brendan embser

Latest Stories

At a Photography Festival in Houston, History Confronts the Present

The complex, finely calibrated messages of the FotoFest Biennial provoke difficult questions about what art can actually do for society beyond illustration.
Rotimi Fani-Kayode, Every Moment Counts (Ecstatic-Antibodies), 1989

How Autograph’s Photobooks Champion Black British Photography

Since the 1980s, the London-based organization has propelled a commitment to the visibility of Black artists by centering identity and human rights.
David Benjamin Sherry, Manorathadayakas, 2008

What “Greater New York” Got Right about Photography in the Age of Instagram

In 2010, photography was at a turning point. How did an ambitious survey at MoMA PS1 anticipate a generation of artists who define the field today?

Gus Aronson’s Tokens of New York in the Age of Isolation

In a new series made in Upper Manhattan and the Bronx, the photographer searches for signs that could be taken for wonders.

FUJIFILM

The Photographer Whose Mother Built Trump Tower

Res searches for bonds between people, from the family household to community protest.

What It Takes to Be a Photo Editor

For TIME magazine’s editor at large, photography is about speaking truth to the world.

Why Farah Al Qasimi Has Her Eye on You

The photographer and cocurator of the 2020 Aperture Summer Open speaks about glamorous bodegas, New York maximalism, and why art is essential—even during a crisis.

What is a Feminist Photobook?

Carmen Winant on feminism, photobooks, and the radical gestures of world-building.

Introducing: Steven Molina Contreras

Between Long Island, El Salvador, and Peru, an American Family’s Emotional Reunion.

Delirious Cities: The 2019 Aperture Summer Open

Meet the twenty-three artists asking how photographs can define the diversity of urban experience today.

Introducing: Luther Konadu

For the latest installment of “Introducing,” Aperture speaks with Luther Konadu, whose constructed photographs riff on the work of Carrie Mae Weems and Paul Mpagi Sepuya.

The Pain and Pleasure of Queer Life in Egypt

Mahmoud Khaled considers the legacy of the “Cairo 52,” the men who were arrested in 2001 at a gay-friendly nightclub.

2019 Portfolio Prize Winner: Mark McKnight

Mark McKnight’s black-and-white images of bodies and landscapes challenge Eurocentric ideas about male beauty—and aim to make “straight” photography a little less straight.

3 Photo Editors On Why You Should Enter the Aperture Summer Open

Essential advice on submitting to Aperture’s annual open-call exhibition.

From August Sander, Stirring Portraits of Nazis and Jews

An extraordinary photobook reveals the lives of persecuted Germans during World War II.

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Aperture 254

This spring, Aperture presents “Counter Histories,” an issue produced in collaboration with Magnum Foundation and informed by their ongoing Counter Histories grant initiative, featuring artists from around the world who tell new stories about how the past informs the present.