An excerpt of images collected over 20 years from popular fashion magazines offers expression to the artist's queer and feminist desires.
An essay in the form of painting studies - including persons, dogs, a frog, a hoofed animal, fish, hare, trees and plants.
A collection of photographs from the archives of the icon of underground and alternative Parisian nights Dora Diamant.
A self-taught photographer, Dora Diamant has left thousands of photos. The Dora Diamant Association, custodian of this archive, and Éditions L'Amazone have joined forces to bring them to life by devoting a series of publications to them. Each volume of the Dora Diamant Archive was created by a different person and is the result of a subjective selection and arrangement specific to its author.
Figurehead of the Parisian underground and queer nights, photographer, DJ, multimedia and polymorphic artist, Dora Diamant was the daughter of Pascal Doury.
Selected by Yamil Farah and Mélanie Matranga.
Renowned Japanese photographer Takashi Homma observes his daily life through the poses of his cat.
A cat wanders, perches, and lounges in various spaces around a humble Tokyo apartment. It is perfectly tranquil in its surroundings, simply going about its daily life. In one image, the cat lays serenely amidst pot plants on the balcony, squinting in morning sunlight; in others, it balances precariously on the edge of the bath, snuggles beneath a sleeping bag, plays in a cardboard box, hides beneath an open umbrella. Here and there, evidence of the cat's fellow inhabitant in the apartment—a man, who also happens to be the internationally renowned photographer Takashi Homma—creeps into the frame. A knee, a foot, a shock of blonde hair, half of a face. There are artefacts of his life and practice too. Framed photographic prints draped in bubblewrap lean against a wall; a tangle of musical effects pedals make for colourful constellation against the cool blue of the carpet.
Many have written of the unique atmosphere and energy of Takashi Homma's pictures. His photographic mannerisms are so light, so subtly empathetic to his subjects, that we all but dissolve into the world he creates. The photographs that populate This Is Not My Cat are no exception. Unencumbered by a sense of fussiness or perfection, these images are casual, diaristic, and quotidian. As viewers, we become part of the images and their atmosphere, rather than poring over their details. They are about feeling as much as they are about looking
The title—This Is Not My Cat—seems multipart. Whereas the anomaly imbedded in Homma's iconic photobook Tokyo and My Daughter is that the girl pictured was not in fact his own child, here, his own cat is recast as belonging to another. Or perhaps it is that a cat's independence cannot be truly curbed. They quietly live, play, and exist alongside us. They move through life in our shadow, but forever in their own world.
Takashi Homma (born 1962, lives and works in Tokyo) is one of the most internationally recognised Japanese photographers active at the front lines of contemporary photography today.
Salvation is a previously-unpublished artist book by Jimmy DeSana that he conceptualized shortly before his death in 1990. The publication contains 44 of the artist’s late photographic abstractions that quietly and poetically meditate on loss, death, and nothingness. Depicted within the works are images of relics, body parts, flowers, and fruits that DeSana altered using collage and darkroom manipulations to create pictures that are both intimate and other-worldly. Salvation provides a nuanced and sophisticated counterpoint to the prevailing work around HIV/AIDS at the time, which tended to favor bold political statements.
Variations of many of the works in this book were first presented at DeSana’s last show with Pat Hearn Gallery in 1988. Shortly thereafter, the artist began assembling a maquette of Salvation, using black and white images as place holders for the color works that he intended to comprise the final layout of the publication. Sadly, he was unable to fully realize Salvation in his lifetime, but on his deathbed, he dictated instructions to his longtime friend Laurie Simmons for completing the work; instructions which she noted on each page of the single-copy maquette. With these notes, Simmons was able to match extant slides and sequencing. Simmons’ studio chose color gels from DeSana’s archive for each corresponding black and white image in the assembly of the publication. Thankfully, due to this recuperative work, Salvation—long-considered to be DeSana’s last major work—is now available for the first time, with every step taken to honor and embody DeSana’s original vision.
Jimmy DeSana (1949-1990) grew up in Atlanta, GA, and received his bachelor’s degree from the Georgia State University in 1972 before relocating to New York’s East Village in the early 1970s. Recent solo and two-person exhibitions include The Sodomite Invasion: Experimentation, Politics and Sexuality in the work of Jimmy DeSana and Marlon T. Riggs, Griffin Art Projects, Vancouver, Canada, 2020, and Remainders, Pioneer Works, Brooklyn, NY, 2016. DeSana’s work can be found in numerous public collections including the Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston, MA; Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, IL; Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, TX; Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY; and the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY, among others. A major retrospective of DeSana’s work was exhibited at the Brooklyn Museum, New York, in 2022, accompanied by a catalogue co-published by the Brooklyn Museum and DelMonico Books.
It is a royal-format (16x24) print review of 250 pages, offering a manifesto where Global South narratives and ideas come to life. Through photography, articles, poems, and essays, each issue deconstructs dominant narratives, highlighting diverse voices. Presented in their original languages with English translations, the review fosters a global dialogue. Issue 0, titled "Ummah – Divine Oneness, Worship Plurality", explores the rich diversity of Islam, challenging colonial stereotypes and offering a new vision from Muslim and culturally Muslim perspectives.
The Hortus project is an open investigation into the nature of seemingly common objects through 'Floriography', urban gardens, and the history of female rights. Hortus was inspired by urban gardens in West Amsterdam and created with its plants by Lilia Luganskaia.
Joanna Cresswell about the 'Hortus':
History teaches us that a language of flowers can communicate endless things about the culture in which it emerged, and herein lies Lilia Luganskaia's interest. Taking inspiration from the world of 19th Century sentimental flower books, Hortus presents itself as a set of notes towards a modern handbook for contemporary floriography, considering what the discipline might look like today. By collecting common flora across one year in the urban gardens around her home in Amsterdam and cross-referencing their meanings with publications from the past, Luganskaia reflects on their natures, their roles, and the symbolic familiarity they might hold for the communities living with them. A female artist and reader of the twenty-first century, she seeks out the essence of modern life through her lens, and through flowers, just like the women who came before her.
Lilia Luganskaia (1990) Russian - Dutch multidisciplinary artist and author, based in Amsterdam. In her artistic practice, Lilia uses her background in documentary techniques to focus on what she calls ‘investigating reality’. Her practice is research-based, Lilia decodes abstract notions such as love, tourism, bureaucracy, politics, and feminism through the use of constructed images, sculptures, videos, and installations. One of the key elements of her work is to understand multiple aspects of the photographic image.