-
Close Enough: Sabiha Çimen Close Enough: New Perspectives From 12 Women Photographers From Magnum was initiated and staged at the International Center For Photography, New York, September 2022 – January 2023. The exhibition explores the practices of twelve emerging and established women photographers and the relationality they create within global situations, local communities and with individual subjects. This exhibition was made in collaboration with Sara Ickow, Dillon Goldschlag and an installation team at ICP; graphic designer Sarah Gephart; and collaborations with the participating artists.
-
Close Enough: Sabiha Çimen, Newsha Tavakolian, Alessandra Sanguinetti Each contributing photographer openly narrates their creative journey ranging from reflections upon long-term personal projects through to work-in-progress and new pivots in their image-making practices. They give highly personal accounts of their visual vantage points and create a constellation of photographic relativity in this exhibition.
-
Close Enough: Newsha Tavakolian “For the Sake of Calmness is perhaps my most personal project to date. One Winter morning in 2016, I was sitting in my home and enduring Premenstrual Syndrome while I faced towards Mount Damavand, the highest volcanic peak in Iran. I had this realization that in front of me was a glorious albeit inactive volcano that held this unending possibility that it might erupt at any moment. I was starting to work out how to visualize the deep bodily intensity of PMS in an abstracted way. The film is about the state of PMS but it is equally an analogy of the state of a country.”
-
Close Enough: Newsha Tavakolian, Alessandra Sanguinetti Set in the context of the 75th anniversary since the founding of the Magnum Agency, Close Enough presents the working practices of the women photographers whose distinct visions are currently shaping the scope of photographic perspectives within Magnum.
-
Close Enough: Alessandra Sanguinetti “I first met Guille and Belinda in 1998, while working on a project on farm animals on and nearby my family’s farm in Argentina, three hours south of Buenos Aires. They were nine-years old and I was twenty-eight. They were raised on neighboring farms and would spend much of their summer daytimes at the home of their grandmother, Juana, who I would often visit to drink mate and chat and to photograph her animals.”
-
Close Enough: Alessandra Sanguinetti
-
Close Enough: Alessandra Sanguinetti
-
Close Enough: Hannah Price “I made City of Brotherly Love over ten years ago, as a young twenty-something who had grown up in suburban Colorado and just moved to live and work in Philadelphia. It was a transitional moment in my life and the moment when I first understood how to use my camera to gain consent to approach strangers and humanize complicated situations.”
-
Close Enough: Hannah Price
-
Close Enough: Susan Meiselas Together, they move and challenge the photography collective’s boundaries beyond those that have previously been set - deepening Magnum’s anchoring of the photographic quest to take account of human experience and survival.
-
Close Enough: Susan Meiselas “At the start of every project, it is key for me to find something to follow or to immerse myself in. For A Room of Their Own, this connection happened in an unexpected visit. I walked into a women’s refuge whose walls were decorated with art, and immediately felt it was comfortable and safe enough to welcome women, for as much or as little as they wanted to contribute.”
-
Close Enough: Carolyn Drake “I think my work with the women members of ‘Knit Club’ is a defining moment in my shift towards collaboration and in my journey to address problems of representation. Like many artists, I struggle with and challenge the power balance between the author and the subject.”
-
Close Enough: Carolyn Drake
-
Close Enough: Carolyn Drake
-
Close Enough: Carolyn Drake
-
Close Enough: Olivia Arthur “I was looking to capture what it is that makes us feel comfortable in our own skin and how we express that. This quest has led me to make work with young people, about touch and the lack of it during the pandemic, about sexuality, and about physicality and intimacy both in private and public spaces. Most recently, my interests in technology and how it can be used to enhance our bodies or create physical connections over long distance has become part of this constellation of inquiries and ideas that have driven me.”
-
Close Enough: Olivia Arthur
-
Close Enough: Olivia Arthur
-
Close Enough: Myriam Boulos The contributing photographers bring direct and uniquely personal vantage points into photography and the constant negotiation of gaining access, holding their bearings, and moving deeper in relation to human subjects and experiences – the challenge to photographers to get “close enough” called forth by the founder of Magnum, Robert Capa.
-
Close Enough: Myriam Boulos “I am realizing more and more that photography is the answer to my failures. Before anything else, photography responds to my need to get closer to people, to understand what is real, and to be present. The act of taking photographs triggers intense moments of reality for me, and a way of literally putting a light onto what is oppressed and normalized. Photography can be an abuse of power, but we also need it to be an essential tool for telling our personal, collective, and local stories.”
-
Close Enough: Myriam Boulos“I am realizing more and more that photography is the answer to my failures. Before anything else, photography responds to my need to get closer to people, to understand what is real, and to be present. The act of taking photographs triggers intense moments of reality for me, and a way of literally putting a light onto what is oppressed and normalized. Photography can be an abuse of power, but we also need it to be an essential tool for telling our personal, collective, and local stories.”
-
Close Enough: Myriam Boulos
-
Close Enough: Myriam Boulos
-
Close Enough: Bieke Depoorter “Agata and I met at a particular point in both of our lives, where we could each see ourselves from the vantage point of the other. If we had met for the first time now, I don’t know if we could have nurtured our collaboration; maybe we would have stopped after one picture. Photographers can hold a lot of problematic power. We decide how our subjects are presented, and we often pretend to be invisible. Agata pushes me beyond this through the ways that she wants her life to be represented.”
-
Close Enough: Bieke Depoorter
-
Close Enough: Bieke Depoorter
-
Close Enough: Cristina De Middel “In 2015, I put an advert in a newspaper in Rio de Janeiro looking for clients of sex workers who were willing to pose for me in exchange for money. To my surprise, many men living in the city responded to this transactional invitation and their portraits and interviews became the first chapter of Gentlemen´s Club. Over the past seven years, I have travelled to ten cities that have links with the business of sex to make a total of 100 portraits.”
-
Close Enough: Lua Ribeira
-
Close Enough: Lua Ribeira “My work almost always start with something that I am really close to. I listen to Trap and Drill music, observing how these cultural movements articulate the precarity of living through crisis-after-crisis combined with the euphoria of making everything in your own way and sharing it directly and without any censorship from intermediary platforms or global corporations. The “DNA” of this frenetic and raw expression of hedonism versus nihilism, the darkness versus joy, the glorification of wealth and banalization of violence is resonating globally for a reason.”
-
Close Enough: Lua Ribeira“My work almost always start with something that I am really close to. I listen to Trap and Drill music, observing how these cultural movements articulate the precarity of living through crisis-after-crisis combined with the euphoria of making everything in your own way and sharing it directly and without any censorship from intermediary platforms or global corporations. The “DNA” of this frenetic and raw expression of hedonism versus nihilism, the darkness versus joy, the glorification of wealth and banalization of violence is resonating globally for a reason.”
-
Close Enough: Lua Ribeira
-
Close Enough: Lua Ribeira
-
Close Enough: Lua Ribeira
-
Close Enough: Nanna Heitmann “The war in Ukraine is being fought with bullets and artillery but it started years ago on Russian television. In this installation, I am piecing together a visual account of this point in time when the majority of Russians are living in an alternate reality, where the Russian army is portrayed as triumphant in its so-called “liberation” of the Donbas region and “de-militarization” of the “fascist forces” in Ukraine.”
-
Close Enough: Nanna Heitmann
-
Close Enough: Nanna Heitmann
-
Close Enough: Nanna Heitmann The twelve photographers’ work shown here collectively create a chorus of inspirational narratives about the practice of photography and the experiences and situations that they navigate. With determination, urgency and resourcefulness, each photographer takes account of their practice, inviting us to get close enough.
-
Close Enough: New Perspectives From 12 Women Photographers From Magnum was initiated and staged at the International Center For Photography, New York, September 2022 – January 2023. The exhibition explores the practices of twelve emerging and established women photographers and the relationality they create within global situations, local communities and with individual subjects. This exhibition was made in collaboration with Sara Ickow, Dillon Goldschlag and an installation team at ICP; graphic designer Sarah Gephart; and collaborations with the participating artists.
