Edward Steichen (1879-1973) was a pioneering photographer, and probably the most versatile and prolific of his era. His subjects ranged from portraits and landscapes, to fashion and advertising, to still-life and war photography, and to dance and sculpture. His manner of handling his multi-faceted career was considered radical and controversial, and laid the foundations for how contemporary photographers crisscross the fields of editorial and advertising today.

For many years, Euro Rotelli had the need to express his feelings and emotions towards the phenomenon of immigration through photography. Not wanting to make a display of suffering and tragedy but more of hope and a successful living together. His new project started when an architect friend who lived in Paris suggested him to visit Saint-Denis and Aubervilliers, two districts that were protagonists of a phenomenon of constant change and movement. Photography has had a tight connection with the older, some even say parental, medium of painting, since its very beginnings. Some may say the development of photography was driven by research in a variety of elements of visual representation, such as perspective and colour. It seemed that photography offered the holy grail of the painter’s quest—full and accurate representation. And in doing so, raised fears about the uselessness of painting. In the end photography managed to profile as the autonomous artistic medium, not a mere tool of painting, nor its enemy. It emancipated its artistic nature and escaped the qualities assigned to it by the negotiations of territory between painting and photography.The figure represented in Ana/chrony is neither erotic nor social. It is surely not political, but it looks nice. The figure we see in Hammam’s set is an allegory—I've found out—a representation of the ultimate truth, in the Arabic world. Her name is Al Haquiqa. It is said that by removing the veil of Al Haquiqa, a person will know the ultimate truth. During his visit what stroked the artist most was not only the people he was able to meet or the partly demolished houses he could visit but rather the over-exaggerated numbers of signs of “PERMIS DE DÉMOLIR” that were placed on the houses and everywhere on the streets. DH: Yes, gay content for sure. I hope you noticed that! And yes, there are beautiful men…yet there are also not so beautiful men. But I find them all beautiful. I would argue what unites them is how they’ve been photographically rendered. I am interested in beauty and where it’s found. Sometimes it exists in the world and sometimes I make it. Or both. In some of the photographs I depict men I love, have loved, could never love, never have, never be, etc. Yet I don’t know if I feel comfortable categorising the work as solely gay. Although I’m a gay man that’s not all I am. It is important for me that the viewer is aware that my imagery, all of my imagery, has been made through the lens of a gay man. This does inform the entire body of work and is ultimately my biggest political statement.

home. They had come to Vrindavan of their own accord, wishing to spend the last years of their lives in devotion to Krishna.So the dark side of the story is Fantômas—Magritte wrote a text about him, saying Fantômas is the Evil. Then we have the bright side of the project, which is a tribute to the surrealists, especially Marcel Duchamp. Duchamp invented the double of himself as a woman and she was called Rrose Sélavy. We twisted the words, but of course they mean something different in French, they are difficult to translate. Duchamp invented Rrose Sélavy. And we created Rose, c’est Paris. Famous for her photos of beautiful women, Bettina Rheims has been one of France’s most celebrated photographers for almost four decades. After this they would go on to share a dynamic career together, showing their work in galleries and museums across the world. DH: Maybe within this series. I’ve made plenty of photographs that depict physical connections. But you are right in the case of this newest work, in pointing out that for the most part subjects are often alone or disconnected. In Hug I made the conscious decision to create a moment where I’m actually holding on to my father. In recent years his health has been a bit shaky and it occurred to me that I never really made a photograph where I’m holding him…and I’d be remiss if I didn’t and one day he was gone. To be honest, although we’re hugging, the photo is really about my being alone. It’s a pretty sad image.

Woodcutter from Rashomon is now a Miner. The Ronin becomes the Deputy and the Wife is now the Prisoner. These roles overlap in time. In fact, the languageshave changed, and stories are often planned in advance miles away from where the story is unfolding.

Saul Leiter, was a very humble man who would rather talk about artists and writers he enjoyed than himself, he was happy to share his memories of other photographers he knew well such as Diane Arbus, or his passion for French photographers such as Boubat or Lartigue who he admired. Through his sensual, multi-panelled panoramic photographs, David Hilliard tells stories—stories about desire, fathers and sons, masculinity unfolding, relationships that elude. This body of work, is his most autobiographical project; through a very tender, observant lens, he looks at his relationships with his parents; the anxieties of being a boy who doesn’t thrill at boyish things; the longing of a young man; and the mature awareness that we will all have to say goodbye to the people we love the most, no matter how hard we may embrace them now. With different focal points throughout and an almost tactile emotional sensibility, the photos portray a beautiful, richly nuanced world: one that Hilliard both perceives and invents through his narrative images. Much of my work weaves together an investigation into my own heritage as well as the current social and political issues that the countries face. EvenSeeing these images for the first time I was convinced that they were paintings. They resembled surrealistic representation of time, and had a tight connection to Salvador Dali’s work on time. Melting figures, decentred compositions and the obvious allegory of the desert surely belong to a known surrealist's style. But, on seeing the whole set of Ana/chrony at once, a certain difference appeared regarding the images. Ana/chrony forms a time-period sequence that connects each of the images in the series with a succession of before and after elements. In a terms of medium, they are connected more like film frames, rather than subscribing to the logic of a painting. In this sequential, time-edited world, I could recognise the movement, which had the figure appearing as not being human at the very beginning, but later on clearly becoming a human figure. The figure was veiled. Anna Sansom (AS): Your work often relates to human rights. Has each of your projects always related to shedding light on a specific situation? CM: Do you feel like your work has a particularly gay content? There are beautiful men, and there is longing and attraction between them, is that enough to categorise the work as gay? Are such categories useful? From Picasso’s Mademoiselles de Avignon to The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas, prostitution has forever been documented in the news, art, and film. Like the best of these representations, Selling Spring peels away the stereotypes and objectification of the sex worker to reveal something deeper. When we see one of his subjects, we don’t see just a stranger, but a reminder of the common human struggle to survive. Delano says, “What interests me is the woman behind this persona created for men’s sexual appetite. She is someone’s sister, daughter, maybe someone’s mother.” The shop window has always been a source of inspiration for Valérie Belin. In the early 90s, she first made photographs of jewelry and trinkets exposed in different shopping malls. Subsequently there came photographs of crystal vases and silverware (Verres I et Verres II, 1993-1994), photographs of glass objects and mirrors in several showrooms in Venice (Venise I, 1997), photographs of mannequins (Mannequins, 2003), and finally, photographs of storefronts in Luxembourg (Vitrines Luxembourg, 2003).