The images of American photographer Mary Ellen Mark are icons of documentary and humanistic photography. Focusing her camera on the socially disadvantaged and those on the fringes of society, she told the stories of her protagonists without prejudice. In the context of the emerging women’s movement in the USA during the 1960s and 70s, and as a freelance photographer at a time when print media was suffering its first major crisis, Mark fought her way to the forefront of female voices in photojournalism. (more…)

In the late summer of 2016, I spent six weeks in the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region where I documented the transformation of some of the most influential cities in the region: Ordos, Hohhot, and Baotou. While looking back on the images I had taken, I was unexpectedly reminded of post-war Italian cinema (more…)

To what purpose, April, do you return again? Beauty is not enough. You can no longer quiet me with the redness Of little leaves opening stickily. I know what I know. The sun is hot on my neck as I observe The spikes of crocus… –Edna St. Vincent Millay (more…)

“Painterly and impressionistic, filled with movement and gesture, Swimmers is Larry Sultan’s most instinctive and unselfconscious body of work. A creatively liberating moment that reveals as much, if not more, about the person behind the lens as those in front of it.” –Sean O’Hagan, The Observer New Review (more…)

Marc Lagrange (1957-2015) was born in Kinshasa, Congo. His career path led him from engineering to photography, and his creativity from fashion to art. (more…)

In Episode 186 The United Nations of Photography founder and curator Grant Scott is in his shed reflecting on commitment to photography and photographers, never getting old, questioning funded photographic institutions (more…)

In the context of europalia georgia, S.M.A.K. organises the first museum solo exhibition of Georgian artist Karlo Kacharava (1964–1994) outside Georgia. This exhibition is dedicated to poet, art critic and artist Karlo Kacharava (1964-1994), one of Georgia’s most influential cultural figures of the late twentieth century. (more…)

On this day, May 5, Kublai Khan, grandson of Genghis Khan, becomes ruler of the Mongol Empire (1260); After 66 days on hunger strike, 26 year old Provisional IRA member and British MP Bobby Sands dies in the Maze Prison (1981); Christopher Columbus lands on the island of Jamaica and claims it for Spain (1494) (more…)

The exhibition offers a broad reflection on the natural element by bringing together three experiences that take place around the same time and in which photography, drawing and graphics act as privileged devices in relocating nature within our perceptive horizon in which often occupies a secondary, background role. (more…)