Magazine
Gregory Crewdson spends years crafting photos on a cinematic scale
Staged truths — Gregory Crewdson is not the kind of photographer who carries a camera. Instead he uses Hollywood-sized productions to create perfect moments that feel both inexplicably personal and profoundly cathartic.
Written by: Gregory Crewdson, as told to Cian Traynor
A photographer's 8,000-mile journey from Cuba to the US
The long route to another life — Photojournalist Lisette Poole spent 51 days documenting two Cuban women's migration to the US. She travelled illegally through 11 countries, via smugglers and roadless jungles, using a point-and-shoot camera when it was too dangerous for the real deal. This isn’t a story she simply observed: it’s an experience she survived.
Written by: Lisette Poole
The lawyer leading a double life as a street photographer
powercorruptionandlikes — By day, Ryan Staley works in the buttoned-down world of corporate law. But his free time is spent on the streets of LA, focusing his untrained eye on an ‘alternate reality’ that only he can see.
Written by: Ryan Staley, as told to Cian Traynor
How Zanele Muholi used photography to confront her trauma
Hail the Dark Lioness — The South African photographer places herself centre stage in Hail the Dark Lioness, drawing on experiences of homophobia and hate crimes that impact her own community.
Written by: Zanele Muholi, as told to Alex King
The photographer tackling an entire history of misogyny
‘We have a problem’ — Spanish photographer Laia Abril is on a mission to map the systems that control women’s lives. It’s a challenge that sees her traversing time and space, going back through history and around the world, to remind us that there are consequences to every action.
Written by: Laia Abril, as told to Andrea Kurland
The hidden African history captured by one maverick photographer
SJ 'Kitty' Moodley — When sociologist Steven Dubin discovered a collection of studio portraits from apartheid South Africa, it brought to light an unknown photographer who empowered others to resist.
Written by: Steven Dubin, as told to Cian Traynor
LaToya Ruby Frazier on Gordon Parks' inspiring legacy
Groundbreaking gravitas — As one of the most prominent voices to document American life in the 1950s and ’60s, Gordon Parks used his camera as a ‘weapon’ to fight racism, intolerance and poverty – paving the way for others to blur the line between artist and activist. LaToya Ruby Frazier is determined to further that legacy through social documentary that’s both personal and political.
Written by: LaToya Ruby Frazier, as told to Cian Traynor
Todd Hido's voyeuristic lens captures suburbia's secretive side
Intimate Distance — By identifying as an artist rather than simply a photographer, Todd Hido has forged an illustrious career out of sheer creative freedom. Taken at a step removed but with an inquisitive eye, the breadth of his work proves that there are no limits except the ones you impose on yourself.
Written by: Todd Hido, as told to Cian Traynor
Ed Templeton on Larry Clark's renegade style of photography
Kindred spirits — There is a lineage of photographers who shoot to shock, planting themselves in fringe-dwelling scenes with the eye of a lustful voyeur. Larry Clark was never one of them. His photographs of wayward teens bingeing on sex and drugs, and leaving 1960s America aghast, are moments that he lived. It’s in this brutal suburbia, in the faces of strung-out kids, that skateboarder Ed Templeton first realised that his own life could be a muse.
Written by: Ed Templeton
Piss Drunx: The legendary skate crew lucky to be alive
Chronicle of chaos — In 1998, a mob of young skateboarders descended on an ordinary street in Huntington Beach, California. Spread across four apartments, they quickly gained notoriety not only for their on-board antics, but for embracing a lifestyle of excess. The Piss Drunx, as they came to be known, adopted a ‘fuck everything’ attitude that turned them into skateboarding icons within just two years. But looking back, many of the original members have mixed feelings about their legacy.
Written by: Oliver Pelling