Aperture Remix

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On the occasion of Aperture’s sixtieth anniversary in 2012, a select group of contemporary photographers have each responded to an Aperture publication that has been influential in forming their work, paying it artistic homage. Each commissioned artist in Aperture Remix has created a new work inspired by the ideas that they have found most influential or of greatest concern in the earlier work.

The range of participating artists and the diversity of their approaches reflect the multifaceted and elastic nature of contemporary photography. The works that each artist has created for Aperture Remix—incorporating new images made in response or interventions with the original publication itself—comprise a way of mapping the enduring influence of Aperture’s publication history as it relates to contemporary practice.

In 1952, one of Aperture’s founders and the first editor of the magazine, Minor White, wrote, “Growth can be slow and hard when you are groping alone. It quickens when you meet other photographers who have worked and thought intensively about their medium. You listen, and ask, and a phrase sticks in your memory like a barb. You see a photograph that blazes with significance. Suddenly a way of working, dim till then, comes clear before you.” Frequently, this meeting of minds takes place via the pages of a book or a magazine; we encounter photographers and artists via the publication of their work. And once published and released into the public sphere, a body of work takes on a life of its own, crossing geographic and generational boundaries, becoming open to new readings. Aperture Remix traces this network of influence; an extended community of shared interests and critical precedents.

Rinko Kawauchi in response to Sally Mann’s Immediate Family (1992)
Vik Muniz in response to Edward Weston’s The Daybooks: Vol. 1, Mexico (1973)
Taiyo Onorato and Nico Krebs in response to a selection of Aperture’s essay titles
Martin Parr in response to Issue 103 of Aperture magazine (1986)
Doug Rickard in response to Stephen Shore’s Uncommon Places (1982/2004)
Viviane Sassen in response to Edward Weston’s Nudes (1977)
Alec Soth in response to Robert Adams’s Summer Nights (1985)
Penelope Umbrico in response to The Masters of Photography (1977–1999)
James Welling in response to Paul Strand’s Time in New England (1980)

Curated by Lesley A. Martin

Production of Aperture Remix editions by Maxwell Anderson with support from Francisco Correa-Cordero. Additional production support by Nina Poppe. The Aperture Reading Room was assembled by Paul Colarusso. Exhibition design by Emily Lessard and Sara Duell. Exhibition preparation by Annette Booth and Emma Abrahamian. Special thanks to Markus Schaden and Marks of Honor. Each of the commissioned works has been created in an edition of five and is available through Aperture.

This exhibition has been generously supported, in part, by the National Endowment for the Arts.
The vitrines in the exhibition have been donated by the Museum of the City of New York.