Aperture's Blog, page 2

VIP passes to the New York Armory Show

4 Sep 25 - 00:00
The Javits Center
Crystal Palace Entrance, 429 11th Avenue
New York

Alex Webb and Melissa O’Shaughnessy in Conversation

8 Sep 25 - 13:00

Vik Muniz Book Signing at Sikkema Malloy Jenkins

6 Sep 25 - 13:00
Sikkema Malloy Jenkins
530 West 22nd Street
New York

Opening Reception for Alana Perino: 2025 Aperture Portfolio Prize Winner

21 Aug 25 - 18:00
Leica Gallery New York
406 W 13th St
New York

Essex Hemphill’s Love Knew No Bounds

The activist and poet Essex Hemphill, who died in 1995, at age 38, due to complications from AIDS, was a singular voice. “I’m an oversexed / well-hung / Black Queen / influenced / by phrases like / ‘I am the love that dare not speak its name,’” he writes in “Heavy Breathing” (1992). The poem, exemplary of Hemphill’s work, eulogizes the unfulfilled promises of civil rights and beseeches a place for the poor gay Black man—and others left in the margins—at the table of a solidifying African American nationalism in the waning years of the twentieth century. “At the end of heavy breathing / the dream deferred / is in a museum / under glass and guard.” Hemphill’s unflinching gaze, fervent advocacy for the downtrodden, and love of collaboration have made him a major influence for many of his peers and generations thereafter, for writers, and especially for visual artists.

Born in Chicago in 1957, Hemphill moved with his family to Anacostia, a segregated neighborhood in Southeast Washington, DC, in the 1970s. He was awakened spiritually and erotically by the closeted Harlem Renaissance literature of Countee Cullen, Langston Hughes, and Richard Bruce Nugent, and emboldened by the clarity and poise of public intellectuals such as James Baldwin and Audre Lorde. These figures served as guiding lights over the corporeal realities of poverty, racial and gendered violence (by state or kin), and the crack and AIDS epidemics. “I live in a town / where pretense and bone structure / prevail as credentials of status and beauty / . . . where everyone is afraid of the dark,” Hemphill writes in “Family Jewels” (1992). Cabs speed past him, refusing service. Meanwhile, “My mother’s flowers are wilting / . . . Our dinner is cold / by now.” In taking up poetry and performance, Hemphill found a path to dignity and self-liberation.

Poster announcement for Wayson Jones and Essex Hemphill performance at d.c. space
Courtesy Wayson Jones Wayson Jones, Christopher Prince, and Essex Hemphill perform at d.c. space in Washington, DC, Saturday, May 31, 1986

© Sharon Farmer/sfphotoworks

Fashioning an alternative to the American dream deferred was by no means a solitary endeavor. In DC, Hemphill was part of a vibrant literary, performing and visual arts scene. He founded the Nethula Journal, a platform for young writers of color, with Kathy Anderson and Cynthia Lou Williams. With his friends Wayson Jones and Larry Duckette, he formed the spoken word group Cinque. His early work appeared in Joseph Beam’s revolutionary In the Life: A Black Gay Anthology (1986), the first of its kind to center Black gay, lesbian, and trans perspectives. When Beam died of AIDS in 1988, Hemphill published the follow-up Brother to Brother: New Writings by Black Gay Men (1991). For a constellation of underground communities along the East and West Coasts, this period in the ’80s through early ’90s was a veritable Black Gay Renaissance, more creatively free, more academic and brazenly political, more unapologetically Black, queer, and sexual than the movements that came before.

Installation view of Essex Hemphill: Take care of your blessings, Phillips Collection, Washington, DC, 2025

Essex Hemphill: Take care of your blessings, a group exhibition curated by Camille Brown at the Phillips Collection, in Washington, DC, commemorates the bygone era in which the poet thrived, and celebrates the dream that he kept alive for the next generation. Brown gathers multimedia works by friends and creative partners, and those of younger artists whose practices engage with Hemphill’s writing. In a town of memorials set in stone, the show pulsates with optimism and collective life. It is dedicated to someone who was of these streets and who, hard as the powers that be may have tried, refused to be rendered a ghost or statistic, and did what he could to save others from that fate.

Hemphill’s poems have been collected in a new volume by Robert F. Reid-Pharr and John Keene, Love Is a Dangerous Word (2025). To read them—a selection is projected in the main gallery over a cabinet of self-published chapbooks and performance programs—is to become entangled in a bed of blood, sweat, tears, spit, and spunk. That is, to be swept off your feet by unrelenting waves of desire, rage, sorrow, and, despite everything, tenderness. Much as the speaker is looking for love in back rooms, underground clubs, and public parks, he is cruising time itself for redemption in the past or hope for the future. He is discursive, provocative, witty, and lyrical, Mercutio playing jester to the hypocrisy of the American enterprise. In “American Wedding” (1986), Hemphill delivers his vow: 

I place my ring
on your cock
where it belongs.
No horsemen
bearing terror,
no soldiers of doom
will swoop in and sweep us apart.
They’re too busy
looting the land
to watch us.

Across the way in the gallery, among a set of haunting black-and-white photographs, is Living Monuments (1980s), by Sharon Farmer, which Hemphill paired with “American Wedding” in “Dear Muthafucking Dreams,” his landmark interdisciplinary and collaborative “unrhymed poetry concert,” performed most prominently at Franklin Furnace, in New York, in 1988. In the photograph, a hooded figure strides across a bridge in front of the Washington Monument. From the viewer’s perspective, the walkway is at eye level with the pyramidion of the 555-foot obelisk. Farmer evokes Orientalist motifs, conjuring an empire bearing down on itself. Or is the figure rising to meet it? Notably, during the Clinton administration, Farmer became the first African American woman appointed White House photographer. She captured, among many historic moments, the handshake between prime minister of Israel Yitzhak Rabin and Palestine Liberation Organization chairman Yasser Arafat, in 1993. 

Joyce Wellman, Someone Different, 1987. Oil paint stick on paper

Another piece Hemphill integrated into “Dreams,” the painting Someone Different (1987), by Joyce Wellman, shares the same wall. As posited by the title, and expressed by the freestyle whorls and patches of frenetic Twombly-esque brushstrokes, the painting suggests transfiguration, as in the Christlike mystery in the paired poem “Black Beans” (1984): “Our chipped water glasses are filled / with wine from our loving. / And the burnt black beans— / caviar.” The pursuit of “the good life” recurs throughout Hemphill’s work. Set in biblical terms, it is the quest for salvation. If not granted by God or state, the hope is that it could be found in or offered by one another. But, as lived by Hemphill and other gay men of his time, the road to paradise is rife with straying paths to danger and self-destruction.

Lyle Ashton Harris, The Watering Hole III, 1996
Courtesy the Museum of Modern Art, New York

In photographer Lyle Ashton Harris’s Watering Hole series, ephemera tacked on a wood-paneled background are lit with a red neon glow, as in the bathroom of a gay bar or the basement lair of a closeted recluse. Alongside pictures of protesters, male models, and divas—Donna Summer, a Venus in white fur; Elizabeth Taylor as Cleopatra—hang newspaper clippings of Magic Johnson’s HIV diagnosis and murders by the serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer. Stuck on throughout each frame are precarious yellow Post-its, notes of a dysphoric mind. The clandestine scene queer people called “the life” allowed for improvisation and indulgence, a desperate break from the mainstream. With so much of the life to live, moderation and safety were often checked at the door.

Installation view of Essex Hemphill: Take care of your blessings, Phillips Collection, Washington, DC, 2025

Diedrick Brackens’s tapestry the night is my shepherd (2022) casts two shadows in melancholy embrace. A faded silhouette in the first panel, and a disembodied arm in the third, luring one of the figures in the central panel, suggests the time-lapse of a doomed affair, or an endless loop of faceless encounters. In either case, heartache. Tiona Nekkia McClodden’s readymade sculpture THE BRASS RAIL (After Essex) (2017), mounted at an obtuse angle, is beguiling and unnerving in its simplicity. Are we going up or down? It’s titled after Hemphill’s poem of the same name about the long-gone “raunchy Black gay club” in DC that was always “bulging out of its jockstrap.” “The Brass Rail,” from the 1980s is  a call-and-response with the readers starting at the opposite ends of the poem. The effect is that of an aural house of mirrors, or a two-man tightrope walk, or, like the Brackens tapestry, a pas de deux heading toward ecstasy and/or oblivion.

CALL: I saw you last night

RESPONSE: Many occupants are never found.

CALL: In the basement

RESPONSE: Many canoes overturn.

CALL: of the Brass Rail.

Clifford Prince King, Conditions, 2018
Courtesy the artist, Gordon Robichaux, NY, and STARS, Los Angeles

On the east wall of the gallery, visions of hope. Clifford Prince King’s photographs stage scenes of intentional tenderness and care between Black men. Like Hemphill’s poetry, especially near the end of his life, King’s photographs are salves to the rigid dictums of patriarchal masculinity. The poet’s candor about living with HIV moved King to interrogate his own positive status through his work. The still lifes Night Sweats (2018), which shows a bed imprinted by a night’s feverish bout with infection, and Orange Peel and Biktarvy (2019) render life with HIV rather ordinary. Sonny and David (2019), depicting lovers intertwined in peaceful slumber, is eerily echoed by Shikieth’s adjacent Visiting Hours (2022). A figure wrapped in a white sheet cradles the sleeper. It’s an ancestral visitation or, for those who don’t believe in ghosts, a portrait of self-love.

Shikeith, Visiting Hours, 2022
Courtesy Yossi Milo, New York 

Hemphill’s legacy was his generosity of spirit, in life and in art. His poetry demands to be performed, shared, and interpreted. One of his most synergistic collaborations was with the filmmaker Isaac Julien. In the film Looking for Langston (1989), a spoken-word fantasia of gay Black bon vivants frolicking in an ethereal 1920s speakeasy, Julien mingles archival footage of Langston Hughes with tracks of Hemphill reading his own poems. In the exhibition, a viewing station for a five-minute B-roll montage of Hemphill recording the audio for the film allows visitors to hear the poet’s rhythmic, emotive idiolect for themselves. Nearby is Pas de Deux No. 2 (1989/2016), a still from Looking for Langston, in which two of the characters are dancing affectionately, breaking through a cloud of smoke. A bouquet of roses adorns the foreground. In the film’s denouement, we would see the dapper revelers fleeing from an armed mob of killjoy straights, running up a staircase lined by a brass handrail. We hear “The Brass Rail” read by two voices in playful repartee, likely belonging to the duo of go-go boy angels guiding the gentlemen’s ascent.

Isaac Julien, Pas de Deux No. 2 (Looking for Langston Vintage Series), 1989/2016
Courtesy the Beth and Richard Marcus Collection

Closing the exhibition, in a secluded room off the main gallery, is a wall projection of Hemphill’s speech at the City University of New York’s “Black Nations/Queer Nations?” Conference, in 1995, just a few months before his death. In dedication to his partner Roger, Hemphill says, “If I had known sooner the true power of love to heal and affirm, I would have left the bathhouses, bushes, and bookstores immediately . . . I would have pursued a healthy way of living with more diligence than I gave to pursuing and busting a nut.” But how could these young men have known any better? What else were they supposed to do? Languishing in the closet may have been an option for some, but for Hemphill and his kind, it was out of the question. It was not these men who were at fault, nor was the pursuit for companionship and gratification the problem. Are those not essential? It was the lack of support and empathy from wider society that sealed their fate.

Poster for Tongues Untied by Marlon Riggs, featuring Essex Hemphill, 1989
Courtesy Brian Freeman and © Signifyin’ Works

In a 2019 interview with ARTnews, Lyle Ashton Harris calls Hemphill and the filmmaker Marlon Riggs his “elder brothers.” “There was an insatiable need to try to create a language for something that I felt was there, that was real to me,” Harris said, recalling when he first saw Hemphill and Riggs’s documentary performance film Tongues Untied (1989). “I felt that Essex and Marlon had a language that I did not have. It was a language out of necessity. It was what sustained me.” Borne out of precarity, manifest of tenacity and survival, is the miracle of mortal creation. The convictions and dreams of those who came before made art, these are our blessings. “I ask no more of you / than I ask of myself: / no more guilt / no more pity,” Hemphill writes in “The Tomb of Sorrow” (1992) which is set in Meridian Hill Park, what was then a cruising site Black people claimed as Malcolm X. “Occult risks await us / at the edge of constraint.”

Essex Hemphill: Take care of your blessings is on view at the Phillips Collection through August 31, 2025.

How Baghdad Is Rebuilding Its Arts Community

Iraq’s capital has endured waves of violence, from civil unrest to foreign invasions, leaving little room for arts infrastructure. But the launch of Baghdad Photo Week, the country’s first photography festival, marks a notable turning point. Organized by the photographer Aymen Al-Ameri and his partner Meena Alyassin, who also cofounded the Iraqi arts magazine Henna, the event took place last December at The Gallery, a commercial art space in Baghdad.

The festival’s theme, “Forgotten,” paid tribute to two pioneering Iraqi photographers of the past, Nadhim Ramzi and Hadi Al-Najjar—key figures, alongside Latif al-Ani, in establishing the medium in the country. Much of the photography on view carried an aesthetic shaped by conflict and melancholy. Al-Ameri, Amir Hazim, and Alhassan Jamal Aldeen each capture daily life in high-contrast black and white, depicting ecological pollution, antiestablishment protestors, and the month of Muharram, the start of the Islamic New Year when Shias mourn Imam Ali, whose face is plastered on every street corner.

Aymen Al-Ameri, from the series Halves, 2012–23Charles Thiefaine, Ala Allah, Mosul, Iraq, 2018

The program aimed to foster collaboration between diasporic Iraqis, image makers from throughout the country, and international photographers such as Charles Thiefaine, who is based in Paris and has made work about the massive 2019 protests in the capital that left hundreds dead, the subject of his project Tahrir Disobedience. Another body of his work, Ala Allah (On God), offers a quieter, warmer portrayal of daily life in Iraq —a more humanizing view than typically seen abroad.

The wide accessibility of photography, which requires little more than a smartphone, has accelerated its growth in Baghdad. With more photographers emerging, the need for a communal space to share images has become crucial. Al-Ameri, the festival organizer, is committed to working with photographers to develop a diverse range of projects. “We have many good Iraqi photographers, but most of the pictures are of the marshes and Karbala,” he told me, referring to Iraq’s southern marshlands and the Shia pilgrimage city. “We need to see more exhibitions. We donʼt have many galleries, and most photographers are stuck in the same cycle.”

The need for a communal space to share images has become crucial.

Documentary photography remains dominant, shaped by heavy international coverage of wars in Iraq. Abdullah Dhiaa Al-Deen’s work is notable for capturing pivotal political moments and social issues with striking honesty. Professional photography in Iraq often prioritizes income potential over artistry, reflecting the country’s high unemployment rates. Bearing witness to decades of tragedy has been central, but now, with the country’s relative stability and recent urban development, visual narratives are evolving.

Wisam Mutwak, Holy soil, 2023

Coming to Iraq for the first time as a war correspondent in 2015, Thiefaine noted that many international journalists reproduced similar imagery. “I started to realize there was a big gap between what international photographers show and the lived experience,” he said. Befriending Iraqi youth, Thiefaine noticed that people were very open to being photographed. “Even during the protest, people wanted to show what they have in mind as a society. They were proud of what they were trying to do. I try to stay far from the imagery of violence in my personal work.”

Thiefaine believes that although Western journalism has contributed to shaping Iraq’s maligned global image, the “political situation is changing very fast, which brings about new representation,” pointing to different subcultures, queer culture, and how the festival itself aimed to show diverse perspectives. With Iraq frequently cited as one of the world’s fastest-warming nations, environmental concerns also drove projects on view, such as Tamara Abdul Hadi’s pictures of the iconic marshes and the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers, as well as Emily Garthwaite’s photographs of Kurdistan’s biodiverse landscapes and minority communities, including Yazidis, Zoroastrians, and Bahá’ís.

Aline Deschamps, Two friends hold arms and walk around the fairy amusement park, 2022 Paul Hennebelle, from the series Brown Eyes and Sand, 2016–21 Claudia Willmitzer, light source of a vehicle headlight spot at the desert of Dasht e lut, Iran, 2014

Female representation in Iraqi photography is growing, albeit slowly. Initiatives such as Iraqi Female Photographers, founded by Ishtar Obaid, spotlight women, including Asmaa Turki, Saba Kareem, and Tiba Sadeq. Turki’s work ranges from young ballerinas in Baghdad to serene abaya embroidery in Najaf, vitalizing traditional themes with quiet beauty. Kareem’s images of the marshes and pilgrimages add to this expanding repertoire.

Al-Ameri organized Baghdad Photo Week with minimal funding—an impressive and steadfast effort emblematic of the Iraqi attitude to life. “Habibi, send me photos right now, let’s talk tonight,” he recalls saying to friends just months before the festival. “To deal with Iraqis is not easy,” he added. “Everything is al Allah [with God],” a phrase symbolizing a relaxed approach to deadlines. Creative problem-solving became vital for handling damaged prints and mismatched frames. Censorship presents another challenge. Political content, nudity, and drug-related themes are taboo. Social media offers some freedom, but constraints still limit expression. Despite Baghdad Photo Week’s groundbreaking success, significant obstacles remain. The country’s cultural infrastructure is underdeveloped, with minimal arts education, scant media coverage, and few exhibition spaces. Yet Baghdad Photo Week highlighted not only Iraq’s wealth of talent but also its need to rebuild an artistic community and, after decades of relentless conflict, reimagine its global image.

This article originally appeared in Aperture No. 259, “Liberated Threads,” under the column Dispatches.

How Baghdad Is Rebuilding its Arts Community

Iraq’s capital has endured waves of violence, from civil unrest to foreign invasions, leaving little room for arts infrastructure. But the launch of Baghdad Photo Week, the country’s first photography festival, marks a notable turning point. Organized by the photographer Aymen Al-Ameri and his partner Meena Alyassin, who also cofounded the Iraqi arts magazine Henna, the event took place last December at The Gallery, a commercial art space in Baghdad.

The festival’s theme, “Forgotten,” paid tribute to two pioneering Iraqi photographers of the past, Nadhim Ramzi and Hadi Al-Najjar—key figures, alongside Latif al-Ani, in establishing the medium in the country. Much of the photography on view carried an aesthetic shaped by conflict and melancholy. Al-Ameri, Amir Hazim, and Alhassan Jamal Aldeen each capture daily life in high-contrast black and white, depicting ecological pollution, antiestablishment protestors, and the month of Muharram, the start of the Islamic New Year when Shias mourn Imam Ali, whose face is plastered on every street corner.

Aymen Al-Ameri, from the series Halves, 2012–23Charles Thiefaine, Ala Allah, Mosul, Iraq, 2018

The program aimed to foster collaboration between diasporic Iraqis, image makers from throughout the country, and international photographers such as Charles Thiefaine, who is based in Paris and has made work about the massive 2019 protests in the capital that left hundreds dead, the subject of his project Tahrir Disobedience. Another body of his work, Ala Allah (On God), offers a quieter, warmer portrayal of daily life in Iraq —a more humanizing view than typically seen abroad.

The wide accessibility of photography, which requires little more than a smartphone, has accelerated its growth in Baghdad. With more photographers emerging, the need for a communal space to share images has become crucial. Al-Ameri, the festival organizer, is committed to working with photographers to develop a diverse range of projects. “We have many good Iraqi photographers, but most of the pictures are of the marshes and Karbala,” he told me, referring to Iraq’s southern marshlands and the Shia pilgrimage city. “We need to see more exhibitions. We donʼt have many galleries, and most photographers are stuck in the same cycle.”

The need for a communal space to share images has become crucial.

Documentary photography remains dominant, shaped by heavy international coverage of wars in Iraq. Abdullah Dhiaa Al-Deen’s work is notable for capturing pivotal political moments and social issues with striking honesty. Professional photography in Iraq often prioritizes income potential over artistry, reflecting the country’s high unemployment rates. Bearing witness to decades of tragedy has been central, but now, with the country’s relative stability and recent urban development, visual narratives are evolving.

Wisam Mutwak, Holy soil, 2023

Coming to Iraq for the first time as a war correspondent in 2015, Thiefaine noted that many international journalists reproduced similar imagery. “I started to realize there was a big gap between what international photographers show and the lived experience,” he said. Befriending Iraqi youth, Thiefaine noticed that people were very open to being photographed. “Even during the protest, people wanted to show what they have in mind as a society. They were proud of what they were trying to do. I try to stay far from the imagery of violence in my personal work.”

Thiefaine believes that although Western journalism has contributed to shaping Iraq’s maligned global image, the “political situation is changing very fast, which brings about new representation,” pointing to different subcultures, queer culture, and how the festival itself aimed to show diverse perspectives. With Iraq frequently cited as one of the world’s fastest-warming nations, environmental concerns also drove projects on view, such as Tamara Abdul Hadi’s pictures of the iconic marshes and the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers, as well as Emily Garthwaite’s photographs of Kurdistan’s biodiverse landscapes and minority communities, including Yazidis, Zoroastrians, and Bahá’ís.

Aline Deschamps, Two friends hold arms and walk around the fairy amusement park, 2022 Paul Hennebelle, from the series Brown Eyes and Sand, 2016–21 Claudia Willmitzer, light source of a vehicle headlight spot at the desert of Dasht e lut, Iran, 2014

Female representation in Iraqi photography is growing, albeit slowly. Initiatives such as Iraqi Female Photographers, founded by Ishtar Obaid, spotlight women, including Asmaa Turki, Saba Kareem, and Tiba Sadeq. Turki’s work ranges from young ballerinas in Baghdad to serene abaya embroidery in Najaf, vitalizing traditional themes with quiet beauty. Kareem’s images of the marshes and pilgrimages add to this expanding repertoire.

Al-Ameri organized Baghdad Photo Week with minimal funding—an impressive and steadfast effort emblematic of the Iraqi attitude to life. “Habibi, send me photos right now, let’s talk tonight,” he recalls saying to friends just months before the festival. “To deal with Iraqis is not easy,” he added. “Everything is al Allah [with God],” a phrase symbolizing a relaxed approach to deadlines. Creative problem-solving became vital for handling damaged prints and mismatched frames. Censorship presents another challenge. Political content, nudity, and drug-related themes are taboo. Social media offers some freedom, but constraints still limit expression. Despite Baghdad Photo Week’s groundbreaking success, significant obstacles remain. The country’s cultural infrastructure is underdeveloped, with minimal arts education, scant media coverage, and few exhibition spaces. Yet Baghdad Photo Week highlighted not only Iraq’s wealth of talent but also its need to rebuild an artistic community and, after decades of relentless conflict, reimagine its global image.

This article originally appeared in Aperture No. 259, “Liberated Threads,” under the column Dispatches.

Aperture Paris Photo 2025 Patron Trip

12 Nov 25 - 00:00

Richard Misrach and Rebecca Solnit at City Arts & Lectures

23 Oct 25 - 19:30
Sydney Goldstein Theater
275 Hayes Street
San Francisco

Susan Meiselas and Kristen Lubben in Conversation

7 Oct 25 - 19:00
Wollman Hall
Eugene Lang Building, Room B500, 65 West 11th Street
New York