Alessandra Sanguinetti Some Say Ice MACK/Magnum Photo A girl plays the piano convincingly. Another different girl, spotlit, plays a different piano, slightly less convincingly. Steam rises from a river, possibly black, convincingly. A buffalo mourns Its condition confined between fences during a winter snowstorm, most convincingly. A man’s hands clean a six-shooter pistol, and I […]
As a collector of vintage photography with a penchant for the curious, horrific, and sometimes downright traumatic, it is no surprise that I gravitated to Ossian Brown‘s book Haunted Air published by Jonathan Cape in 2011. There also appears to be a new 2022 edition available. I am reviewing the book now as it […]
“All are slightly queasy in appearance, the Technicolor saturation making the images unbelievable to some extent, which adds to the delirium of her dream state”. High-intensity color saturation in a photograph creates something of a parallel universe in which things can feel positively uncanny. I would suggest that in terms of historical notation […]
“I felt ambivalent about what was unfolding but in the end, the psychic energy and latent subtext, prefaced by a short story involving a headless woman, a bird and a photographer was too compelling to dismiss.”
“I think of the USA as an adolescent country with a made up history and in a constant tantrum to make itself the most important place in the world. I wanted this work to be anti-documentary, if that is even possible, and to stress that things are simple, complicated, entwined and conflicted at the same time”
“A good number of the images allegedly had annotations written on the images such as “not interested in pictures”, “Deceased”, and “Looks better from the ground” written on them”
“Luc Sante, an American writer and photographer, who was from Belgium originally, said my pictures look like unexploded bombs, there is so much energy in them. They look quiet, but inside, they are full of energy, that is waiting to explode. So, I think people are feeling there is more than only the image.”
“That’s because the energy from extreme situations provides drama, and drama is a photographer’s gift”
“In my opinion, the devastating confusion that capitalism wreaks upon the coherence of memory and history renders almost all imagery, and in particular, photography, as bearer of the uncanny.”
