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Deana Lawson Guest Edits Aperture Magazine’s Fall Issue
“Arrhythmic Mythic Ra” draws from artists past and present to explore the enigmatic nature of photography.
This fall, Aperture publishes “Arrhythmic Mythic Ra,” an issue guest edited by Deana Lawson that refracts themes of family, social history, and the astrophysical through a selection of surprising and illuminating images by photographers from the past and present.
“It seems the photographs that I’m most drawn to in my conscious looking life push against our preconceived notions of social and aesthetic norms, images that are abrasive to our tastes, that make our model of the world more complicated,” Lawson writes.
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“Photography, the outlier, is most adept at reminding us of instability and fallibilities,” Lawson notes. “I believe we all need to observe things we don’t understand. And as someone who makes pictures, I’m reminded that a photograph, by its nature, can deliver more about the subject than even the photographer or the subject intend. With this in mind, I have arranged a constellation of images that operate like texts and texts that operate like pictures—fragmented, arrhythmic, mythic.”
“Arrhythmic Mythic Ra” features the work of more than thirty photographers—including Berenice Abbott, Bruce Davidson, LaToya Ruby Frazier, Balarama Heller, Arthur Jafa, Kikuji Kawada, Sally Mann, Louis Mendes, Boris Mikhailov, and cover artist Lieko Shiga—alongside new poetry by renowned authors Ben Okri, Tracy K. Smith, and Simone White; an essay by economic anthropologist Jason Hickel; and a short story by artist Jeff Whetstone.
“Lawson’s approach to reading photographs is wholly distinct and fresh. She has organized a surprising and enigmatic collection of images and texts for this special issue. It is very much an artist’s project in magazine form,” says Michael Famighetti, Aperture’s editor in chief.
The issue coincides with Poetic Record: Photography in a Transformed World, an exhibition and two-day symposium at Princeton University, where Lawson is professor of visual arts. The exhibition is curated by Lawson and Famighetti, and the symposium is organized by Lawson in collaboration with Princeton colleagues Jeff Whetstone and James Welling at the Hurley Gallery, Lewis Center for the Arts. The show, on view from October 1 to December 5, 2024, includes work by many photographers featured in “Arrhythmic Mythic Ra.” The symposium takes place from October 10 to 11.
See more in Aperture No. 256, “Arrhythmic Mythic Ra.”