Tag: Alexander Giles
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There is an undeniable allure to places where human ambition collides with the formidable power of nature, creating a landscape at once magnificent and unsettling. It is a sensation I have often felt when encountering the vast, silent giants of infrastructure, each echoing a unique story of ingenuity, necessity, and inevitable consequence. The profound resonance…
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There is a peculiar alchemy that happens when a place, steeped in layers of history and forgotten stories, finds its visual chronicler. It is a process I understand intimately, one that echoes through my own ongoing work, “Echoes of the Past,” where I grapple with the visible and invisible threads connecting memory to the mundane…
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It is strange to admit, but I did not always know how to look at nudes. Not really. I do not mean in that bashful, adolescent way we are told to feel growing up in a culture that censor’s skin while glorifying it in everything from shampoo adverts to gallery retrospectives. I mean really look,…
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It’s been several weeks since I last lifted my camera and stepped out into the world, seeking that fleeting convergence of instinct, light, and subject that might offer something worth holding onto. The days since have carried a quiet weight. Not dramatic, not despairing, but a low, persistent thrum of guilt that catches at the…
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In “I’ll Let You Be in My Dreams If I Can Be in Yours,” published by the always intriguing MACK Books in September of last year, the photographic partnership of Carolyn Drake and Andres Gonzalez unfolds a captivating visual dialogue that gracefully sidesteps the well-trodden paths of conventional documentary photography. This 144-page volume is the…
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As I ease back into the rhythm of writing, I’m reflecting on a book that truly captivated me during my recent respite: Václav Jirásek’s “Cars.” Now, I’ll admit, I’m no car person. My relationship with cars is purely functional, they get me from A to B, comfortably and safely. I appreciate a smooth drive and…
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There’s a certain comfort, a familiar embrace, in the world rendered without colour. Perhaps it’s the way it strips away the superfluous, forcing the eye to engage with form, texture, and the subtle dance of light and shadow in its purest form. For me, black and white photography has always been a foundational love, a…
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By the mid-1800s, photography had already carved out its place, snapping stiff portraits, cataloguing plants, mapping far off lands. But around the 1860s, something fresh sparked in the crowded, buzzing streets of growing cities. Early street photography was born, turning the lens loose on the wild, messy pulse of urban life. This wasn’t about posed…
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Reuben Radding’s “Heavenly Arms,” published by Red Hook Editions, is a book that resists easy categorization. It’s a collection born from a decade of wandering city streets, a search for what Radding calls “the musicality of American life, the scent of human connection and conflict.” And in its sprawling, often enigmatic tapestry of images, it…
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The promise, whispered in the fading light of my first, somewhat ill-prepared visit to East St Clement’s, has been kept. The return journey to the heart of Footdee, camera bag heavier this time with both digital and the more considered weight of my film apparatus, unfolded under a sky washed with the purest April blue.…