Our latest issue delves intobodies of work that ruminate on those places that are hidden or forgotten. Our cover features an image from Mark Mahaney’s debut monograph, Polar Night, which is a poetic narration of Utqiagvik, the most northerly town in Alaska, US, which plunges into darkness for two months each year. Known as “ground zero for climate change”, Utqiagvik provided Mahaney with the impetus for his first personal project.
Elsewhere, Martin Bogren turns to intuition for his latest project about traditional summer balls in the Swedish countryside, and, witnessing Iran’s housing crisis, Hashem Shakeri captures the bitterness and desolation as building construction stalls in Tehran’s ghostly satellite towns.
The one exception to this month’s focus on the unseen is Federico Estol’s Shine Heroes: empowering documentation of the vilified shoe shiners of Bolivia’s capital La Paz, which transforms their working lives into a fictional tale of superheroes.
In Agenda, we present our round-up of the best books and exhibitions to check out this month. We also feature a new book that investigates the elusive portrait at the heart of Roland Barthes’ seminal Camera Lucida and preview the German Biennale für aktuelle Fotografie, and Black Shade Projects, in Morocco.
This month’s featured projects consider places that have found a new purpose: a former mining town in Belgium by Filippo Maria Ciriani, a knife workshop in Sheffield by Theo Deproost, and a disused airstrip in Romania by Mihai Şovǎialǎ.
Our Any Answers this month is Aperture Foundation’s executive director, Chris Boot, and for Creative Brief we speak to Crack Magazine’s art director, Ade Udoma. Plus we catch up with Agnès B, whose new cultural venue in Paris is dedicated to art, photography and the environment.
—
Purchase the latest issue from the BJP shop, or join 1854 Full Access to receive each issue with a unique collectable cover every month, or 1854 Digital Access, which offers the magazine ad-free on tablet and iPad.