Essays

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How Photographers Navigate the Challenges of Working on Assignment

Is it possible to retain an artistic vision—and ethical integrity—while making images for news media and fashion brands? Four photographers speak about responsibility, community, and the push for structural change.

What Can Photographs Tell Us about Latinx Identity in the US?

Pilar Tompkins Rivas, guest editor of Aperture’s Winter 2021 issue, on the images that collectively chart the history and future of Latinx culture.
Theo Eshetu, Brave New World, 1999.

A Prolific Video Artist’s Infinite Screens

Raised in Africa and Europe, Theo Eshetu makes kaleidoscopic films that reflect the dilemmas of biography and belonging.
Lauren Halsey, land of the sunshine wherever we go II (detail), 2021.

The Artists Building a Black Cosmos

In imagery that fuses Black artifacts, rituals, and fantasies, three artists offer blueprints for a jubilant new universe.

The Luminous Openness of Rinko Kawauchi’s Photographs

In her images of keenly observed gestures and details, Kawauchi reveals the mysterious and beautiful realm at the edge of the everyday world.

Judith Joy Ross’s Timeless and Empathic Portraits

Ross has been called one of the greatest portrait photographers in the history of the medium. As a long-overdue retrospective opens in Europe, a new generation will witness her radical belief in the individual.

After 9/11, Do We Prefer Images to Reality?

In three timely new books, David Levi Strauss considers the profound effects that photography, terror, and divisive politics have had on the twenty-first-century imagination.

A Photographer’s Heartbreaking Images of the 9/11 “Missing” Posters

In the weeks after 9/11, Steve Pyke photographed posters of the missing from the Twin Towers. Published for the first time twenty years later, they remain instant memorials to an incalculable loss.
Portrait of two women

The New Era of South Asian Photography Festivals

Amid a pandemic and political crises, three festivals rethink their format—and chart a new path for arts communities in Bangladesh, India, and Nepal.
Catherine Wagner, Constantine Fragments, 2014

From Rome to Disneyland, Catherine Wagner Finds “Clues” to Civilization

Since the 1980s, the photographer has searched for the foundations of culture—and discovered gender codes in high art and kitsch.

The Photography Collectives Telling New Stories across South Asia

From Nepal to Sri Lanka, artists and curators are joining forces to reimagine the region’s cultural histories.

William Gedney’s Timelessly Intimate Photographs of San Francisco in the 1960s

A new publication of Gedney’s work shows why his lyrical images deserve a closer look.

The Photographers Crafting Visionary Narratives of the African Diaspora

Drawing inspiration from history, legend, and speculative fiction, artists grapple with the legacy of slavery and colonial empire—and conjure images of the “Black fantastic.”
Sunil Gupta, Towards an Indian Gay Image, Qutb Minar 2, 1983

Sunil Gupta’s Vision for a Queer Politics of Belonging

Gupta has spent his career photographing queer subjects in India—and inspired a new generation to insist on making confident, unflinching work.

How Three Photographers Are Working through India’s COVID-19 Crisis

Aditi Jain, Uzma Mohsin, and Prarthna Singh speak about the vital role of art as a form of witness and protest.

In Delhi, Dynamic Images and Shared Solidarities

Rahaab Allana, guest editor of Aperture’s Summer 2021 issue, considers the relationship between photography, urbanism, and activist trajectories from within and outside a restless city.

Tim Davis on the Joys and Pitfalls of Seeing through the Camera

In a new book, the photographer reflects on the act of camera-seeing and his expansive visual poem celebrating Los Angeles.

Can Photographs Help Communicate the Experience of Incarceration?

Artist and educator Nigel Poor’s new book reveals an archive from San Quentin and a record of a prison photography workshop.

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Aperture No. 257

Aperture presents “Image Worlds to Come: Photography & AI,” a timely and urgent issue that explores how artificial intelligence is quickly transforming the field of photography and our broader culture of images.

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