After seven years of making documentary films, a colleague’s remark kept me up at night: “Documentary release forms,” they said, “have been linked to a lineage of control mechanisms found in American slave photographic history.” I was stunned—and soon learned about cases like Harvard’s claim over the images of Tamara Lanier’s ancestors, upheld by the…
Lately, you can barely move on the internet for news of a lookalike competition. Once the preserve of the village fete or the more obscure corners of Comi Con, there was one this weekend for Dev Patel in San Francisco, described as “wholesome” by the writer, Taylor Lorentz. It followed similar outings recently for Harry Styles in…
As a foundation of life and a reservoir of history, soil is a powerful and timeless cultural symbol. The word “human” actually comes from the Latin word “humus,” meaning earth or ground. Reflecting on humanity’s relationship with the Earth, artists have long embraced soil as a medium, from Palaeolithic sculptures to Renaissance frescoes using soil…
Between train stations, office cubicles, waiting rooms, school corridors and parks, it is safe to assume that the places and buildings we inhabit have and continue to define the way we navigate space. Transit through infrastructure is pre-planned by others, so well that the design is barely noticeable, in perfect adherence to the behavioural anticipations…
As part of T A P E’s SNAPSHOT, a year-long touring programme featuring films exploring Black girlhood, made by Black female filmmakers, MILISUTHANDO, directed, written and narrated by Milisuthando Bongela, is screening in select cinemas until March 2025. A deeply intimate portrait of past, present and future South Africa, blending poetry, film, and photography into…
All We Imagine As Light is filled with moments of beauty: moonlight filtering through cobalt saris fluttering by the open window as two women whisper in bed; a transcendent act of lovemaking suffused in golden light; a static shot of a woman reading verses of Malayalam poetry penned by a hesitant lover lit by the…
British Afro-Caribbean artist Sonia Boyce (b. 1962, UK) has been a well-known figure in the British art scene for four decades, but her new exhibition at Whitechapel Gallery aims to tell the lesser-known story of her artistic journey. An Awkward Relation affords Boyce a rare opportunity to pause and look backwards at a key turning…
The first ‘merch’, as we know it today, is thought to have been made for fans of Elvis Presley. Colonel Parker, Elvis’s talent manager, signed a deal in July 1956 for a company to produce everything from T-shirts to sneakers and belts, all emblazoned with the rockn’roller. By December of the same year, the range…