It is said that the kamaitachi spirit resembles a weasel, rides on a whirlwind, flies through the air, and moves so incredibly fast that before you know it it’s already gone. With strong and sharp claws, the invisible beast attacks suddenly and sucks blood from its victim’s wounds. Such a kamaitachi, half-naked and with its clothing blown up by the wind, jumps high in front of a group of curious farm children. Darkly surreal, a female head appears under a male arm and stares at the viewer, her eyes wide open. An androgynous figure runs across Tokyo. A young woman sits pensively between portrai ..read more

If tourists flock to Tokyo to be wowed by its urban acceleration, Kyoto provides the inverse as a serene city showcasing the splendors of ancient Japan. During the height of the pandemic, the city saw an influx of new residents seeking more space and a less frenetic lifestyle. With new galleries opening and support from the local government for the arts, it continues to evolve as a vibrant center of contemporary culture.  Kyotographie, a photography festival held annually (excepting interruptions due to the pandemic), smartly takes advantage of the city’s overwhelming number of shrines, t ..read more

A young woman sits on a plastic-covered bed in a cheap motel room. She is dressed without pageantry or occasion, in a black tank top and a pair of shorts. A small tattoo is visible on the inside of her elbow. She is barefoot. Her gaze is one of neither confrontation nor seduction. “See me as I am,” she seems to be saying. “Look at me as I look at you.” Behind her, a poster depicting a flat, computer-rendered landscape of a beach is tacked to the wall. This could be Vietnam, but it could also be anywhere tropical. What does it mean to grow up in a country violently marked by colonization and wa ..read more

To make the Jamaican national dish of ackee and codfish, first you have to find ackees, a fruit that’s poisonous before it’s fully ripe but delicious when cooked with garlic, onions, peppers, and tomatoes. One of the purveyors of canned ackee, originally native to West Africa, is the company Caribbean Dreams. “Which struck me as being hilarious,” says the photographer Samantha Box. “Because it’s like, who’s dreaming of what? What are these dreams? What does it mean for this thing to be called Caribbean Dreams when it’s a symbol of Jamaican culture?”  Box set these questions in motion with ..read more

Ziyu Wang grew up in Xinyang in a traditional Chinese family, meaning that he was constantly aware of the gendered expectations that his parents have for him. “My father had hoped I would become a government official, because in his eyes, this was a symbol of masculine power,” Wang says. “As a result, I took a photo of myself wearing a suit against a blue background, as in China, all government officials have ID photos with this backdrop.” But what might it mean for Wang, who is queer and now lives and works in London and Shanghai, to upend these expectations, and to challenge himself and othe ..read more

The Image Equity Fellowship, in partnership with Google, Aperture, For Freedoms, and FREE THE WORK, aims to support the next generation of image makers of color in the US. Throughout a six-month fellowship, a group of twenty artists made new bodies of work with the dedicated mentorship of Lebanese filmmaker and photographer Ahmed Klink; American artist and 2016 Guggenheim Fellow Lyle Ashton Harris; photographer and documentarian Bee Walker; multi-hyphenate creative Mahaneela; and Rujeko Hockley, assistant curator at the Whitney Museum of American Art. An exhibition of their work Through Fire a ..read more

In what sense are the gestures in Joanna Piotrowska’s pictures photographic? A woman, whose face we do not see, crosses her arm over her torso, the tip of her index finger landing below her clavicle. A man lifts his head, although the picture is framed so that we can see only his neck and Adam’s apple. An older woman presses her closed fist onto the forehead of a younger woman. An unshaven young man lies with his head cradled in the arms of an older man. Another woman in side profile rests her head against a wall, her arms dangling, midway up a stairwell. Joanna Piotrowska, Untitled, 2022 Joan ..read more

For twenty-two years, every day, wherever he was in the world, Juan Pablo Echeverri took a self-portrait. A moment of action, followed by five minutes of waiting. His life was active, restless, multifarious—but the daily ritual of facing himself in a photo booth, this constant thread, was never skipped. The genre of artists’ self-portraits has a rich and well-documented history—think of the eighty that Rembrandt made in his lifetime—and within the history of photography there is a whole lineage of artists who have interrogated the serial self-portrait at the core of their practice, embrac ..read more

On May 10, 1994, South Africans inaugurated Nelson Mandela as their first Black president, bringing to an end the country’s notorious system of apartheid. Nearly thirty years later, crucial questions remain about ensuring equal rights for all South Africans. How might these citizens account for the trauma of violent racial segregation? How can they reconcile personal memories with official state accounts? And what role can artists play in creating new avenues for those personal and national narratives? Tell Me What You Remember, curated by Emma Lewis and currently on view at the Barnes Founda ..read more

Tommy Kha told me about a moment, not too long ago, when he was photographing his mother and she asked him: Why is art always so sad? She fled Vietnam in the eighties, raising Tommy and his sister in Memphis. When they were children, the history that had delivered their family to America was passed down in fragments and gestures. It was a story that was never told. Rather, it was carried through expressions or habits, with a tendency toward conversational dead ends, and in the chasm between shouting and silence. In her closet, Tommy’s mother had kept photographs from when she was younger, some ..read more