Aperture Conversations | Aperture Events

A Good-Humored Act of Resistance: Alejandro Cartagena and Álvaro Enrigue

Brianna Rettig — Thu, 23 Oct 2025 19:36:15 +0000

Join Aperture and the Photography Program at Parsons School of Design at the New School for a special conversation between artist and editor Alejandro Cartagena and writer Álvaro Enrigue. The two will discuss Cartagena’s new monograph, Ground Rules (Aperture, 2025).

Ground Rules is the first comprehensive, fully bilingual survey charting the career of the prolific photographer Alejandro Cartagena. Celebrated for his photobooks Carpoolers (2014) and A Small Guide to Homeownership (2020), Cartagena is known for his formally engaging and socially incisive images that span the politics of the US-Mexico border, suburban sprawl, and the increasing wealth disparities in North America. Ground Rules deploys a diverse array of photographic formats, from documentary and collage to the appropriation of vernacular photographs and AI-generated imagery, all unified by Cartagena’s commitment to addressing Mexico’s most pressing social and environmental issues with humor and pathos.

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Image: Alejandro Cartagena, from the series An Invisible Line, 2010–17, from Alejandro Cartagena: Ground Rules (Aperture, 2025)

Alana Perino and Ariel Goldberg | Aperture Conversations

Brianna Rettig — Tue, 19 Aug 2025 20:40:24 +0000

2025 Portfolio Prize winner, Alana Perino, discusses their award-winning series Pictures of Birds with writer, curator, and educator Ariel Goldberg. In this open discussion that ranges from the climate crisis’s evident impact on barrier islands to the presence of ghosts and angels in family mythology, we learn how Perino’s unique approach to photography invites contemplation on death, beauty, and connection.

Pictures of Birds constructs a mesmeric evocation of memory and mortality in Longboat Key, Florida, where Perino temporarily moved in 2020 to be with their father and stepmother, whose health was in decline. Here, family roles were rewritten as Perino and their sister became their parents’ caretakers, and the series reflects on the strange experience of living in “a home and a retirement community arranged to affirm health and security yet compromised by the ubiquity of illness and impermanence.”

This conversation originally took place on September 6, 2025.

Vik Muniz on Photography, Mind, and Matter

Brianna Rettig — Mon, 11 Aug 2025 20:24:10 +0000

Join us for a conversation between artists Vik Muniz and Lucas Blalock, as they discuss Vik Muniz on Photography, Mind, and Matter, the latest book in The Photography Workshop Series (Aperture, 2025).

In this volume, Vik Muniz—known for his playful pictures that complicate what is understood as a photograph, sculpture, or painting—offers his insight into thinking creatively and seeing the familiar in new and surprising ways. Through images and words, Muniz shares his creative practice and discusses a wide range of topics, from generating ideas and creating artworks that challenge viewers’ perceptions, to thinking through collaboration, imperfection, and the interplay of subject, scale, and material.

This program is presented in partnership with the School of Visual Arts. RSVP here.

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Image: Vik Muniz, Rodrigo de Freitas Lagoon, after Johann Moritz Rugendas, from Live Cash, 2022; from Vik Muniz on Photography, Mind, and Matter (Aperture, 2025). © Vik Muniz 2025

Melissa O’Shaughnessy and Alex Webb | Aperture Conversations

Brianna Rettig — Wed, 06 Aug 2025 19:00:13 +0000

On the occasion of the reissue of Perfect Strangers: New York City Street Photographs, two prolific New York City street photographers, Melissa O’Shaughnessy and Alex Webb, discuss the tradition of the genre and the artistry of the unexpected.

As one of a growing number of women street photographers contributing to this dynamic genre, O’Shaughnessy enters the territory with clarity and a distinctly humanist eye. Through her curious and quirky vision, we witness the play of human activity on the glittering sidewalks of the city.

Webb, recognized as a pioneer of American color photography since the 1970s, has consistently created photographs characterized by intense color and light. His work, with its richly layered and complex composition, touches on multiple genres, including street photography, photojournalism, and fine art, but as Webb claims, “To me it all is photography. You have to go out and explore the world with a camera.”

This conversation originally took place on September 8, 2025.

Image: Melissa O’Shaughnessy, Vesey Street, 2015, from Perfect Strangers: New York City Street Photographs (Aperture, 2020). © Melissa O’Shaughnessy

Susan Meiselas and Kristen Lubben in Conversation

Brianna Rettig — Wed, 09 Jul 2025 21:08:46 +0000

Aperture, in collaboration with the Photography Program at Parsons School of Design at the New School, is pleased to present a conversation between artist Susan Meiselas and the director of Magnum Foundation, Kristen Lubben, discussing the book Nicaragua.

Originally published in 1981, and now in a third edition, Susan Meiselas’s Nicaragua is a contemporary classic—a seminal contribution to the literature of concerned photography. Starting with a powerful and chilling evocation of the Somoza regime during its decline in the late 1970s, the images trace the evolution of the popular resistance that led to the triumph of the Sandinista revolution in 1979. The book includes interviews with various participants in the revolution, along with letters, poems, and statistics.

In the decades following the original publication, Meiselas has continued to contextualize her photographs and relate them to history as it unfolded. Multiple editions build upon this body of work to evoke and conjure up the reality of people’s lives and aspirations, their victories and disappointments. By extending and deepening her work, Meiselas asks us “to consider not only the specific timeframe of this book, but to think about the broader perspective of history unfolding, and how in the passage of time a photograph of a single moment in a person’s life shifts its meanings as well as our perception of it.”

This program is presented in partnership with The New School. It is free and open to all. RSVP here.

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Image: Susan Meiselas, Youths practice throwing contact bombs in forest surrounding Monimbo, 1978–79; from Susan Meiselas: Nicaragua, June 1978–July 1979 (Aperture, 2025). © Susan Meiselas/Magnum Photos

Finding a Father Figure: Exploring Estrangement Across Borders | Aperture Conversations

Brianna Rettig — Thu, 01 May 2025 18:16:34 +0000

In Diana Markosian’s Father (Aperture, 2024) and Abdulhamid Kircher’s Rotting from Within (Loose Joints, 2024), both artists contend with complex family histories through intimate and observational photographs. In this Aperture Conversation, hosted in partnership with the British Journal of Photography, the two artists discuss their unique experiences photographing their fathers in particular. Writer and editor Dalia Al-Dujaili moderates with keen perceptiveness.

Born in Berlin, Kircher left for the United States as a child, leaving his father behind. Only later, when he was seventeen, did he become more familiar with his father’s life in Turkey and Germany. Rotting from Within chronicles Kircher’s summers in Berlin, documenting a new relationship with his father and, slowly, his disillusionment with him.

In her first book, Santa Barbara (Aperture, 2020), Markosian recreates the story of her family’s journey from post–Soviet Russia to the US in the 1990s. Father presents the photographer’s journey to another place and time, in an attempt to piece together an image of a familiar stranger—her long lost father.

This conversation originally took place on June 3, 2025.

Zanele Muholi on the Myriad Possibilities of the Self

Brianna Rettig — Tue, 08 Apr 2025 19:54:08 +0000

Join Aperture and NeueHouse for a conversation delving into Somnyama Ngonyama, Hail the Dark Lioness, Volume II, the second title in Zanele Muholi’s widely acclaimed self-portrait series. Muholi and Lesley A. Martin, executive director at Printed Matter, New York, and coeditor of this title, will discuss the artist’s poetic interpretations of personhood, queerness, Blackness, and possibilities of self.

In Somnyama Ngonyama, Hail the Dark Lioness, Volume II, Zanele Muholi explores and expands upon the publication of the first volume in 2018, photographing themself in a range of new international locations. Drawing on material props found in each environment, Muholi boldly explores their own image and innate possibilities as a Black individual in today’s global society, and—most importantly—speaks emphatically in response to contemporary and historical racisms.

This program is presented by Aperture, NeueHouse, and AIPAD. The conversation will be followed by a book signing. RSVP is required.

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Zanele Muholi (born in Umlazi, Durban, South Africa, 1972) is a visual activist and photographer, cofounder of the Forum for the Empowerment of Women, and founder of Inkanyiso, a forum for queer and visual media. Muholi has won numerous awards, including France’s Chevalier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres; ICP Infinity Award for Documentary and Photojournalism; Fine Prize for an emerging artist at the 2013 Carnegie International; and a Prince Claus Award. Their Faces and Phases series was shown at dOCUMENTA (13) and the fifty-fifth Venice Biennale and was shortlisted for the Deutsche Börse Photography Prize in 2015. The first volume of Somnyama Ngonyama (Aperture, 2018) was awarded the Kraszna-Krausz Photography Book Award in 2019. Muholi is an honorary professor at the University of the Arts Bremen, Germany. They are represented by Stevenson Gallery, Johannesburg, and Yancey Richardson Gallery, New York.

Lesley A. Martin is executive director of Printed Matter and coeditor of Somnyama Ngonyama, Hail the Dark Lioness, Volume II with Renée Mussai. Previously, she was the creative director of Aperture, where she served as editor on more than one hundred fifty books, and was the founding publisher of The PhotoBook Review.

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Image: Zanele Muholi, Mihla IV, 2020; from Zanele Muholi: Somnyama Ngonyama, Hail the Dark Lioness, Volume II (Aperture, 2024). © 2024 Zanele Muholi

Memorable Fancies: Minor White’s Photography and Legacy

Brianna Rettig — Fri, 28 Feb 2025 16:16:48 +0000

Join us for a special conversation celebrating Minor White’s legacy and the publication of Minor White, Memorable Fancies (Princeton University Art Museum, 2025), the artist’s previously unpublished daybooks, written between 1931 and 1976. Todd Cronan, coeditor of this volume, will moderate a conversation with the photographers Lyle Ashton Harris, Aspen Mays, and Mark Armijo McKnight about White’s impact and influence. The speakers will consider the history of Aperture as part of White’s legacy, as well as their personal connections to his work and career, from imagery and subject matter to philosophies about teaching and self-discovery.

White (1908–1976, born in Minneapolis) is regarded as one of the most significant figures in twentieth-century photography, known for revolutionizing the medium through a reconsideration of word-and-image relationships, sequencing, and audience. White influenced generations of photographers through his teaching, workshops, writings, exhibitions, and the cofounding of Aperture, which entered the history of photography with the first issue of its quarterly magazine in 1952. Its founders declared: “Aperture has been originated to communicate with serious photographers and creative people everywhere, whether professional, amateur, or student.” They believed their magazine answered a “vital need” in the field, responding to the growing impact of photography and a desire to create community around it. White was editor of Aperture magazine from 1952 to 1975. Today, Aperture remains a nonprofit publisher that leads conversations around photography worldwide.

With an introduction from Sarah Meister, Aperture’s executive director, and Katherine A. Bussard, Peter C. Bunnell Curator of Photography and steward of the Minor White Archive at the Princeton University Art Museum, New Jersey, our esteemed panelists will engage in a discussion of White’s impact as documented in Memorable Fancies.

This program is presented by Aperture, the Princeton University Art Museum, Princeton University Press, and the School of Visual Arts. RSVP required.

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Sarah Meister is executive director of Aperture. She joined Aperture in May 2021, following more than twenty-five years at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, where she curated numerous exhibitions. She is author and coeditor of the three-volume series Photography at MoMA (with Quentin Bajac and others). She was also lead instructor for the online course Seeing Through Photographs and codirector of the August Sander Project.

Katherine A. Bussard is Peter C. Bunnell Curator of Photography at the Princeton University Art Museum, New Jersey. She is a curator, scholar, and collaborator. She is the author and coauthor of five books, including the award-winning publications The City Lost and Found: Capturing New York, Chicago, and Los Angeles, 1960–1980 (2015) and Life Magazine and the Power of Photography (2020).

Todd Cronan is professor of art history at Emory University and editor-in-chief of nonsite.org. He is author of Against Affective Formalism: Matisse, Bergson, Modernism (2014), Red Aesthetics: Rodchenko, Brecht, Eisenstein (2021), and Nothing Permanent: Modern Architecture in California (2023) and coeditor of Minor White, Memorable Fancies (2025). He has written on art and politics for Jacobin, the Nation, Brooklyn Rail, the Chronicle of Higher Education, and Common Dreams.

Lyle Ashton Harris has cultivated a diverse artistic practice, ranging from photography and collage to video installation and performance art, examining the impact of race, gender, and desire on the contemporary social and cultural dynamic globally through intersections of the personal and the political. Harris has been widely exhibited internationally, and his work is represented in numerous museum collections, including Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, Museum of Modern Art, Metropolitan Museum of Art, Whitney Museum of American Art, in New York, National Portrait Gallery, Washington, DC, and Tate Modern, London. Harris is professor of art and art education at New York University.

Aspen Mays is a photographer and installation artist. She has held solo exhibitions at Higher Pictures, New York; Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago; Light Work, Syracuse, New York; and the Center for Ongoing Projects and Research in Columbus, Ohio. Her work has been featured in Artforum, Art Papers, the New Yorker, and the New York Times. She is associate professor and chair of undergraduate photography, printmedia, and painting and drawing at California College of Arts. Her artist book, Tengallon Sunflower, was published in 2024 by Dais Books.

Mark Armijo McKnight is a photographer who uses his practice to reconcile his own identity as a mixed-race person of color and as a gay man. He was a 2023–24 Guggenheim Fellow, and his first solo institutional exhibition, Decreation, was held at the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York. He is assistant professor of expanded photography at Rutgers University.

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Image: Cover of Minor White, Memorable Fancies, 2025. Edited by Todd Cronan and Peter C. Bunnell, with contributions by Andrew Kensett. Published by the Princeton University Art Museum and distributed by Princeton University Press.

Trevor Paglen and Noam M. Elcott: The Past, Present, and Future of AI | Aperture Conversations

Brianna Rettig — Thu, 16 Jan 2025 22:14:12 +0000

Multidisciplinary artist Trevor Paglen and art historian Noam M. Elcott present their latest work before launching into a dialogue on the metaphysical dilemmas AI technology poses in our society writ large. Both heavyweights in their own respective fields, the two provided scholarship and images for the latest issue of Aperture magazine, “Image Worlds to Come: Photography & AI.”

Learn more in this kaleidoscopic conversation that jumps from the specificity of working with generative AI models to contemplating Doritos as a delightfully apt metaphor for ultra-processed images.

This conversation originally took place on February 18, 2025.

Image: Trevor Paglen, CLOUD #557 | Hough Line Transform; Hough Circle Transform, 2023

The Power of Images: A Conversation about Race Stories | Aperture Conversations

Brianna Rettig — Thu, 09 Jan 2025 21:13:27 +0000

Editor Marvin Heiferman joins fellow coeditors Drs. Sarah Lewis and Deborah Willis to honor the late critic Maurice Berger. Aperture’s Race Stories: Essays on the Power of Images, the first in the Vision and Justice publishing series, attempts to capture, in the words of Dr. Lewis, “the fire and force” of Berger’s work at the intersections of photography, race, and visual culture.

Race Stories features a collection of award-winning short essays by Maurice Berger that explore the intersections of photography, race, and visual culture. The book examines the transformational role photography plays in shaping ideas and attitudes about race and how photographic images have been instrumental in both perpetuating and combating racial stereotypes. Written between 2012 and 2019 and first presented as a monthly feature on the New York Times Lens blog, Berger’s incisive essays help readers see a bigger picture about race through storytelling.

This conversation originally took place on February 12, 2025.

Image: Deborah Willis, Carrie in EuroSalon, Eaton, Florida, 2004; from Race Stories: Essays on the Power of Images (Aperture, 2024); Courtesy the artist