MALAYSIA / SINGAPORE: Apparently whimsical images that critique community erasure in Malaysia and the re-wilding of a hyperreal city-state in lockdown.
Social Critique
COLOMBIA: An artist using clay figures to tell the stories of real people – stories of homelessness and social invisibility.
USA: Timeless portraits made in collaboration with the inmates of three penitentiaries in the northeast of Louisiana, the US state with the largest per capita prison population.
REPUBLIC OF KOREA: Exploring the liminal space at the threshold of realty and simulation, original and replica, fact and fake.
JAPAN / USA: A photographer whose identity lies at the threshold of two very different cultures and histories, Osamu James Nakagawa evokes the spirit of place and ghosts of a past that still linger in the present.
INTERNATIONAL: We are social creatures, but it is a characteristic with many aspects. Talking Pictures asked twelve photographic artists from around the world to consider the nature of human connection. The images they selected are as nuanced as they are diverse.
UNITED KINGDOM: Throwing the paradoxes of domesticity into sharp relief, Sian Bonnell uses absurdity to critique the socially constructed role of women in the home.
RUSSIA / ESTONIA: An artist who uses ritual and imagination to rediscover her untamed inner self and resist the growing tides of unfreedom.
FRANCE: For Denis Darzacq, the body is an instrument of social critique with which to explore the constraints and barriers suffered by people marginalised by materialist society.
AUSTRALIA: Alasdair Foster, a curator, researcher, and writer who draws on an array of experiences from around the world, offers his perspective on photography – and where it’s going next. Interview by Alexander Strecker.
RUSSIA / SERBIA: Three visions of the future: current harbingers of isolation, relics of a forgotten race into space, and a speculative evocation of post-human bio-augmentation…
INDIA / UK: Challenging the prejudices ingrained in conventional constructions of beauty and the traditional role of women, Sujata Setia emphasises the potential for survival, redefinition, and regeneration.
USA: An artist whose creative practice is as feisty as it is experimental, transforming her external appearance into visual metaphors of inner dissent.
RUSSIA/GERMANY: personal reflections on the competing connection and constraint of family life, and the untenable expectations enshrined in contemporary iconography of perfect motherhood.
CHINA: Without recourse to AI, Zhang Wei pieces together photographic fragments to create images that suggest the way in which ideological revisionism and Newspeak are deployed to encourage collective amnesia while making conformity seem inevitable.
GERMANY: The Zeitgeist evoked in radiantly melancholic portraits in which the artist paints on the black of night with light itself.
USA: Employing the symbolic and physical qualities of water, Wendy Sacks makes photographs that speak of the complex nature of human relationships, both light and dark.
INDIA: Described as “the most entertaining artist-iconoclast of contemporary Indian art”, Pushpamala N’s pioneering and influential feminist–conceptual photographic performance works seek to subvert the dominant cultural and intellectual discourse in India.
AUSTRALIA: An anthropomorphic metamorphosis in which bees not only evolve to humanoid form but behave with all the perverse complexity of humankind.
UNITED KINGDOM: Quintessentially British in their rigorous formality, these allegorical tableaux grow from the personal experience of an intergenerational life partnership condemned to the margins of ‘otherness’.
GEORGIA: Staged annually in the capital of Tbilisi, this festival of photography is known for its openness and inclusivity.
UNITED KINGDOM: An artist, activist, and co-creator of a potent form of psychological therapy centred on photography.
MEXICO: Dulce Pinzón creates latter-day visual fables that address real social issues: racial prejudice, low-paid workers, environmental damage.
AUSTRALIA: Documenting the dysfunctional, the dispossessed, and the dogged hope that lingers amid the ashes of failure.
USA: Meticulously crafted miniature worlds that speculate on a future without human beings.
USA: Spanning six decades, Mariette Pathy Allen’s sensitive portraits have chronicled the transgender and non-binary community.
YEMEN: Caught in the tension between cultural roots and personal identity, these symbolically expressive tableaux map an intimate journey of becoming.
BANGLADESH: A photographer with a strong social conscience and a deep concern for the welfare of the marginalised members of her society.
LATVIA: Personal evocations of the impact of social and ideological change while living through the turbulent post-war and post-Soviet eras.
GERMANY: What are the implications of an AI generated image winning the world’s largest photography competition? For photography, for society, and for the arts?
REPUBLIC OF KOREA: Land art seeking a fresh perspective on Nature freed from notions of territory and property.
INTERNATIONAL: Eleven artists reflect on what they learned during the pandemic, picking just one thing they would reimagine for the better in the future.
AUSTRALIA: Distinctive ways of being and knowing, experienced through a queer perspective on expanded photography.
USA: Pulitzer-prize-winner Renée C Byer reveals how photography and journalism used together can catalyse action in the face of escalating inequality at home and abroad.
CANADA: a satirical retelling of familiar stories as Disney princesses, deities, and US presidents tumble into the real world like Alice in reverse.
THAILAND: Scathing satirical tableaux critiquing the country’s turbulent socio-political scene, created by one of Southeast Asia’s leading artists.
MEXICO: Named one of the top twenty talents worldwide by FOAM magazine, Diego Moreno’s monsters have much to show us about familial love and about domestic abuse.
USA: Patty Carroll’s ‘Anonymous Women’ parody and personify the frenetic consumerism and suffocating domesticity of ‘idealised’ notions of femininity promoted in the post-war era.
UNITED KINGDOM: Going beyond the clichés and prejudices about homelessness by facilitating each participant to create their own self-portrait.
ISRAEL: An exploration of the equivocal transition from child to adult in portraits of adolescents in Ukraine, Russia and Spain.
USA: Past and present converse in an archive of American life shot from a refreshingly tangential perspective.
INTERNATIONAL: Nine photographic artists from across five continents reflect on what motivates them to create photographs.
UKRAINE: The artistic trope of the male nude re-imagined as emblem of a new generation of young Eastern European men.
BELGIUM: The Belgian spirit of whimsical individuality found hiding in plain sight at the edge of suburbia.
USA: Emerging from person crisis, these images unfold a domestic conversation around the paradox of family ties and the quest for redemption.
FRANCE: As the old civilisation collapses generating crisis, illusion and corruption, the paradox of the real echoes through the imaginative lens of memory.
BANGLADESH: Asia’s longest-running photo festival, founded on a powerful vision of social justice and driven by a tenacious dynamism, it forms one arm of a tripartite structure including a news picture agency and a media school.