Aperture Magazine launches earlier in March its 226th issue. Available in newsstands and entitled American Destiny, this edition focuses on contemporary America past, present and future.
The 2017 Spring edition includes marginal explorations by Brian Sholis, a photographic history of American working classes byDavid Campany, a poetic dive into latinos communities (Kathya Maria Landeros), the forgotten territories of industrial North (Jim Goldberg & Donovan Wylie) and their classes and races issues (Mark Neville and his Braddock / Sewickley series) or the Wisconsin farmlands (Alessandra Sanguinetti). Aperture’s will to apprehend contemporary America through photography, both in its social concernes and in its political issues, depicts with brio a deeply-divided country with an uncertain future.
The magazine’s editorial sets the tone: “In this contentious moment in history, the stories we tell are a social responsibility”. Conversation between the artist LaToya Ruby Frazier and the academic Kellie Jones following this statement evokes duties for contemporary photographers to apprehend present, in the legacy of Walker Evans, James Agee, Gordon Parks or Danny Lyon. To varying degrees, the photographers presented in those pages are among their legacy.
American Destiny emphasizes the new and noticeable awaking of American cultural circles. Among the political exhibitions at MoMA or ICP or through different artistic actions implanted throughout the territory ( like the For Freedoms collective), photography seems today at the heart of a twofold process: depicting American transformations, taking images as a way to fight. End to end, these different works by photographers thus play a plural role. They are both witnesses of their time, actors for social initiatives and committed to artistic gestures. Photography has therefore the necessity to document social changes and contrary climates across America in this hectic times.
Aperture 226, American Destiny
Available since March 7 – 25$
