TO CELEBRATE its tenth edition, ZUM presents both new and historical photo essays, in addition to texts written especially for the magazine. In an outstanding example of historical review, Professor Andreas Valentin revisits the work of José Oiticica Filho, who joined his scientific and artistic knowledge to challenge the experiment between reality and photography. Tatewaki Nio, author of the cover photo of this edition, crossed the border with Brazil to photograph Bolivia’s amazing new architecture, with buildings that at times resemble jukeboxes created with Photoshop. Three features make a powerful contribution to our reflections on the circulation of the image. In two different series, Odires Mlászho scratches the reverse side of photographs published in newspapers and transforms pictures from books into serpentine, in an obsessive search to understand how images are modified when their form, context and ink are extracted from them. Dorrit Harazim, a frequent contributor to ZUM, reviews David Shields’ polemical book, which challenges the impartiality of visual coverage of war by The New York Times – a careful reflection, which deserved to be extended to the Brazilian press.

The Canadian professor Lorna Roth questions the neutrality of photographic technology in bringing to light the history of Shirley cards, used since the 1940s to standardise the skin tones in photos. The article on Motoboy Channel, a kind of image-based social network replicated in several places round the world, discusses how digital tools can strengthen the identity of a group. This edition of ZUM also includes Nicholas Nixon’s complete series of portraits that reflect on the passage of time in the lives of four women; the condensed time in Michael Wesely’s images of the rebuilding of the Potsdamer Platz in Berlin; the incendiary production of Ukrainian Boris Mikhailov, who exposed the social and political conflicts in his country; and the uncanny, technicolour humour of Swede Lars Tunbjörk, who died in 2015 at the peak of his career. Enjoy the issue.