From portraits taken around Harlem in the 1940s to assignments for Life magazine to the 1963 March on Washington, Gordon Parks (1912-2006) wielded his camera as a tool for social [...]
“It’s not that we have a short time to live, but that we waste much of it,” wrote stoic philosopher Lucius Seneca. The phrase appeared in his essay “De Brevitate [...]
If you were to rip open a tattered matchbox, what might you find hidden in its confines? And what’s lurking behind biological renderings and advertisements? Jason Limon imagines a playful [...]
Rarely do artists conceive of work that is prescient and, decades on, more urgent than when it was created. One who has accomplished this is certainly Ana Mendieta (1948-1985), whose [...]
Acclaimed British photographer Peter Marlow (1952-2016) was known for his journalistic attention to people and happenings in conflict zones and political interactions. Throughout his career, though, he also embarked on [...]
During the medieval and Renaissance periods, baskets were everyday essentials—no plastic bags at the supermarket or even reusable totes. They were also used for all sorts of activities, from handled [...]
In Yorùbá culture, it’s said that more than 600 years ago, a hunter discovered a lush grove in southwestern Nigeria carved by a rushing river. His community had experienced drought [...]
Jeongmin Lee is interested in the ways “memory is carried through craft and repetition.” On traditional Korean mulberry paper, or hanji, Lee draws delicate lines in ink and pigments known [...]
“Civilizations are remembered through their monuments, but understood through the things they throw away,” says artist Helena Minginowicz, whose sensitive paintings interrogate our understanding of value. Using airbrushed acrylic, which [...]
From the Three Patriarchs of Zion Canyon to the swamps of Louisiana to the immense cascade of Niagara Falls, John Buck’s dreamlike landscapes evoke the juxtapositions and proportions of dreams. [...]