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Nov 22: Week in Photography
Your lens to the internet's most powerful photographs. 📸 MOST POWERFUL PHOTO OF THE WEEK 📸 Ivan Pierre Aguirre “Overwhelmed” means to be buried or drowned, to be defeated completely. In this image from El Paso, we see inmates charged with stacking bodies into a morgue truck — the city's hospitals are close to the point of rationing care, and almost 800 people have died since the outbreak began. This shot by Ivan Pierre Aguirre feels clandestine, a view over a fence to see a part of a pandemic that Texan officials have tried to downplay. The frame speaks to the severity of the crisis, even as more and more of the country becomes overwhelmed by rapidly rising COVID-19 cases.
📸For Your 👀 Only: A Look At The Lagos Home Exhibition The LagosPhoto international art festival has become a big deal in recent years, attracting photo talent from across the region and becoming a key hub for editors and art buyers. With the coronavirus pandemic, the festival itself has been postponed and a digital exhibition, Home Museum, has been curated from a wide-ranging call for submissions that explores the ideas of identity and restitution. We spoke with editorial director Azu Nwagbogu and Oluwatoyin Sogbesan, one of the guest curators, for their insights into how this unique and powerful collection came together.
How did you approach curating such personal ideas, from such a wide open call, into such a unique platform?
OS: Inclusive participation was the guiding model. If the collections were in line with the open call, they made it through to be exhibited on the platform. As curators and guest curators, we facilitated the participants to choose their objects of virtue, tell their story and invite the world to their inner space — “‘their homes.’” Nwannediuto Ebo Can you talk a bit about how the home is a museum, and where that idea came from?
OS: Our homes are refuges, where tangible and intangible are likely stored. This is a reality we latched on to with a broader understanding that heirlooms that became iconic, valuable collections started their journeys from “the home.” The home was the very first exhibition space that allowed both welcome and unsolicited visitors in to appreciate our everyday collections. The home is that space where our identity is formed, our values constructed and our heritage defined. The open call helped to call our attention back to the important place of “the home” to evoke significant individual and communal histories. Hence, the open call says, “As we go about our busy lives, we often forget the small things worth preserving.” The pandemic situation also validated the idea and made the home a safe haven, a treasure cave and space of remembrance and reconnection with the self, the past, and with the world. In these trying times, “the home” is easiest to access than a museum.
Can you talk more about why restitution is healing?
OS: Restitution is healing because it means that there is an acknowledgment of a scar from an unjustified injury. It implies the admission of wrong actions of looting through force, or inequitable conditions of foreigners in Africa and beyond. It indicates the validation of a past devoted to informing the present towards a well-documented future. To say the least, it means “empowerment” back to original owners and recognition for their authorship and contribution to humanity. Being able to reconnect in some sort of ways is the beginning of the journey towards healing. With everyday gadgets with camera functions, the power is in the hands of the people irrespective of age, gender, race, education, status, or geographical location. That in itself is satisfying as no one is cut off from the discourse on restitution. Kervin St. Pere Any final thoughts? AN: For its eleventh edition, LagosPhoto has turned its attention to the crucial political and civic ramifications of restitution. Rerouting the optic and debates from Paris, London, Amsterdam, and Berlin back to Nigeria and the continent, it steps aside from the opinions of academics and museum directors. The focus instead is on citizens, friends, and families and their response to the museum of the future. Restitution and photography become perfect partners in the process.
We recognised the potential of LagosPhoto Festival to reverse power relations and mobilise civic interest in the question of restitution and the museum of the future. With the theme of Rapid Response Restitution, photography would help to forge a democratic understanding of cultural heritage and what it might mean for future generations. Operating as a digital platform, this edition responds to the necessities of the lockdown situation. The first wave of COVID-19 had forced us all to remain inside and reflect on our immediate environment, our belongings, and our personal libraries made of artefacts, paper, and memories.
Our challenge was to develop a concept that might bring the museum of the 21st century quite literally closer to home, into private spheres of historical and cultural knowledge. The danger of reifying the concept of home into a normative discourse was evident to us. Yet we were more interested in breaking the museum down to its smallest, most humble common denominator, far away from the colonial emporium and toward a community-centred crucible of experience.
In June 2020, we began conceptualizing the scaffolding of this new online museum. Birds of Knowledge, a young artists’ research cooperative, was invited to design its infrastructure. This group would mirror the cultural and geographic diversity of the co-creators of Home Museum.
Interested in building an autonomous digital venue for the exchange of artistic research during a pandemic, Birds of Knowledge were ready to experiment with a model driven by visual conversations and poetic narratives that might help to suspend the deep-seated colonial systems of classification that predetermine the discourse of the museum. This would be achieved through a self-generated process of assembling images and texts in line with personal interests and research. Presented without reference to age, gender, or nationality, Home Museum would offer alternative routes into the conversation on restitution. It would highlight authorship and inclusivity. Infused with humility, love, and generosity, each photograph says: “Come into my home, here is my history. This is my museum.” Diana Baltag 📸THE WEEK'S PHOTO STORIES FROM BUZZFEED NEWS 📸 This week, we're starting to go deep, looking at what we like, what's working, whats not. There are so many good photographers out there — here are some of the best photo stories from across the internet, and from our desk. THIS INMATE'S PERSPECTIVE ON PHOTOGRAPHY BLEW MY MIND Alec Soth / Magnum SEE THE FULL STORY
15 PHOTOGRAPHERS TO FOLLOW Laurence Philomene SEE THE FULL STORY
THIS PRINT SALE IS A TRUE DELIGHT Sofia Lopez Manan SEE THE FULL STORY
📸SOME HOPE 📸 Ravensbeard Wildlife Center via Reuters This northern saw-whet owl was rescued from the Christmas tree at Rockefeller Center — he doesn't look too pleased about it, but it's sometimes hard to let people take care of you. "That's it from us this time — see you next week!" —Kate “We are making photographs to understand what our lives mean to us.”— Ralph Hattersley Want More? Go To JPG Homepage
📝 This letter was edited and brought to you by the News Photo team. Kate Bubacz is the photo director based in New York and loves dogs. You can always reach us here.
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