Aperture 246 - Spring 2022
Celebrations
The “Celebrations” issue explores how photographs envision ceremonies, festivities, and euphoria in the everyday.
Featured Content
Issue Details
Aperture magazine presents “Celebrations,” an issue that considers how photographs envision ceremonies, festivities‚ and allow us to discover euphoria in the everyday.
Throughout the issue, photographers portray exuberance against a backdrop of political strife in Beirut, pursue the thrill of wanderlust, excavate family histories, and respond to the powerful, constant urge to gather. Whether in Kinshasa’s vibrant nightlife of the 1950s and ’60s or London’s sweaty dance floors of our era, jubilation carries on, despite an ongoing, and unpredictable, pandemic.
In “Celebrations,” Lynne Tillman contributes a survey of landmark images of celebration through the years, by artists from Malick Sidibé and Peter Hujar to LaToya Ruby Frazier. Several profiles and essays—including Alistair O’Neill on Jamie Hawkesworth, Moeko Fuiji on Rinko Kawauchi, Tiana Reid on Shikeith, Mona El Tahawy on Miriam Boulos, and Anakwa Dwamena on Marilyn Nance’s views of Lagos, Nigeria during FESTAC ’77—reveal the celebratory gestures embedded in vibrant portraiture, serene slants of light, unbound queer desire, and joyous cross-cultural exchange.
Format: Paperback / softback
Number of pages: 140
Publication date: 2022-03-08
Measurements: 9.25 x 12 x 0.6 inches
ISBN: 9781597115247
Support has been provided by members of Aperture’s Magazine Council: The Kanakia Foundation, Jon Stryker and Slobodan Randjelović, and Susan and Thomas Dunn. Additional support is provided by the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council.
Aperture’s programs are made possible in part by the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of the Office of the Governor and the New York State Legislature.
Table Of Contents
Front
Agenda
Robert Adams, Tracey Rose, Thomas Demand, Raymond Depardon
Collecting
Britt Salvesen on LACMA’s new photography collection by European women
Viewfinder
Kaya Genç on Sabiha Çimen’s collaborative project with Turkish students
Studio Visit
Randy Kennedy on Kunié Sugiura and the boundaries between photography and painting
Backstory
Elisabeth Zerofsky on Mohamed Bourouissa’s prescient book about the Parisian suburbs
Curriculum
Sohrab Hura on Bruce Lee, Apichatpong Weerasethakul, and the secret life of Dayanita Singh
Words
What Makes a Celebration?
How photographs honor community and love, mourning and jubilation
Lynne Tillman
Because the Night
Roxy Lee and the freedom of club culture
Charlie Porter
When the Party Came to Lagos
Marilyn Nance’s euphoric chronicle of FESTAC ’77
Anakwa Dwamena
Around the World
Jamie Hawkesworth seeks beauty in travels from Detroit to Mongolia
Alistair O’Neill
Shikeith’s Black Uncanny
A young artist’s vision of Black queer spiritual life
Tiana Reid
After the Fall
Tobias Zielony captures the yearning for youthful self-determination
A Conversation with Kimberly Bradley
The Shape of Things
How Rinko Kawauchi became a visual poet of the everyday
Moeko Fujii
Pictures
What’s Ours
In Lebanon, Myriam Boulos finds exuberance amid revolution
Mona Eltahawy
Itaewon Story
Heinkuhn Oh’s glamorous mavericks of 1990s-era Seoul
Harry C. H. Choi
Night Revels of Kinshasa
Jean Depara’s cosmopolitan scenes of midcentury Congo
Yasmina Price
Under the Blue Sun
For Fabiola Menchelli, abstraction is a form of alchemy
Kate Palmer Albers
Hanafuda
Will Matsuda’s meditations on the American landscape
Lucy Ives
Back
Endnote
Six questions for Ryan McGinley
Other Issues
