#25

october 2023

News from America, Paulo Nazareth

Malign influences, Diego Moreno & Cristina Rivera Garza

The great time, Gê Viana & Dinho Araújo

White ethnography, Paulo Nazareth & Janaina Barros Silva Viana

[Interview] I don’t like you anymore, now that everyone likes you, Sophie Calle & Clément Chéroux

The papangu ate it, Nicolas Gondim & Natércia Pontes

Explosion, Lyle Ashton Harris & André Pitol

Outburst of a dream, a fantasy, Igi Lólá Ayedun & Katiúscia Ribeiro

Metropolis, Adriana Lestido & Paloma Vidal

From the sun to the pixel, David Campany & Penelope Umbrico

 

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A question permeates many of the works in this edition. How to face the violence inscribed in the history of photography and deeply rooted in the archives of images? With different strategies, the artists presente here look into ethnographic production, family albums, journalistic projects and even travel photographs to repossess the images, restore their stories and celebrate life.

At the opening of this edition, Paulo Nazareth’s photographs are transformed into postcards “in reverse” as they return news of a history of racism and xenophobia to the United States. Nazareth also fights the death evoked by the historical archives of black people by animating photographic reproductions with the breath of the white spots of helmeted guineafowls. Gê Viana recovers the history of the quilombolas of Alcântara by throwing light on an important set of photographs with layers of color and life; while the Mexican artist Diego Moreno uses his family snaps to reveal the creatures that inhabit the depths of the human soul.

Racial and erotic tensions overlap in Lyle Ashton Harris’s Blow Ups, which combine world news with the intimacy of the artist. Made over many years, his blow-ups have been combined for ZUM to form a single narrative. In this edition’s interview, Sophie Calle reveals how she writes her biography by projecting herself into the life of others with grains of fine irony.

Facing the visual ocean is also a way to reestablish history and redefine self-identity. Featured on the cover of this edition, artist Igi Lólá Ayedun uses self-portraits and artificial intelligence to construct a future of beings who navigate an ancestral universe. Between the ready-made and the assemblage, the costumes worn by the papangus photographed by Nicolas Gondim make the future a sampled present. The crises of the present echo the melancholy of the past, as seen in Adriana Lestido’s distant Buenos Aires, and in the economic crisis facing contemporary Argentina. In a dialog created for this edition, writer David Campany and artist Penelope Umbrico advance and retreat into a time machine to show that the reproducibility of photography, since its inception in the 19th century, remains radically subversive and current. The future sleeps in the past.

 

Thyago Nogueira, editor

 

#23

october 2022

Neighborhood blood, Affonso Uchôa & Desali & Cidinha da Silva

Updating Venus #1, Val Souza & Thyago Nogueira

Resumption, Emerson Uýra

New power, Maxwell Alexandre & Nathalia Grilo

The body against the grid, Gretta Sarfaty & Ana Maria Maia

The secret ceremony, Lourdes Grobet & Beatriz Novaro

Scumb, Justine Kurland

Memories of re-existence, Arquivo da Memória Trans Argentina & Amara Moira

Counterdream, Andrea Tonacci & Patrícia Mourão de Andrade

 

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THE 21ST CENTURY has buried the idea of a unique and shared reality. What could be universal when some talk for others, offering their views as a corollary of their privileges? In the field of art, fragmentation has invaded the frame, helping us to reverse the perspective. Original artists invest in collages and reorganize archives to suture gaps and compose new realities.

The cover and opening article in this edition, Val Souza refreshes feminism by nourishing it with images of black women. In her self-portraits, Souza confronts the look that objectifies, as well as defies the narrow patterns of beauty. Her quest to redefine Venus gave rise to a trans-historic panel celebrating the deity of independent and resilient women. In the 1970s, Gretta Sarfaty also broke patterns by ironizing her own image. Iconoclastic, Justine Kurland has cut open the photographic canon to protest against the ruling patriarchy. Survivors of the Argentinian dictatorship, women – and photographs – of the Trans Memory Archive rewrite history and bear witness to a life that resists oppression and prejudice. In the performances of the Amazon entity Uýra, resistance is also a way of learning with nature.

Throughout its history, photography has experimented with different ways of looking at the other. In a moving homage to filmmaker Andrea Tonacci, researcher Patricia Mourão de Andrade looks back at the originality, hesitations and impasses of a film art committed to the struggles of others. Lourdes Grobet, who died earlier this year, glorified wrestling by celebrating the sportsmen who give form to Mexican popular culture. The photographs of filmmaker Affonso Uchôa and artist Desali exhibit their own reality “without sentimentality, without self-pity or false exercises of empathy”, in the words of Cidinha da Silva. “They are expressions of the outskirts of Brazil through their own voice”, continues the writer from Minas Gerais, also echoing Maxwell Alexandre’s new work, which removes blacks from paintings to display them in the galleries, where they choose what to see and why. Changing times!

Thyago Nogueira, editor

 

#22

april 2022

Corpoflor, Castiel Vitorino Brasileiro

Beijing diaries, Rong Rong

As someone who consults an oracle, Fernanda Liberti & Stephanie Borges

Speaking of mud, Mabe Bethônico

The healing, Samuel Fosso & Akinbode Akinbiyi

Revolution in the roots, Arthur Jafa

My black death (2015), Arthur Jafa

Black power, Lázaro Roberto/Zumví Arquivo Afro Fotográfico & Denise Camargo

Radical futurisms, T.J. Demos & Black Quantum Futurism

 

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The war in Ukraine has rekindled the importance of images in international mobilization, but the album of photographs of human tragedies has been growing for years without all human suffering being visible.

Samuel Fosso has made the self-portrait a lifeline to overcome the violence and injustices that have marked the history of the Central African Republic. In the 1970s, he fulfilled his desires with photography; today, he uses his images to navigate between continuing pleasure and suffering. In the China of the 1990s, Rong Rong and his troupe of artists found in performance
a way to resist the social oppression that the drive for economic growth insisted on keeping invisible.

On the other side of the world, Brazilian photographer Lázaro Roberto has recorded the beauty and struggle of his people in an educational and affirmative mission. His work gave rise to the Zumví Afro Photography
Archive, one of the most important independent collections in the country.

In his collages and writings, Arthur Jafa has also rewritten history, seeking justice by denouncing the concealment by European modernism of African roots and making evident the contribution of Black art to world culture.

Using mutilated newspapers to highlight their photographic coverage, Mabe Bethônico eloquently shows us the crimes of Mariana and Brumadinho and the perverse association between industry and journalism. Who has the right to build a future, asks art historian
T. J. Demos. In order to combat the racial violence of capitalism, one must listen to Black, transsexual and indigenous art.

In the informality of Fernanda Liberti’s photographs, a silent, libertarian rebellion stitches alliances between distinct identities. Her visual album is included as a poster for ZUM subscribers.

In her photographs and writings, Castiel Vitorino Brasileiro teaches us that her transmutation is not only a form of healing, but a revolutionary opportunity for images, languages and ourselves to find new ways of being and existing.

#21

october 2021

Centralia, Poulomi Basu

In search of ghosts, Frida Orupabo & Lola Olufemi

Ongoing struggle, Deborah Willis

Fashion at the crossroads, Rafael Pavarotti & Hanayrá Negreiros

On rape, Laia Abril

The vision of the cloak, Glicéria Tupinambá

Segregation story & The long search for pride (1963), Gordon Parks

[Interview] Looking is learning, Alfredo Jaar & Fabiana Moraes

Monuments at war, Laura Erber & Demonumenta

Venezuelan photobooks, Victor Sira

 

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ZUM emerged in 2011 to promote contemporary photography and debate on its burning issues. Over the last ten years, around 400 collaborators have taken turns to reduce our visual ignorance. Alfredo Jaar, interviewed in this edition, reminds us that photographs bear a way of seeing the world which is not always visual. Deciphering them continues to be the mission of this magazine. To celebrate ZUM’s 10th anniversary, we are offering our readers a poster with another of Jaar’s maxims: “You do not take a photograph. You make a photograph.”

In the 1950s, photographer Gordon Parks exposed Alabama’s deep-rooted racism by the simple expedient of following the daily lives of a Black family. The story of the Causeys, told in bright and pungent colors, was also his. It was also that of George Floyd, whose murder at the hands of the American police force in 2020 was captured on video and sparked the spread of the Black Lives Matter movement through the world. And that of Deborah Willis, who uses photography as a means to weave together her family’s journey to the fight for respect and justice through the generations.

Without leaving the creative force to one side, the artists Poulomi Basu, Laia Abril and Frida Orupabo also use photography as a weapon to make reports. Basu confronts the cruelty of the ethnic and political conflict that fragments society in central India. With forensic detail, April dissects the historical culture of machismo that destroys lives all over the world. By unveiling colonial archives, Orupabo gives form to its traumas and obliges us to face its fruits. Recent attacks on monuments are founded on the certainty that those who control the images, control politics, as researcher Laura Erber points out when analyzing various acts of iconoclasm. But it is Glicéria Tupinambá  who commands the retaliation against colonialism by bringing the extinct cloaks of her people back to life, guided by dreams, visions and photographs. Rafael Pavarotti, whose rise to fame is stunning and meteoric, populates the world of international fashion with his army of martyrs, warriors and orix s willing to face the apocalypse. From the peaceful Icoaraci in Belém, Pará , the photographer redefined beauty and showed that peace is an ongoing struggle. Let us all take up the fight.

 

#20

april 2021

2021-2022 Calendar, Limitrofe Television & Analcancer2009 & Bouquet International

Kitchen table, Carrie Mae Weems

Colonial fictions, Denilson Baniwa

Bird against teeth, ToiletPaper & Ana Paula Maia

The real people, Paiter Suruí & coletivo Ixomasoden

Orange, Orhan Pamuk

[Interview] My people, Lita Cerqueira & Maria Hirszman

We're all together is not a tip, Allan Weber

The archeology of progress, Paulo Tavares

 

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Reaching the twentieth printed edition is quite a feat, even when there’s little to celebrate. In this ZUM#20 we bring together contributors who defy the status quo of the image and make us see what we have not seen – be it by transforming the personal universe through the mirror of collective tragedies, by tackling with irony the situation of those at the edges of capitalism, or by facing the archives on which history is based, but which can also be used to rewrite history. Like many Brazilians, the young photographer Allan Weber lost his job during the pandemic. To support his family, he put down a deposit on a motorcycle and started to work delivering orders made via cellphone apps, from his home in the north of Rio de Janeiro. The scenes of his everyday life are on the cover of this edition, revealing the beauty of an urgent and often invisible routine. It is like opening an intimate diary that Carrie Mae Weems invites us to her kitchen table, to share her anxieties. Published in full here, in times of isolation, the series of photographs completes thirty years and is ever-more current. With a touch of irresistible prose, Lita Cerqueira clicks open the shutter of the memories and loves that have marked her life. In a stroll through the night, the Turkish writer Orhan Pamuk ventures into photography to scrutinize the urban landscape of Istanbul, a city in transformation.

Photography and literature still fuse in a new tale by the writer Ana Paula Maia, inspired by the images taken for ToiletPaper, a magazine edited by the artists Maurizio Cattelan and Pierpaolo Ferrari. Visual transgression and delirium are also the pillars sustaining the work of the trans collectives Limitrofe Television, Analcancer2009 and Bouquet International. Their pop calendar, which opens this edition (transformed into a poster for subscribers) helps us to count the time we have lost. Faced with so many images, what is the role of archives? In rescuing the stories behind old snaps, the Paiter Suru. people prepare the arrows of the future. Denilson Baniwa confronts the classic iconography of Theodor Koch-Grünberg with the icons of the movies, and so rocks the frontier which divides our photographic science and pure science fiction. Facing tradition itself, the architect Paulo Tavares contests the notion of progress which permeates modern Brazilian photography and shows how it can help combat the erasure of the indigenous peoples it helped to celebrate. We carry on vigilant in difficult times.

 

# 19

december 2020

Natureza Brazileira, Rosana Paulino

The discolored angels of the plague, Teresa Margolles & Mario Bellatin

Bodies without redemption, Ren Hang & Chen Shuxia

Activist art, Naine Terena & Ascuri, Denilson Baniwa, Edgar Kanaykõ, Emerson Uýra, Gê Viana, Sallisa Rosa, Jaider Esbell, Moara Brasil, Olinda Yawar Tupinambá, Patricia Pará Yxapy e Sueli Maxakali

Violent geometry, Rosana Paulino & Renata Felinto

Notes on fundamental joy, Carmen Winant & Nathalia Lavigne

Black is king?, Beyoncé Knowles-Carter & Kênia Freitas e José Messias

Surveillance and spying, Julian Stallabrass

Incoming, Richard Mosse

The fleeting shroud, Ana Mendieta & Andréa Del Fuego

Photography is not art (1943) & Photography can be art (1981),  Man Ray

Beyond the camera lucida, Ronaldo Entler & Davi de Jesus do Nascimento

 

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To investigate the past is to give a future to the present. Artist Rosana Paulino opens this edition with a new work (in poster form for subscribers to ZUM), in which she investigates the violent roots of Brazil’s history – our true nature, which art and society insist on hiding. Ever more visible, the indigenous artists selected by curator Naine Terena break down frontiers to rewrite the history of Brazilian art from new perspectives. Both the nudes by the Chinese photographer Ren Hang and the photographic archives rescued by artist Carmen Winant suggest that the body can be a free territory, open to self-exploration. Freedom also laps at the work of Davi de Jesus do Nascimento, who uses self-portraits and his family’s collection of photographs to build his identity and ancestry.

In an extreme opposite, the faces and bodies of Ana Mendieta’s performances and the posters photographed by Teresa Margolles compel us to remind that violence against women is not just a statistic. Our body moves into the 21st century under the surveillance of images, as Julian Stallabrass’ essay on art and politics shows, or in the portraits of immigrants in search of a future, taken by artist Richard Mosse. Researchers Kênia Freitas and José Messias fully examine Beyoncé’s Afrofuturist epic to celebrate the creative potential and investigate its narrative ambiguity.

Every step we take into the future brings us closer to the past. After all, what is photography and what is it for? In their own time and in their own way, Man Ray and Roland Barthes sought an answer; in texts which have become classics they found more questions and the certainty of a varied and irreducible essence.

 

# 18

july 2020

Sonda [Probe], Ventura Profana

Africa of the mind, Deana Lawson e Zadie Smith

The coast, Sohrab Hura

The truths about deepfakes, Giselle Beiguelman

The lightness of the home, Ahlam Shibli & Marta Gili

LogicAcaso [LogicChance], Paulo Bruscky & Moacir dos Anjos

Their story, Lebohang Kganye & Napo Masheane

Desire in motion, Décio Pignatari & João Bandeira

Narcissus' notebooks, Hudinilson Jr. & Veronica Stigger

Our pain of others, Berna Reale & Marisa Mokarzel

Before & after, Eyal Weizman & Ines Weizman

 

Read ZUM #18 online.

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The world has come to a halt. And, through the lens of a virus, it has found itself to be even more unequal. Social exclusion, racism and lies have become worse. In the images that follow, the body asserts itself as a battleground and a place of resistance: be it in the performances of Berna Reale, which uncover the violence of the State; or in the clips of Hudinilson Jr., which expose the desires that we insist on repressing; or in the proud gazes portrayed by Deana Lawson, which, according to the writer Zadie Smith, are a response to the discrimination promoted by the history of men and of the image.

The political struggle also takes hold in the visual field. And we need history to face the dispute: as the artist Ahlam Shibli reveals in showing the attempt to erase the Palestinian tragedy, or through professors Eyal and Ines Weizman, by investigating tragedies visible only in the gaps between the images. The verb “to go viral” has returned to the center stage, confusing even more the boundaries between truth and falsehood, as Giselle Beiguelman explains in analyzing the spread of videos produced by artificial intelligence – the deepfakes.

In the post-war photo collages of Décio Pignatari, in the scenes of the Indian coast of Sohrab Hura, or in Lebohang Kganye’s reinvention of the family album, the surreal helps us cope with the violence and to rebuild ties. With a game of chance, artist Paulo Bruscky has created a new work, printed in fluorescent colors. This work also circulates as a special insert in the printed magazine for subscribers, reaffirming our commitment to the printed image, the physical presence.

Restrictions to free movement, established to protect us, mean that this edition is arriving late, but it is no less dashing. On the eve of it going to press, Ventura Profana presented us with some dazzling photomontages, which join symbols of the Abrahamic religions with those of the political and social situation in Brazil and in the rest of the world. The images have made it to the cover and the supplement that opens this special edition. We are all under attack, physical or virtual, but bodies and images resist.

 

# 17

october 2019

Black soul, Don McCullin & Leão Serva

White night, Feng Li & Thomas Sauvin e Léo de Boisgisson

The real in pieces, Dora Maar & Amanda Maddox

Far away is now, Vincent Catala & J.P. Cuenca

Pride in torture, Mauricio Lissovsky & Ana Maria Mauad

Heavy menu, Michael Schmidt & Thomas Weski

Unlearning decisive moments, Ariella Azoulay

Opaque future, Carlos Zílio & Paula Braga

First impressions, Anna Atkins & Joshua Chuang

Eyes of blood, Marc Ferrez & Hélio Menezes

Anatomy of a passion, Eduardo Solon & Inácio Araujo

In the beginning, everything was blue, as can be seen in the cyanotypes made by Anna Atkins, whose primacy in the history of the photobook has only been recognized almost two centuries later. In his last major work, Michael Schmidt shows the pernicious consequences of capitalism in stomach-turning photos.

Photography has never been a neutral technology, recalls the writer Ariella Azoulay in dispelling the myths of imperial origins to build other histories of photography. So does the anthropologist Hélio Menezes, who identifies the participation of the slave system in the modern progress documented by Marc Ferrez in the 19th century.

From frame to frame, the cinephile Eduardo Solon amassed a collection of moments in which his affective memory is intertwined with the history of cinema. A pioneer, Dora Maar has also reinvented the world from fragments,
with her surrealist photomontages.

The historians Mauricio Lissovsky and Ana Maria Mauad recover photos which show that torture was a routine practice in Brazil during the military dictatorship. In an exclusive interview, Don McCullin reveals that he does not feel proud of his war photographs, and advises young people to register the reality of their own cities. That’s what the Chinese photographer Feng Li does, prompted by the visual Babel of contemporary China.

Here in Brazil, the failure of public policies carves the emptiness captured by Vincent Catala in the faces and landscapes of Rio de Janeiro. Progress is also an illusion in the photographic series by Carlos Zílio, current both during the dark years of the military dictatorship and in our present.

In a time of uncertainty regarding the future, to relearn how to look is fundamental to recover the capacity to imagine the new, together.

 

# 16

april 2019

The player, Jorge Molder & Marta Mestre

Museum of the revolution, Guy Tillim & Joaquim Toledo Jr.

Killed negatives, Inês Costa

Stop time, Hiroshi Sugimoto

Real women, Camila Falcão & Clara Averbuck

A monument to modernity, Irving Penn & Eduardo Costa

Scars which speak, Silvana Jeha

Beyond Mexico, Manuel Álvarez Bravo & Gerardo Mosquera

The spam of the earth, Hito Steyerl & Giselle Beiguelman

Traces of a war, Dorrit Harazim

 

For decades photography has been carving out different clichês for itself. We need to be aware of them to dismiss them. Artist Hito Steyerl contrasts the images of perfect people that appear in spam messages to the growing number of politically invisible or discriminated citizens. Photographer Camila Falcão presents the intimacy of transsexual and transvestite people, who have built a new type of feminism while their lives and rights are under threat.

Be wary of what you see and what others have seen on your behalf. For every photograph taken by Walker Evans and other top photographers, recording the efforts of the United States government to overcome the Great Depression, thousands of others were discarded and are only now being seen. Similarly, behind every hero from the Vietnam War, there are hidden Vietcong photographers who worked for their own cause and obstinately sought victory.

South African Guy Tillim presents us with the historical and urban layers of contemporary Africa, where the colonizers were replaced by dictators, and are now opening up to global capitalism. The product of positivist criminology, an archive of penitentiary tattoos gives us a snapshot of the stories of the American, Italian, Syrian and other immigrants who crossed ways in São Paulo in the early 20th century.

While the Portuguese artist Jorge Molder investigates the effects of chance, the Japanese photographer Hiroshi Sugimoto reflects on the human desire to fix time.

We look with fresh eyes at the masterly work of Manuel .lvarez Bravo, setting aside the exoticism that the Eurocentric view imposed on the artists of his country – a tension between modernism and nationalism, which is also present in the hitherto unpublished portrait of Oscar Niemeyer by Irving Penn.

It is important to keep one’s eyes open to see better and more freely.

# 15

october 2018

The Amazonian Man, Éder Oliveira & Daniela Labra

Who am I?, Cindy Sherman & Daniel Rubinstein

The ethics of looking, Susan Meiselas & Francisco Quinteiro Pires

Treasure hunt, Mike Disfarmer & Michael P. Mattis & Judy Hochberg

The spiral shore - Rasen kaigan, Lieko Shiga

The art of being indignant, David Goldblatt & Rodrigo Moura

Off-field, Ana Vitória Mussi & Ligia Canongia

Deep dream, Alec Soth & Humberto Brito

Photographing the multitude, José Inacio Parente & Wislawa Szymborska

The paintings of Éder Oliveira which open this edition were created from photographic studio portraits or extracted from the crime sections of newspapers in the state of Pará, Brazil. How is social exclusion depicted in the press and what is its face? What prejudices do we conceal in the gulf between the way we see ourselves and how we see others? When painting photographs and omitting their original medium, Oliveira shows how visual representation expresses the inequalities of our democratic representation.

Photography is context. Female icon of the Magnum agency, Susan Meiselas tells us how she traveled the world to tell stories of abuse and oppression. Be it showing us the actions of authoritarian regimes in Latin America or living alongside Cape Verdean immigrants in Lisbon, Meiselas has reenergized photojournalism, by showing us that it is necessary to engage deeply in every click. This same lesson has been left to us by the South African photographer David Goldblatt, who died this year after living his life in a divided country. His work is a testimony to and a manifesto for the battle against racism.

Divided between the roles of photographer and protester, José Inacio Parente recorded in 1968 the spark of hope that preceded the cruelest years of the dictatorship in Brazil. Then came the dark times, as Ana Vitória Mussi also suggests in her paintings of black images of sports journalism, an allusion to the period of censorship and exacerbated patriotism.

The studio portraits made in the post-war period by eccentric Mike Disfarmer, or Alec Soth’s photos taken at the turn of the century along the Mississippi River in the USA show the disappointment that surrounds the American dream at different periods.

The renowned artist Cindy Sherman tries to free herself of her own image when she embraces the illusions of social networks. With philosophical density and remarkable sensitivity, Japanese photographer Lieko Shiga plunges into the image to offer a labyrinthine report of her daily life before and after it was swallowed up by the sharp reality of a tsunami.