BJP’s annual Cool + Noteworthy issue is back, presenting the people, places and projects that have caught our eye over the past year.
Among this year’s noteworthies is the photographer behind our cover story, Tyler Mitchell, who became the first black cover photographer of American Vogue when he shot Beyoncé for the September 2018 issue. He tells the BJP about his new-found mission since returning home after living in London: “I realised I have a responsibility to be, specifically, a black American photographer and filmmaker.”
We also spotlight Kensuke Koike, a Japanese collagist who gives new life to old photo albums. Koike has attracted a loyal following on Instagram with his savvy cut-and-move videos, making his latest book one of the most anticipated on 2018. Feng Li is another newcomer who has made waves in fashion photography over the past year. This issue we feature Li’s playful fashion shoot in his native Chengdu, a creative city on the rise in China.
We celebrate Chinese photographer Pixy Liao for her first published book, Experimental Relationship. The project charts a decade of whimsical self-portraits that bend and question gender roles in a Sino-Japanese relationship. Liao’s work has won widespread, including a special mention in the Paris Photo/Aperture Foundation Photobook Awards and the Jimei × Arles – Madame Figaro Women Photographers Award.
But it’s not all about bright young things. In Any Answers, Eugene Richards looks back on his 50-year career as one of America’s leading documentary photographers, and elsewhere we recognise the work of the Ryerson Image Centre in Toronto, which they has spawned two notable exhibitions this past year – Collaboration: A Potential History of Photography, featured in our August edition, and now The Flavio Story, which explores the repercussions of a Gordon Parks photoessay published in Life in 1961.
We recognise an important contribution to the history of photography in Steidl’s scholarly anthology devoted to August Sander’s lifework, Persecuted/Persecutors: People of the 20th Century. A collaboration with The Shoah Memorial (the Holocaust museum in Paris), the book publishes Sander’s best-known portraits from the 1920s and 30s with his latter work for the first time.
2018 was the year that a global trend for sustainable living was ignited after the world finally woke up to the severe reality of a climate catastrophe. This year, we saw two photography projects that called for action. Melting glaciers were the focus of a hard-hitting collaborative project by environmental charity Project Pressure, while The Gaia Foundation commissioned 47 photographers to make a case for sustainable agriculture in We Feed the World.
Elsewhere we speak to Carmen Winant, about her book on the rarely-discussed subject of childbirth; Nigel Poor, on her dynamic multimedia exhibition offering insight into life inside a US state prison; and the founders of Mfon, who have published a new journal that continues to highlight the work of black female artists from the African diaspora – among other articles in the Cool + Noteworthy issue.
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