Aperture #256

Aperture is a nonprofit publisher that leads conversations around photography worldwide. Aperture connects global audiences and supports artists through our acclaimed quarterly magazine, books, exhibitions, digital platforms, public programs, limited-edition prints, and awards. 

In this issue:

This fall, Aperture publishes “Arrhythmic Mythic Ra,” an issue that refracts themes of family, social history, and the astrophysical through the eyes of guest editor Deana Lawson, one of the most compelling photographers working today.

“The photographs that I’m most drawn to in my conscious looking life push against our preconceived notions of social and aesthetic norms,” Lawson says. “A photograph, by its nature, can deliver more about the subject than even the photographer or the subject intend. With this in mind, I have arranged a constellation of images that operate like texts and texts that operate like pictures—fragmented, arrhythmic, mythic.”

Aperture issue 256 features the work of more than thirty photographers—including Berenice Abbott, Bruce Davidson, LaToya Ruby Frazier, Balarama Heller, Arthur Jafa, Kikuji Kawada, Sally Mann, Louis Mendes, Boris Mikhailov, and cover artist Lieko Shiga—alongside new poetry by renowned authors Ben Okri, Tracy K. Smith, and Simone White; an essay by economic anthropologist Jason Hickel; and a short story by artist Jeff Whetstone. “Lawson’s approach to reading photographs is wholly distinct and fresh. She has organized a surprising and enigmatic collection of images and texts for this special issue. It is very much an artist’s project in magazine form,” says Michael Famighetti, Aperture’s editor in chief. 

“I believe we all need to observe things we don’t understand,” Lawson says, regarding her approach to the issue. “Arrhythmic Mythic Ra” invites readers to confront the unknowability of every photograph, offering a meditation on the mysterious relationship between the visible and invisible world.

The issue coincides with Poetic Record: Photography in a Transformed World, an exhibition and two-day symposium at Princeton University, where Lawson is the Dorothy Krauklis ’78 Professor of Visual Arts. The exhibition is curated by Lawson and Famighetti, and the symposium is organized by Lawson in collaboration with Princeton colleagues Jeff Whetstone and James Welling at the Hurley Gallery, Lewis Center for the Arts. The show, on view from October 1 to December 5, 2024, includes work by many photographers featured in “Arrhythmic Mythic Ra.” The symposium takes place from October 10 to 11.

Lawson is one of the most original artists of her generation, the recipient of numerous awards, including the Deutsche Börse Photography Foundation Prize in 2022 and the Hugo Boss Prize in 2020. In addition to many exhibitions at museums and galleries worldwide, her work is the subject of the acclaimed Deana Lawson: An Aperture Monograph, published in 2018.