Photography+

Photography+ is our online magazine that explores how photography intersects with everyday life. Each issue is themed and includes interviews, opinion pieces, essays and folios. Our 2021 writer in residence is Tshepiso Mabula.

#15 Hope and Futurity

Editor's note

#15 Hope and Futurity

This issue of Photography+ — the first of the new year — focuses on hope. Following from our last issue on the Environment, an often bleak and despairing topic in the era of climate catastrophe, we are interested here in how photographers are imagining the future — how they are holding onto hope for a better future, unmarred by current realities of war, climate chaos, pandemics and vaccine inequality, and migrant crises. While a better future might, at times, seen unattainable, this issue explores how photography can help us trust in the possibilities of this future, giving us the hope we need to organise in service of a transformed world. How can photography help lead us out of apathy and despair by offering us a glimpse into this world? This is a question that the artists and writers of this issue seek to answer. Ricardo Reverón Blanco writes on Stacy Arezou Mehrfar’s series, Down in the Forest, We Sing A Chorus (2020-21), touching on themes of isolation, hope, and the interdependency of nature. Clorinde Peters responds to Asia Werbel’s photograph “Daughter” (2020) and explores motherhood, loneliness, and how we might build communities of care. Charlotte Flint looks back at the work of lesbian artist and activist Tee Corinne, arguing that Corinne’s images of eroticism and desire between women inspire us to work towards the just future that we want. Our writer in residence, Tshepiso Mabula ka Ndongeni, explores the photographer Puleng Mongale, whose work invites Black South Africans to re-connect to ancestors and to a lost notion of home. In this issue’s interview, Alun Be discusses his series Edification and the relationship between identity, inheritance, and the future. Finally, we are delighted to publish as our Community Submission Lixuan Guo’s photograph, “Tomorrow’s Wings,” which celebrates the creativity and resilience of a new generation. We hope you enjoy this issue!

Picturing Motherhood, Imagining Care

Tee Corinne: Kaleidoscopic Erotica

The Wayfarer’s Almanac: On Displacement and Hope

'Human Values Are Far More Important': Bringing Past and Future Together with Alun Be

Community Submission: Lixuan Guo’s Tomorrow’s Wing’s

An Ode to Life: Down in the Forest, We Sing a Chorus (2020-2021)

#14 Environment

Editor's note

#14 Environment

It’s with pleasure that I welcome readers to this issue of Photography+. As the new Editor, it has been very exciting for me to put together this issue on the Environment with writers and artists whose work is urgent, provocative, and timely. Over the coming months, Photography+ will be working on innovative and creative stories that focus on how photography intersects with the everyday. Taking as a basis the crucial political and social issues of our time–climate change, pandemics, global vaccine inequality, workers’ struggles beyond borders, and movements against state violence, for example—we will be asking how photography helps us both understand the world in which we’re living and imagine a better, freer, more just future. Since we are in an era of profound ecological crisis, this issue is devoted to exploring the role of the photographer in documenting and confronting the climate catastrophe. Each writer and artist asks us to think through the relationship between photography and climate change, between the photographer and their environment. Ricardo Reverón Blanco reviews Mandy Barker’s latest series, STILL (FFS), showing us how Barker imbues life into the lifeless bodies of her subjects, the Flesh-Footed Shearwaters of Lord Howe Island. Tshepiso Mabula ka Ndongeni tells us about Umhlabathi, a photography collective in Johannesburg that takes inspiration from soil in order to document racial and class inequality in South Africa. In our interviews, Nadia Huggins explains how her work with water allows her to re-represent the Caribbean beyond colonial imagery, and Lucas Leffler describes how his use of natural elements helps him create new photographic processes. In an article on sustainability and the photographic industry, Hannah Fletcher from The Sustainable Darkroom and Matt Barker from MPB tell us how they envision a sustainable future for photography and a collaborative community of photographers. Finally, for each issue of Photography+, we will be asking our readers to submit photographs in relation to the issue theme. We are thrilled to publish the first photograph drawn from our Community Submissions: Laura Denning’s Toxic Monocultures (2021). I look forward to working with more photographers from the Photography+ community over the coming months. I hope you enjoy reading this issue! With thanks, Nisha