Aperture 261 Winter 2025
Aperture’s “The Craft Issue” features photographers who make pictures the slow way—building camera obscuras, creating photograms, and laboring in traditional darkrooms to make handmade, unrepeatable forms.
Details
Features
EDITORS’ NOTE
The Craft Issue
THE POLEMICS OF CRAFT
Theaster Gates is making the most of the material world
A conversation with Ekow Eshun
LOOKING GLASS
Ann Weathersby holds a mirror to expanded female consciousness
Rebecca Bengal
THINGS AS THEY ARE
Jungjin Lee’s landscapes of introspection
Julia Halperin
HANDS TO HEAVENS
The darkroom alchemy of Aspen Mays
Mimi Zeiger
THE DEPTH OF A POCKET
Christophe Lemaire and Sarah-Linh Tran on fashion, movies, and everyday gestures
A conversation with Alistair O’Neill
A VISION OF HER OWN
How Lucia Moholy immortalized the Bauhaus
Alice Rawsthorn
STITCHES IN TIME
Troy Montes Michie’s collages conjure fragments of queer history and desire
Zoë Hopkins
ZEN AND THE ART OF PHOTOGRAPHY
Irina Rozovsky and Mark Steinmetz on attention, focus, and darkroom magic
A conversation with Michael Famighetti
HYBRIDS
Erin Jane Nelson fuses ceramics and photography
Eli Cohen
TREASURE ISLAND
John Chiara’s custom camera obscuras illuminate the world’s simple mysteries
Dan Beachy-Quick
Columns
AGENDA
Michella Bredahl, Boris Mikhailov, Alejandro Cartagena, Ralph Eugene Meatyard
BACKSTORY
Quinn Moreland on Mimi Plumb’s prophetic images of America on the edge
VIEWFINDER
Kaelen Wilson-Goldie on Karim Kal’s mysterious views of nighttime Algeria
STUDIO VISIT
Lucienne Bestall on Jo Ractliffe’s Cape Town workspace
CURRICULUM
Philip Montgomery on Sade, Borderland, and the LAPD Archive
ENDNOTE
Edmund de Waal on a life amid archives and vessels
The PhotoBook Review
IDEAS OF AFRICA
Brendan Embser speaks with curator Oluremi C. Onabanjo
TURN-ON
Natasha Stagg visits Climax Books in New York
GOOD VIBRATIONS
Vince Aletti on Mark Borthwick’s early fashion photography
Reviews of photobooks by Nick Haymes, Nikolay Bakharev, Alanna Fields, Donna Gottschalk, and Yung Lean