Aperture’s Must-Read Photography Features of 2024

Nearly two trillion photographs were taken in 2024. Aperture published a few thousand. As always, the photographs and stories we put into the world this year serve as a bulwark against the breakneck speed of contemporary images and a forum for critical, engaged thinking about photography and its role in public and private life. Below, we’ve compiled a selection of interviews, portfolios, and essays from 2024 that—rather than attempt to define the year in pictures—capture photography’s unique power to connect, to provoke, and to inspire. —The Editors

Jump Ahead:
The Year in Interviews
The Year in Portfolios
The Year in Essays

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The Year in Interviews

Trevor Paglen on Artificial Intelligence, UFOs, and Mind Control
A conversation with Sarah M. Miller, from Aperture No. 257, “Image Worlds to Come: Photography & AI”

The pioneering artist was one of the first to reckon with AI. Now he’s happy the rest of the world is catching up. “Paglen deploys the camera less for depictive purposes than as an analogy for the extraordinary labor of making something visible,” writes Sarah M. Miller. “Photography is neither his sole medium nor his raison d’être, but it’s indispensable to a practice that examines how belief is compelled.”

The Inside Story of Josef Koudelka’s Groundbreaking Career
A conversation with Lesley A. Martin and Melissa Harris

From his legendary coverage of the 1968 invasion of Prague to his reflections on the solitude of exile, Koudelka is renowned for his photographs of pivotal world events. Here, Melissa Harris speaks about working with the photographer on his visual biography Josef Koudelka: Next. “Josef loves a challenge, a visual challenge,” says Harris. “He had not really worked in this way before, where there had to be a clear relationship between text and image.”

How Tina Barney Became an Astute Observer of the Upper Class
A conversation with Sarah Meister, from Family Ties (Aperture, 2024)

The photographer’s signature large-scale portraits show the secret world of the haute bourgeoisie—and the way certain poses are handed down across generations. Here, in an interview from Barney’s new book, Aperture’s executive director, Sarah Meister, speaks with the artist on her beginnings with the medium, the transition to working in color, and her approach to large-format photography and working on assignment.

Danny Lyon on the Making of “The Bikeriders”
A conversation with Lucy McKeon

Lyon’s riveting book about a Chicago motorcycle club is one of the definitive accounts of American counterculture—and was the inspiration for the 2024 film starring Austin Butler and Jodie Comer. “You can go out and make twenty pictures in a day. You can make fifty pictures in a day,” says Lyon. “But you just want to make one good picture—one really good picture. That’s what you’re trying to do.”

Gregory Halpern on Finding His Voice in Buffalo
by Brendan Embser

The photographer speaks with his brother, the journalist Jake Halpern, about growing up in a city of surreal sights and memorable characters. “I don’t ever feel like a total insider or a total outsider in Buffalo,” says Halpern. “But I think that’s been key to me—to have both insider knowledge, but also a little bit of distance.”

How Photography Influenced Duro Olowu’s Life in Fashion
A conversation with Dan Thawley, from Aperture No. 255, “The Design Issue”

From album covers to Yves Saint Laurent, the London-based designer’s curiosity is limitless—and his deep knowledge of photography has informed his way of seeing the world. “I think photography is a very sinuous reference that is not bound by trends,” says Olowu.

Arielle Bobb-Willis on Keeping Her Inner Kid Alive
A conversation with Nicole Acheampong, from Keep the Kid Alive (Aperture, 2024)

The rising art and fashion photographer’s debut monograph is a vivid statement about color, gesture, and style. “Photography is, and will always be, a daily practice of falling in love with as many things as I can,” says Bobb-Willis.

Louis Carlos Bernal’s Intimate Portrayals of the Chicano Experience
A conversation with Elizabeth Ferrer and Elianna Kan

For Bernal, who worked on the border between the US and Mexico, photography was a potent tool in affirming the value of communities who lacked visibility and agency. “With every photograph that he’s taking of every Mexican American person, he’s making a political statement,” says Elizabeth Ferrer, curator of the related exhibition of Bernal’s work tied to Aperture’s recent monograph. “He’s saying, Look at this person. This person has dignity. This person should not be overlooked.”

Wendy Red Star on the Power of Indigenous Art
A conversation with Josh T. Franco, from Delegation (Aperture/Documentary Arts, 2022)

In an interview from her Aperture book, the celebrated artist discusses family bonds, Native history, and how studying sculpture inspired her genre-defying photography. “I’m also marking on history,” says Wendy Red Star. “And red—I always think about school and failing papers and getting that red mark on your paper. I wanted that red mark on history.”

Ed Templeton’s Delirious Skater Chronicle
A conversation with Lesley A. Martin, from Wires Crossed (Aperture, 2023)

Part memoir, part document of a punk-infused scene, Ed Templeton’s book explores the lives of skateboarders crisscrossing the world in the late 1990s and early 2000s. “This book is a culmination of literally my first idea as a photographer, which was to document this culture that I’m part of,” says Templeton.

How Emmet Gowin Defines Intimacy in Photography
A conversation with Rebecca Bengal, from Aperture No. 256, “Arrhythmic Mythic Ra”

Since the 1960s, Emmet Gowin has made portraits of stunning openness, recorded scenes of environmental devastation, and explored the marvels of biodiversity. His concern, he says, is about showing how we belong to the earth. “Even before organizing the archive, it was the pandemic period that really turned me into a student of my own work,” says Gowin. “I had a lot of time, and I began to print things I’d tried to print when I was young but didn’t have the skill.”

For Bertien van Manen, Photography Was All About the Heart
A conversation with Kim Knoppers, from Aperture, Fall 2015, “The Interview Issue”

In her unvarnished portraits of strangers and family, the late photographer extolled the beauty and mysteries of everyday life. Here, we look back at the photographer’s conversation with Kim Knoppers for Aperture’s “Interview Issue” in 2015, in which the photographer spoke about her well-traveled career and what it means for her to revisit older bodies of work.

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The Year in Portfolios

A Young Photographer Makes a Family Tree about South Africa
by Kwanele Sosibo, from Aperture, issue 254, “Counter Histories”

Through his vivid landscapes and portraits, Lindokuhle Sobekwa portrays the harsh poetry of rural life in the country’s Eastern Cape. “Sobekwa’s work provides the space for personal contemplation and the wider political reflection required in a nation as young as South Africa,” writes Kwanele Sosibo.

When Luigi Ghirri Photographed the Ferrari Factory
by Michael Famighetti, from Aperture No. 255, “The Design Issue” 

In the mid-1980s, Ghirri was invited to make promotional photographs for the mythic carmaker. His images bring the company down to earth from the upper stratosphere of luxury. “Ghirri’s pictures feel like a laboratory record,” writes Michael Famighetti. “Workers don elegant lab coats emblazoned with the company logo—that rearing horse. Interior leather samples are arranged in Ellsworth Kelly–like compositions. There is little sense of mechanical noise or grease. Even an image of molten steel being poured is quiet.”

6 Photographers Reflect on Robert Frank’s “The Americans”

Here, in celebration of the centennial of Frank’s birth and Aperture’s recent reissue of The Americans, six artists—Dawoud Bey, Tommy Kha, Ari Marcopoulos, Katy Grannan, Kristine Potter, and Alec Soth—choose a photograph from the volume and reflect on its lasting impact.

Charlie Engman Transforms the Internet’s Murk into Art
by Travis Diehl, from Aperture No. 257, “Image Worlds to Come: Photography & AI”

The artist’s experiments with AI offer an indelible collection of “cursed images” inspired by a feeling of being nostalgic for the present. “I feel like, weirdly, this work is the most photographic work that I’ve ever made,” Engman states. In his previous output, he was trying to push and bend photography’s conventions, its history. With the AI images, “I actually felt like I was running toward photography to see how close I could get,” he says, “and what that kind of closeness would mean in this new context.”

Avion Pearce Creates a World between Reality and Dreams
by Lucy McKeon, from Aperture No. 255, “The Design Issue,” under the column Spotlight

Winner of the 2024 Aperture Portfolio Prize, Pearce’s series In the Hours Between Dawn merges analog techniques with political purpose and a poetic sensibility. “Exploring photography’s potential to chart the interplay between time, the body, and the borough’s transformation,” writes Lucy McKeon, “Pearce’s expression relies as much on feeling as on fact.”

Naomieh Jovin’s Photo Collages of Haitian American Life
by Edwidge Danticat, from Aperture, issue 254, “Counter Histories”

Merging family archives with her own photographs, Jovin tells a story about immigration with the lives of women at the center. “So much of the immigrant experience is one of loss, loss of the community they leave behind, loss of the history in their home country,” the artist writes. “By creating these photos of the women in my family, and reclaiming the images they made during their lifetimes, I hope to forestall this loss, to show the purpose and honor that defined their lives, and to actively create a new narrative for my generation.”

12 Graphic Designers on Their Favorite Books
From Aperture No. 255, “The Design Issue,” in The PhotoBook Review

There are proper photobooks, showcasing the work of a single photographer’s accomplishments, and then there are books that use photography in the service of something else, as a manual, guide, illustration, or history lesson. For Aperture’s “Design Issue,” we invited a group of graphic designers to select some of their favorite books that use photographs to delve into a range of ideas related to design.

A Photographer’s “Spiritual Collaboration” with a Mysterious Mexican Archive
by Michael Londres

When Gonzalo Reyes Rodriguez found a trove of pictures of a young man who called himself Technoir, he found a way to speak about desire. “To this day, Technoir’s identity remains a mystery to Rodriguez,” writes Michael Londres. “He doesn’t know whether the young man died of AIDS-related illness or grew into normative obscurity. But in the great void of what is not known, there’s the possibility of redemption through remembrance and beauty.”

Akihiko Okamura’s Outsider View of Northern Ireland
by Declan Long, from Aperture No. 255, “The Design Issue,” under the column Viewfinder

In the 1960s, the Japanese photographer recorded the Troubles with understated eloquence. “Okamura singles out low-key moments, discovering worlds within worlds,” writes Declan Long. “Looking for what we might learn of desire, sadness, loneliness, or dreaming among the dispersed, matter-of-fact materials of daily life.”

The Uncanny Worlds of Nhu Xuan Hua
by Larissa Pham, from Aperture No. 255, “The Design Issue” 

Working across art and fashion, Hua explores the constructed nature of memory in indelible, dreamlike images. “Hua’s photographs defy easy interpretation,” writes Larissa Pham. “A woman sings karaoke in a shining, armored gown. An archival wedding photograph is beguilingly redacted, dress and suit visible but the bodies of husband and wife absent contours. A black dog gazes out the entrance of a temple—who, or what, is it guarding? Even the simplest image is limned with story; we sense it the way we remember our dreams upon waking.”

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The Year in Essays

A Mother’s Relentless Quest to Find her Missing Son
by Ken Chen, from Aperture, issue 254, “Counter Histories”

After her son disappeared from Hong Kong into China, in 2000, Yu Lai Wai-ling embarked on a lifelong search to bring him home. Decades later, the photographer Billy H.C. Kwok convinced Ms. Yu to tell her story, assembling piercing images of grief and resolve. “The boy came to represent Hong Kong,” writes Ken Chen, “a phantom languishing inside the foreign motherland.”

The Japanese Women Who Transformed Photography
by Carrie Cushman and Kelly Midori McCormick, from I’m So Happy You Are Here: Japanese Women Photographers from the 1950s to Now (Aperture, 2024)

From Tokiwa Toyoko’s images of women working in the 1950s to Ushioda Tokuko’s domestic portraits, women artists have played a pivotal role in shaping the medium’s history in Japan. “While chronicling a history of Japanese women photographers akin to the scope and depth of the canon of male photographers may not be possible, nor is it our goal,” write Carrie Cushman and Kelly Midori McCormick, “we have found that the stories uncovered by doing this work not only diversify the canon but also reveal ever more absences and gaps in the ways that photographic history has been written in the first place.”

What Is Street Photography Today?
by Chris Wiley

An exhibition in New York strives to define the possibilities of street photography today—and to tell us something about the state of our world. “Soon, it seems, the whole of our reality might be shaped by our encounter with a fundamentally alien, super powerful AI,” writes Chris Wiley. “How can we possibly hope to capture this world from street level, using as blunt and as literal a tool as a camera?”

Dayanita Singh Finds Common Ground in the Work of Two Architects
by Tausif Noor, from Aperture No. 255, “The Design Issue” 

In her long-term series on Geoffrey Bawa and Bijoy Jain, Singh offers a world in which the aspirations of modernism are realized. As Tausif Noor writes, “Singh’s photographs highlight Bawa’s meticulous selection of materials to create contrast, a hallmark of the so-called tropical modernism associated with his legacy.”

Rediscovering Hisae Imai’s Otherworldly Vision
by Moeko Fujii, from Aperture, issue 253, “Desire”

Once a darling of Tokyo’s avant-garde and fashion scenes in the 1960s, Imai took an unexpected turn after a tragic accident. “Imai’s photographs stand out for their unique approach to the depiction of the female body, often fragmenting and abstracting form,” writes Moeko Fujii.

The Musicians Who Energized a Revolution in Nepal
by Muna Gurung, from Aperture, issue 254, “Counter Histories”

Prasiit Sthapit’s photographs show how musicians—as both instigators and healers—influenced an insurrection that shook the country. “The music was medicine, a balm, and also a reminder for fighters who were alive to continue the mission of building a just world,” writes Muna Gurung.

How Images Make the Objects We Desire Seem Irresistible
by Jesse Dorris, from Aperture No. 255, “The Design Issue” 

In the twentieth century, photographers proved you could sell anything. Today, they work in a world where you have to sell everything. As Jesse Dorris writes, “Modernism, with its emerging formal concerns of experimentation and abstraction, was a tool kit for a sales pitch.”

The Women Photographers Who Consider the Dynamics of Being Seen
by Amanda Maddox, from Aperture, issue 253, “Desire”

At a moment when women are increasingly losing control over their own bodies, can self-representation become a form of resistance? “Just as there’s often a need for women to talk to one another for their voices to be heard,” writes Amanda Maddox, “there’s an enduring need for us to see each other, too, in all our multiple, complicated selves.”

Robert Frank’s Genre-Bending Collaborations with Musicians
by Ian Bourland, from Aperture No. 256, “Arrhythmic Mythic Ra”

An exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, showcases Frank’s collaborations with musicians Patti Smith, Tom Waits, and the Rolling Stones. “Musicians liked Frank because he turned a sympathetic eye to the margins of the American experience, foregrounding its grubbier contours,” writes Ian Bourland.

One of Photography’s Most Enigmatic Love Triangles Finally Gets Its Due
by Matthew Leifheit

In their book Body Language, Nick Mauss and Angela Miller show how PaJaMa and George Platt Lynes shaped a network of queer image culture decades before Stonewall. As Matthew Leifheit writes, “Body Language provides a fascinating, deeply researched background for the enigmatic works these queer artists left behind, helping to illuminate their contributions for generations to come.”