wear colonial-style costumes and masks, creating a symbolic cultural tradition. It is kind of eerie: people who are descendants of slaves and colonized peoples putting on the white face, carrying the memory of a centuries-old ritual, metabolizing and transforming a tradition that started with their colonizers.

This performative aspect and the ritualized mimicry reminded me of Les maîtres fous. I’m not sure the conceptual depth translates in a still, but I haven’t been able to shake that film ever since I saw it.

Nina Strand 12/01/2026 Nina Strand 12/01/2026

SZILVESZTER MAKÓ

What is this? Is it a glimmer of hope we can spot in the series of photographs accompanying the interview with Rama Duwaji in The Cut? Shot by Szilveszter Makó, the portraits of the Syrian illustrator and animator, wife of the new Mayor Zohran Mamdani, referred to here as the ‘First Lady of New York City’, seem like small life boats floating in the dark sea of the States. They playfully evoke classic fashion photographs of the 1940s, as well as the Surrealist paintings of René Magritte. I love this one, with her standing barefoot, her shoes placed on one side and a painted sleeping cat on a bar stool on the other. Her posture, her firm gaze …

Afterimage by Nina Strand:.

Over the holidays, I read the text about photographer Donna Gottschalk by Hélène Giannecchini for the show Nous Autres at Le Bal, Paris. Gottschalk grew up in in Alphabet City, New York, in the 1950s, and Giannecchini reflects: 'The people she loved most lived on these streets, and most of them are long dead. And it’s the brutality of this city, of society as it is, the relentless poverty, everything that weighs on marginalized bodies, that killed them.' And today, all bodies that are not white male bodies seem in danger, like the woman with the last name Good, just killed by ICE in Minneapolis.

Over the past year, I have collaborated with two female photographers, Carol Newhouse and Carmen Winant, observing them creating double exposures, a technique Newhouse learned while living in a lesbian separatist community in the United States during the 1970s. They used photography as a tool to reinvent themselves. They had abandoned their families and everyday lives and built their own homes in the woods of Oregon. They were safe there. They were unsafe in the city. The houses are still standing, and I wonder if the women might feel tempted to move back there as they witness history grimly repeating itself for the queer community in the States.

Maybe we should all leave society? Or we could move to New York, where the powerful wheels of Mamdani and Duwaji are turning, there is hope. In the photo series, Duwaji’s confident gaze and half-smile bring a sense of sanity and control. Scrolling through her illustrations on her website gives even more, with the drawing of three fierce women of different races surrounded by flames. The one in the centre has her arm raised in a fighting pose as a text promises: 'Sooner or later, people will rise up against tyranny.’

Nina Strand 15/12/2025 Nina Strand 15/12/2025

CAROL NEWHOUSE & CARMEN WINANT

The mirrors in Double are hidden among the other works, aiming to include the viewer by having them unexpectedly catch sight of themselves, perhaps noticing something about who they are. For the artists, the mirrors also function as a material reference. There are many mirrors within the pictures from the old Ovulars that placing them on the outside creates a kind of double exposure—a doubling in itself.

As Carol points out in an email: ‘In that moment, it can feel as though the three of us—the viewer, Carmen and I—are held together in the same instant, captured in the same image. It’s instantaneous, like the click of a shutter or the glance of an eye. It is also intergenerational, echoing the passage of time.’ Carol sees this as an inclusive encounter that suggests movement and the potential for freedom and creativity: ‘To me, all of this describes the female gaze, which I could also call the feminist gaze.’

(…)

Carol shares a thought about how she never anticipated how her work in the 1970s—those ideas and images—would eventually find their way into the world. The footage and the creative process had never seemed as if it would last beyond the moment; the women hadn’t been thinking about the future, just doing what felt right at the time. Now, years later, people are still asking her what they were thinking when they made their work. The fact that it continues to resonate with so many is a surprising reminder of how far it has travelled and how deeply it has impacted others. It was serendipity that led Carmen to rediscover this work almost a decade ago, bringing it back into the light through her book and the several shows she’s curated with Carol. Their ongoing conversations around using photography as evidence led to this one-year workshop where together these two friends have created new narratives. As Carmen later writes, there is poetry in the fact that their pictures and stories have quite literally merged on celluloid.

The photographic works from the Ovulars explore the construction of histories, as well as the significance of the photographs themselves—images designed to challenge the existing power structures within the medium. The double exposures created by Carmen and Carol are part of this lineage, contributing to an ongoing feminist photographic movement. Their work not only reflects history but actively reshapes it.

This year has been an incredible one for Objektiv Press and our Afterimage series. As we wrap up 2025, we’ve been sharing excerpts from our books every Monday leading up to Christmas. We leave you with these words from Double by Carol Newhouse & Carmen Winant, Objektiv #30. We’ll return next year with more. Until then, we wish you moments of peace and connection.

Nina Strand 08/12/2025 Nina Strand 08/12/2025

MARTIN PARR

My autoportrait project has run over 40 years. The aim is to demonstrate the different ways in which you can have your portrait done in a studio or public space, as well as the different techniques photographers employ. The only reason I use myself as the subject is because I’m the one person who’s consistently there. Hanoi Studio took five black and white shots of me in different poses, and in one they gave me naff sunglasses. They then did a montage, printed in black and white, and hand-coloured.

I’m uninterested in how I look, as long as I’m presentable. I look in the mirror once a day – I have no choice, as I’ve got to comb my hair. I guess that’s interesting given I do fashion photography. I’m not interested in clothes, I just wear what’s comfortable. Socks with sandals is a good combination before it gets to the hottest part of the year. I guess you could call it my spring look …

I have had a wonderful life with photography. From North Korea, to a vicar’s garden party in Somerset, or shooting Mar del Plata beach in Argentina – what a privilege it has been to see the world and record my response. I had a funny one in Morecambe last summer. I was taking photos and this couple came up and said, “That’s a nice camera. What are you doing around here?” I replied, “I’m documenting Morecambe.” They said, “You mean like Martin Parr?” I said, “I am Martin Parr.” They were rather surprised.

I’ve been taking photos for almost 70 years, and in that time we’ve seen the amazing transformation from analogue film to the digital era, and I’ve got a lot older. We live in a difficult but inspiring world, and there is so much out there I want to photograph.

This week’s Afterimage contribution is an edited extract from Utterly Lazy and Inattentive by Martin Parr and Wendy Jones, published by Penguin. It is adapted from “There’s Something Very Interesting About Boring”: Martin Parr on His Life in Pictures, The Guardian, 24 August 2025, in remembrance of Parr following his passing this weekend.

Nina Strand 01/12/2025 Nina Strand 01/12/2025

ELLE PÉREZ

When we were developing my show Diablo at MoMA PS1, the curators were interested in doing something that evoked the feeling of being in my studio. The collage Diablo was originally not meant to be an artwork, but was my answer to the question 'What does your studio look like?'

Diablo is a version of one of my foundational impulses: I have always made this kind of image collection, even as a kid.

2024 On the wall collages

Diablo is a version of one of my foundational impulses: I have always made this kind of image collection, even as a kid. An intense collage covered an entire wall in my childhood bedroom. I was surrounded by images and pieces of text for years, and I’ve made something similar in every studio I’ve had. The wall collages that I make in my studio are an engine for moving my work forward, and for discovering potential formal innovations. I have become interested in these collages as works of art because of how they reflect the process of thinking with images. They both trace and make possible the development of thought, using the multiple and mundane materials of the studio: laser prints, inkjet prints, darkroom prints, reference articles, screenshots, work prints and postcards, Post-It notes, washi tape, and push pins.

The collages reflect the honesty and idealism of the studio space, a place of thought unbounded, where the question to answer is: What more is possible? In these collages made as studio work, I am able to conjure possibility while it is still not yet within my grasp; manifestation and failure to arrive both live within these pieces. A gift of vision that I give to myself.

I’m interested in the movement of the pieces of paper as a gesture. Catching the light and the breeze, the papers are not fixed in place except for at one or two points. They are animated by their relationship to space and open air; a passing person’s wake could lift the page. My drive toward making both these collages and also observational images feels deeply connected to being from places that are always about losing, reimagining, and forgetting.

Reimagining is one of my greatest skills. I think it comes from that experience of constant loss: you can’t hold onto things forever; you have to keep moving, reshaping, and finding new ways to see things. It’s that cycle of loss and reinvention that shapes how I approach the world, especially through photography.

This year has been incredible for Objektiv Press and our Afterimage series. As we wrap up the year, we’ll be sharing excerpts from our books every Monday leading up to Christmas. This is Elle Pérez from their book the movement of our bodies, Objektiv #29.

Nina Strand 24/11/2025 Nina Strand 24/11/2025

DAVID CAMPANY

I have been thinking a lot lately about the relation between ‘theory’ and ‘writing’, and ‘literature’. Many theorists don’t think of themselves as writers, and of course many writers don’t think of themselves as theorists. As we know, a lot of ‘theory’ is not very well written, probably because those who write it do not think of themselves as writers.

The essayist and psychotherapist Adam Phillips once suggested that psychoanalytic writing, from Freud onwards, but particularly Freud, should be read as a form of literature. That is to say, not as a claim to truth or science, but as a claim to writing. Asked for a definition of literature, Susan Sontag suggested it was writing that you would want to reread.

I read a lot of theory, but the only theory I reread are the texts I want to reread, and these I think of as also being literature. However, I would like to think that I have a wide sense of what literature is, and can be. When reading, I keep my mind open for those unpredictable moments when a theoretical idea finds what seems to be a fully satisfying, or startling, or at least profound literary form.

People often complain about the way certain writers still seem to dominate theoretical discussions of photography, particularly Walter Benjamin, Roland Barthes, and Susan Sontag. I share that frustration. But do you know why their thought dominates where the equally profound thought of others does not? It’s because it was well written. Their writing stays with people as sentences, as modes of thought that found compelling written form, as literature.

Rereading a text has its own satisfactions. Not the least of these are the fact that we never read it the same way twice. In rereading, the emphasis, our emphasis, may fall somewhere else. In this sense, to reread a text is to measure one’s own changes – intellectual, social, political, aesthetic, critical, poetic – and in the process, we find that resonant meaning comes neither from the text, nor from us, but from somewhere between the two. This may explain why there is often a gap between the self-perception of ‘theorists’ and literary ‘writers’. A theorist is often hoping to ‘convey’ their theories, to communicate them unequivocally. A literary writer says “never mind if this is strictly true; is it interesting?” But if a text is interesting, that is a kind of truth. This is why Phillips suggests psychoanalytic writing be read a literature, regardless of the writer’s intention. Freud the writer will outlast Freud thetheorist, or even psychoanalysis itself. And perhaps Freud knew that.

‘Theory’ is often suspicious of the power of ‘literature’, seeing it as rhetorically sly in its way of not appealing to the intellect only. In doing so it often condemns itself to small and specialized audiences. This is why the idea ofthe ‘public intellectual’ is vanishing. But there were never that many public intellectuals, never that many who had found a way to give literary form to their theories. It is very difficult thing to do. What may be vanishing is the desire to even try.

This year has been incredible for Objektiv Press and our Afterimage series. As we wrap up the year, we’ll be sharing excerpts from our books every Monday leading up to Christmas. This is David Campany’s contribution to our A Criticism Review, Objektiv #25.

Nina Strand 10/11/2025 Nina Strand 10/11/2025

LUCAS BLALOCK

11. In my pictures, I’m always looking for language adequate to my own subjectivity, my own messed-up feelings, and this is something I hope viewers might be able to mirror for themselves. Photography is nothing like a verbal or written language in most respects, but, like language, it is in common use. We all ‘speak’ photography and this makes it a particularly interesting form in which to work. Like language, it changes as our use of it alters, shifting to accommodate new uses, evolving socially, and making space for importations and slang. There is a root system in both, but neither is essentially itself—it becomes by being used.

Afterimage by Lucas Blalock:

11. In my pictures, I’m always looking for language adequate to my own subjectivity, my own messed-up feelings, and this is something I hope viewers might be able to mirror for themselves. Photography is nothing like a verbal or written language in most respects, but, like language, it is in common use. We all ‘speak’ photography and this makes it a particularly interesting form in which to work. Like language, it changes as our use of it alters, shifting to accommodate new uses, evolving socially, and making space for importations and slang. There is a root system in both, but neither is essentially itself—it becomes by being used.

I’m interested in photography the way a poet might be interested in English or Spanish. What can you do with this thing we use every day? How can it be stretched? What can it accommodate? Although my work does have a lot of intervention and gesture in it, I don’t see it as self-expression. It’s more like co-relation or triangulation—trying to drum up potential relationships we both (you and I) share through photography to the world.

So.

How can I get photography to address the real conditions of my experience?

What can I ask photography to do?

From Why Must the Mounted Messenger be Mounted?, by Lucas Blalock, Objektiv #26. Join Blalock, Carmen Winant and Elle Pérez with Objektiv Press during Paris Photo. On Saturday, November 15, at 11h., Delpire & Co. will host a presentation by Winant, followed by a discussion with her, Pérez and Blalock over coffee and croissants.

Nina Strand 03/11/2025 Nina Strand 03/11/2025

MARGE PIERCY

Afterimage by Carmen Winant:

I've always been attracted to photography that poses a threat to itself. I probably work the way that I do – using so many found and collected images – because I’m distrustful of how seductive photography can be. But I can't really shake it either: I feel too tender towards the photographic object. I love feeling them, seeing them in relation to each other. I often describe myself as a photographer who doesn't make my own pictures for this reason. This is all to say that I’ve been drawn to other people who remodulate our expectations of the image: Leigh Ledare, Jo Spence, Valie Export, Jim Goldberg, Rodrigo Valenzuela, Paul Mpagi Sepuya, and so on. And, if I am being honest, I draw more from writers than I do from visual artists. The French poststructuralists and Helene Cixous but also American poets like Marge Piercy, whom I've been re-reading a lot lately. They give me language, but they also – on the best days – help me ideate as I go.

A revised quote by Winant from Carte Blanche, Objektiv #20. Join Carmen Winant, Lucas Blalock and Elle Pérez with Objektiv Press during Paris Photo. On Saturday, November 15, at 11h., Delpire & Co will host a presentation by Winant, followed by a discussion with her, Pérez and Blalock over coffee and croissants.

Nina Strand 28/10/2025 Nina Strand 28/10/2025

OBJEKTIV PRESS AT PARIS PHOTO

On the occasion of Paris Photo, Objektiv Press will present this summer’s project Double with Carmen Winant and Carol Newhouse at Les Rencontres d'Arles, featuring a presentation from Winant along with a conversation with her, Elle Pérez and Lucas Blalock over coffee and croissants.

Coffee & Croissants – Delpire & Co
Saturday, 15 November 2025, 11h

We will also hold our tenth pop-up event at Polycopies! This year, we will focus on the books from Winant, Pérez and Blalock,, but other titles will also be available..

Delpire & Co — Saturday, November 15, 11h.
On the occasion of Paris Photo, Objektiv Press will present this summer’s project Double with Carmen Winant and Carol Newhouse at Les Rencontres d'Arles. The event will include a presentation by Winant, followed by a discussion with her, Elle Pérez and Lucas Blalock, over coffee and croissants.

Coffee & Croissants – Delpire & Co
Saturday, 15 November 2025, 11h
Delpire & Co, 13 rue de l’Abbaye, Paris 6e
www.delpireandco.com

Polycopies — Thursday, November 13 & Friday, November 14, 11h–19h.
We’re at Polycopies for our tenth pop-up Thursday and Friday. This year, we will focus on books from Winant, Pérez, and Blalock, but other titles will also be available. Please note: Objektiv Press will be there from 11h to 19h, but the boat will remain open for booklovers until 21h.

The book Double accompanied the exhibition of Carol Newhouse and Carmen Winant at the Rencontres d’Arles. Double invites us to consider how we reinvent ourselves and our histories through shared self-representation and interconnection. Using some works from Newhouse’s archive, their work gives form to intergenerational relationships and feminist legacies, bringing past experimental photographic practices into the present.

the movement of our bodies gathers a decade of celebrated artist Elle Pérez’s reflections around photography. A collage of loose thoughts, letters, press articles and reviews, text messages, pictures, sketches, responses, emails, notes, and lectures, the book explores what Pérez chooses to photograph and what photography means to them. It is a tapestry of personal insights, intimate moments, and candid reflections, all woven through the medium.

Why must the mounted messenger be mounted? by Lucas Blalock, soon to be published in Mandarin, offers an expanded meditation on the artist’s twenty-year involvement with photography. In it, Blalock charts the development of his photographic ideas as they run alongside a tangled web of accidents, influence, romance, anxiety, and work. It is a book about coming of age with a preoccupation alternately in full bloom and on its last legs.

At Polycopies we will also present the new publication from Notes Press, an imprint of Objektiv Press. Notes on Paname by Nina Strand opens during the summer of the 2024 Paris Olympics and moves toward the tenth anniversary of the 2015 attacks. Through brief reflections accompanied by images of bistro terraces, it explores the confusing emotions of love and belonging to a city that isn't one's own.

Nina Strand 24/10/2025 Nina Strand 24/10/2025

MANUEL ÁLVAREZ BRAVO

*The Man from Papantla (Señor de Papantla)* 1934, printed 1977. Manuel Alvarez Bravo

Afterimage by Elle Pérez:

The picture of Jose de Jesus took about a year to make. The image itself holds a reference to Señor de Papantla by Manuel Álvarez Bravo, one of my favorite artists. I had the luck of being able to study his prints when I wasteaching at the Williams College. As with the works of Peter Hujar and Roy DeCarava, so much happens in Bravo’s shadows. They contain so much information that is hard to re-photograph, and therefore it isimpossible to grasp the true sensitivity of his printing until you see the prints in person. The resulting effect of two-dimensional form holding a profound sense of depth and volume is something I think about frequently while photographing, and even more so while printing.

In Jose De Jesus (2018) and in Jose Gabriel (2017), the shadows are crucial. In the latter photograph, the shadows reveal his eyes when you come closer, making him appear to be looking at you. Jose De Jesus offers three modalities of shadow and light, each with its own depth, against a plain wall. Jose De Jesus happened to personally own the Bravo monograph we were using as reference; it was given to him by a friend. So he was familiar with and had a relationship to the specific photograph.

From the movement of our bodies, Objektiv #29. Join Carmen Winant, Elle Pérez, and Lucas Blalock with Objektiv Press during Paris Photo. On Saturday, November 15, at 11h., Delpire & Co. will host a presentation by Winant, followed by a discussion with her, Pérez and Blalock over coffee and croissants.

Nina Strand 20/10/2025 Nina Strand 20/10/2025

KETUTA ALEXI-MESKHISHVILI

When we could still afford to have a stable world view, an image could shift our perception of the world. In this sense, it’s the billion collective images that I’ve consumed in the past ten years that have resonated with me the most. Slowly, over time, the power of a single exhibition or image to change one’s perception has been put to question. In a time of relentless and almost involuntary consumption of images, the rise of mass-market digital retouching and live rendering software, can a single image hold power?

What made me love photography was its boundary problems: how the ambiguous power of decisions such as composition, editing, framing, circulation and presentation of an image tends to determine the meaning more than that which is being depicted. Or, for example, the opaqueness of boundaries between the depicted and depicter that are easily blurred by the dynamics of power. These tendencies allow photography a vast, mysterious area for an artist to investigate and play in. What has surprised me most lately, in my inquiry into this phenomenon, is how closely the experience of motherhood has paralleled it and in turn, has fed my images post-partum.

My exhibition at Galerie Frank Elbaz in Paris, that was titled mother, feelings, cognac, was an attempt to communicate a sense of lost boundaries, between bodies, images, definitions: a certain amnesia, personal and general, if you will. Recently, I sense myself moving away from that as well, but whatever is brewing is very new and I can't yet verbalize it.

Artists have been foreshadowing our ‘post truth’ moment for a long time. I think whether directly or indirectly, all work is affected by the broader realities of its time. Generally, I don’t set out to comment on things through my work. Following the last US presidential election, however, I was invited to participate in a group show called Produktion: Made in Germany Drei, at the Sprengel Museum in Hannover. For this exhibition I worked on a concise project, titled MID, where I photographed – off the computer screen – found images of window locks produced in Germany. I also added a crumpled ribbon of a different colour to each image, in order to keep things open to interpretation. But the images still turned out to be too resolved for me. After that experience, I turned in again, hoping that the personal, with its call to empathy, can also be political.

What comes after the pictorial turn? Instagram has eaten Facebook, fashion is having pop culture for breakfast, emojis are feasting on the written word, and most of human communication is taking place on a screen. Maybe the pictorial turn is the last turn we make before the end.

From the final issue of Objektiv in 2020, marking its tenth anniversary. We gave twenty artists carte blanche to create portfolios or collage-like mind maps exploring the photography that inspires their practices. Each contribution was accompanied by a short statement.

Though not part of our Afterimage series, these contributions touch on themes of memory and perception. The artists were prompted with a set of inspirational questions, including one posed to W.J.T. Mitchell: What comes after the pictorial turn? He responded:

‘I think the study of the whole sensorium – the senses themselves, beyond vision, or as connected to vision – is one thing that follows logically after an emphasis on the visual. I never thought of images as silent; even silent movies were never silent: they had music and text.’