Aperture

Founded in 1952, Aperture is an essential guide to the world of contemporary photography that combines the finest writing with inspiring photographic portfolios. Each issue examines one theme explored in “Words,” focused on the best writing surrounding contemporary photography, and “Pictures,” featuring immersive portfolios and artist projects.

Aperture

Contributors

Agenda • Exhibitions to See

Backstory • The platform Hood Century reveals stories of modernist design and Black experience.

Viewfinder • Sakir Khader’s portraits of Palestinian perseverance.

Timeline • African Art & American Style

Studio Visit • For decades, Lise Sarfati has occupied a studio above a Parisian street Eugène Atget once roamed.

Curriculum

EDITORS’ NOTE • Photography & Painting

Njideka Akunyili Crosby Endless Returns • A Conversation with Ikechúkwú Onyewuenyi

In the Studio • Since the invention of the medium, photographers have trained their cameras on art objects and artists.

Bonnard’s Camera

Lia Darjes Vanitas • Leftovers in a backyard become a stage for improvised tableaux.

Here’s Looking at You, Kid • Why are so many contemporary painters remaking famous images?

Christopher Wool See Stop Run Print • A Conversation with Carrie Springer

Shirana Shahbazi Palimpsest

Abstraction as Event. Event as Abstraction. • How did gestural painting and photography echo each other in the 1950s?

Poppy Jones Souvenirs

Photorealism’s Living History • Instead of portraying reality, photorealism is about expanding our relationship to images, the past, and each other.

Kunié Sugiura Liquid Light • Since the late 1960s, Sugiura has defied the expectations of the art world with hybrid, dreamlike forms that test the limits of photographic expression.

Alice Wong Living Color

Vija Celmins The Surface of Things • A Conversation with Richard Learoyd

The PhotoBook Review

Break It Down • A new book offers an expansive, intimate look at California’s rebellious Vietnamese diaspora culture.

Cover Stories • Why do some photobooks thrive with unconventional designs?

The Only Game • Jason Fulford speaks with Chiara Bardelli Nonino about the Italian polymath Bruno Munari

Reviews

Endnote • Amy Sherald was swept to international prominence in 2018 with her official portrait of Michelle Obama. But she’s far from an overnight sensation, as a career-spanning survey at the Whitney Museum of American Art will soon attest. Transforming ordinary subjects into extraordinary emblems of self-possession, Sherald makes paintings that meet your gaze wherever where you stand.