Titles
Between Us: Dialogues of Human Representations (Sharp Ideas)
Subjects and photographers engage in complex dialogues of concealment and revelation—subject and photographer, self to the other, and image to the viewer. Gaze, pose, and frame intertwine to construct intricate narratives Between Us. It is a process that offers a window into the transformative power of personal meaning-making; not necessarily tied to an inherent essence but a complex, performative act within broader societal forces—the dialogues of human representation. Can we ever create and engage with these images as passive spectators? Or are we active participants in the complex, ever-evolving dialogue between image and imagination? Do these forces direct how we capture the fragile echo of human existence between us in the image?
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Photographers: Bureau 623, Marta Bevacqua, Sylvain Biard, Butu Bilikhodze, Jeanne Chauveau, Ilya Daesque, Can Dagarslan & Sophie Bogdan, Dzesika Devic, Alexey Dubinsky, Lee Foxcliff, Francesco Frizzera, Cayetano González, Phillip Kalantzis Cope, Nasos Karabelas, Vasiliy Khraban, Micah McCoy, Maéva Lecoq, Michel Nguie, Jordane Prestrot, Alina Ryzheuskaya, Mariam Sitchinava, Lisa Smit, Ja-Shang Tang, Jason Travis, Aliaksandr Veledzimovich, Dilden Vilberk, Maria Windschüttel, Lukasz Wierzbowski
Curator: Phillip Kalantzis-Cope
Mid-Continent Modern, Phillip Kalantzis-Cope
This book documents the contributions of architects Jack Sherman Baker, John Gordon Replinger, A. Richard Williams, Robert Louis Amico, and Jeffery S. Poss to the Midwest's built environment. All were keenly aware of the prairie landscape of Central Illinois, its vast vistas, and the prismatic forms of houses, barns, and granaries that punctuate the horizon. Together, we tell the story of their work, the "Champaign School of Mid-Century Architecture," and the people who live, use, and care for these buildings.
The Thread of Water, Julie Patarin-Jossec
"The Thread of Water" is a reflexive wandering in the depths of the Mediterranean Sea. The photographs investigate the colonial politics of the underseas through the eeriness of subaquatic weightlessness and light contrasts: artifacts and bodies are altered, if not disincarnated, in undefined waterscapes that build a narrative of dispossession and perdition. From digital to analog photography, including thermal imagery, the collection curated for this book questions how movement can transcend landscapes to embrace affect. But, more than anything, "The Thread of Water" is an intimate narrative about trauma and queerness that navigates different forms of storytelling (photographs, drawings, poetry, fieldwork notes) to explore the in-betweens, the coexistent multiplicities, and the pervasiveness of liberatory praxis.
Mountain: Darjeeling, Matheran, Ootacamund, William Cope
These three photobooks, “Darjeeling”, “Matheran,” and “Ootacamund,” show how an essentially horizontal technology can deny the vertical. Each book focuses on an Indian mountain railway: the Darjeeling Himalayan Railway in West Bengal; the Nilgiri Mountain Railway in Tamil Nadu; and the Matheran Hill Railway in Maharastra. In their precipitous landscapes, these three railways are without doubt beautiful. The pictures speak to that. However, in his introductory texts accompanying the photographs, William Cope also explores the often-difficult human stories behind each railway and every image. His question for these lines: what does the railway mean?
The Grift, Andrew Kochanowski
"The Grift" is not a political book in the traditional sense. Instead, it takes a dispassionate look at a phenomenon enabled by conventional mass media, new digital channels, and informal word-of-mouth networks. It looks to actors playing their parts, but more broadly to mutual, bottomless need and dependence. Feasting off the spectacle, the speaker and the crowd crave one another. One will lie to the other, and both will lie to themselves. Who is grifting who?
“I’ll tell you why pyramid schemes are illegal. Because for every winner, there are 99 losers. Because no matter what you hear, you’re the one paying. There’s a reason the show is free. If you’re wondering about the mark in the room, it’s you.” — Andrew Kochanowski
Cement, William Cope
In this book, William Cope captures this small journey in photographs. His introduction sets the railway line in the larger context of the history of the cement works and, beyond that, the difficult history of cement as a quintessentially modern product.
“It was just a mile from the Commonwealth Portland Cement works to the Portland railway station in New South Wales, Australia. But for such a short stretch of otherwise ordinary industrial railway line, there was surprising drama. Small steam locomotives hauled their heavy wagons out of their foreboding setting in the works, struggled up a steep hill, passed under one road, then across another, finally crossing a field in a sweeping curve to reach the station. Here, the wagons would be picked up by a goods train on the government railway for transportation to Sydney and empties picked up for return to the works. “ — William Cope
Machine Learning, Phillip Kalantzis Cope
In “Machine Learning,” Phillip Kalantzis Cope deploys post-industrial techniques to make meaning from industrial and rural landscapes. The book frames a collision of new and old by applying artificial intelligence techniques to his images. The new images are created in the “eye” of artificial intelligence software; interpreting and recreating often overlooked, disregarded utilitarian structures and out-of-the-way corners. This book draws us to consider emergent visual economies. Who is the image maker when we use such tools–humans or machines? And what do these tools and their algorithms show us that we have not already seen ourselves?
“Feedback is a method of controlling a system by reinserting into it the results of its past performance. If these results are merely used as numerical data for the criticism of the system and its regulation, we have the simple feedback of the control engineers. If, however, the information which proceeds backward from the performance is able to change the general method and pattern of performance, we have a process which may well be called learning.” — Norbert Wiener. The Human Use of Human Beings: Cybernetics and Society (1950)
See it When I Believe It, Nathan Pearce
Every photo album I have has been rearranged over time, the order shifting, emphasis changing, and stories reconfigured as time passes. The images in this album, “See it When I Believe It,” have deep meaning to me. But the chance of new meanings will lie with you, the viewer. I want you to change the edit, shuffle pictures, put images up on your wall, make new connections with the life that I'm sharing.
“Meghan and I met during a socially distanced outdoor gathering, one of my first times leaving isolation after the first wave of Covid. I immediately wanted to be closer to her, physically and otherwise. That same feeling has never ceased. We were married a year to the day from when we first met. Those snapshots were made in a time that we were newlywed and experiencing the unexpected and surreal experiences of a new life together.”
The Dance: Languages of Light and Time (Sharp Ideas)
On the street, the image-maker searches for that moment where you can see the sharpness of time. They lie in wait, foresee, make impulsive interventions, or establish distance through an anthropological gaze. In this dance, authentic life meets photographic agency. At the same time, light plays on the surface, connecting a technical medium to the source of life itself. The image maker uses this natural force to illuminate form, action, and space. In doing so, they offer languages of light and time as pathways of transcendental exchange between the image-maker, the viewer, and our essential shared meaning-making facilities. But does the "everyday" appear naturally? Or is life always a prop in “constructing” a scene? Can we know the difference?
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Photographers: Alicja Brodowicz, Tonatiuh Cabello, Caspar Claasen, Sergi Escribano, Marco Giusfredi, Asli Gonen, Todd Gross, Tim Hale, Zisis Kardianos, Lesya Kim, Peter Kool, Łukasz Korulczyk, Charalampos Kydonakis, Phillip Kalantzis Cope, Linda Maclean, Bill McIntyre, Gustavo Minas, Suresh Naganathan, Monserrat Orallo, Artem Pankov, Andra Ratto, Jodi Rogers, Koushik Sinha Roy, Jack Simon, Valeria Tofanelli, Lukas Vasilikos, Alice Christine Walker, Wong Wei-him
Curator: Phillip Kalantzis-Cope
Beach Boulevard, Brian O'Neill
This book is a visual diary of sorts - out of the past, and through the present.
Pink hues begin to meld with the sea haze along the beach as the sun sets over the site of the old high school, now replaced by common establishments. Two young women wait for a young man, circling a street corner on their bikes as another day begins to pass tonight along the beach. This area was once orange groves and oil fields as far as the eye could see. What now fills the horizon? Further inland, homes hide behind ten-foot brick walls, trying to remain in the shade. And, at the end of a long day of walking the hot pavement and breathing the fumes of individual liberty, a rare young man tells the tale of his false imprisonment and asks where the pier is - so that he can retrieve his backpack and dog. I tell him, follow along Beach Boulevard.
Natures: Landscapes of Human Intentions (Sharp Ideas)
We derive meanings from natures. But can these meanings be intrinsic to what we might call a “bare nature”? Or are these meanings only ever self-referential to our species defining production of totems, divine revelations, or modern systems of scientific gaze? In other words, does our search for beauty and meaning in nature only reveal an inward gaze—landscapes of human intentions? Or does nature speak to us—and if so, what are its languages?
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Photographers: Coby Cobb, Preschelle Ann Bigueras, Julia Coddington, Benedetta Falugi, Don Hudson, Jordi Huisman, Phillip Kalantzis Cope, Simon Kossoff, Michael Kowalczyk, Sasha Kurmaz, Anne-Sophie Landou, Markus Lehr, Catherine Lemblé, Anna Longworth, Brad McMurray, Wendy Morgan, Chris Moxey, Lars Nordström, Brian O’Neill, Gerry Orkin, Julie Paterson, Ed Peters, Chris Round, Nayeem Siddiquee, Monica Smaniotto, Valeria Tofanelli, Bart van Damme, Mike Writston, Dmitry Yurchenko
Curator: Phillip Kalantzis-Cope
Middlescapes, Phillip Kalantzis Cope
Middlescapes tells the story of an imaginary place, found in reality. A place where at once we can see the speculative and critical of the modern American vernacular. In an inventory of past utopias, materialized in lines of corn, barns, constructed environments, and human forms, we are offered a reflection on the subtle interplay of history caught in an infinite loop – past futures, future pasts.
“These are our Middlescapes. Yesterday and tomorrow. Mine, yours, ours.”
