This year sees the influential photography platform 1000 Words celebrate its fifteenth anniversary. Over this period it has built a reputation for commissioning outstanding essays and reviews for books, exhibitions, festivals and more. Bringing together some of the leading voices and commentators from the industry in the process to articulate with authority the magic of this medium.
So with this year marking the first year that 1000 Words joins us as Media Partner of OD Photo Prize, we asked editor Tim Clark to share a few highlights the magazine has featured so far in 2024, their anniversary year. You can click through to read the full article for each feature listed below on the 1000 Words website.
Deadline for Submissions | 28 July, 2024
OD Photo Prize is an annual competition devoted to discovering and nurturing the next generation of photographic artists.
Tim Clark | In January, we profiled Karla Hiraldo-Voleau, a Dominican-French artist photographer based in Lausanne, Switzerland. Through a combination of writing, photography and performance, Another Love Story, her recent photobook with Mörel, re-narrates the final moments of a romantic relationship by casting a similar-looking actor as her ex-lover. Part-fact, part-fiction, the project abounds with emotional and ethical complexity to reclaim the power of her own history whilst also revealing how identity construction can be played out in the digital space, writes Anneka French in our review.
TC | One of February’s features involved another book review, this time looking at Disruptions from Palestinian artist Taysir Batniji. Published by Loose Joints, it collates two years of glitched video calls with his family in Gaza while living in Paris. In solidarity with the struggles of the Palestinian people during the latest act of devastating destruction and erasure by the state of Israel, all proceeds go towards the NGO Medical Aid Palestine providing critical medical care and support on the ground. In Elisa Medde’s powerful text, she considers this evocation of the emotional and physical separation that occurs across borders.
TC | During April, Rut Blees Luxemburg’s exhibition The Essence of Architecture at Hamburg Werkstatt Fotografie in Germany, brought together large-scale photographic work concerning the representation of the city and the phenomenon of the urban. Here the artist discusses the selection and configuration of images in the exhibition, foregrounding liquid elements in the photographs that refer less to bodily failure and human fallibility than that which is unruly and essentially turbulent, thereby threatening the established dry and dusty order of power and control, she explains to Michael Grieve.
TC | Also from April this year, Acts of Resistance was a collaborative exhibition by the South London Gallery and V&A Parasol Foundation for Women in Photography. It confronted the systemic brutalisation and circumscription of women’s bodies worldwide — from persecution in Bangladesh, oppression in India to solidarity with Palestinian freedom. As Max Houghton writes, this was not a show for performative activists; it’s really doing the work — the exhibition fostered a reparative gaze, challenging historical narratives of control and subjugation, and calling for greater community involvement and institutional accountability. Pictured here is an extraordinary self portrait from Japanese artist Mari Katayama who explores body image, identity, and her experience as an amputee so beautifully.
TC | In her Spolia exhibition at Huis Marseille, Amsterdam, Lisa Oppenheim boldly addressed the absence left by artworks confiscated or forcibly taken from Jewish owners during the Nazi regime. Utilising innovative photographic techniques, the American multimedia artist conjured the missing items and meticulously details their history. As Jilke Golbach notes in her text, Oppenheim’s profound connection to the archival is palpable, resulting in a visually stark yet conceptually rich body of work.
TC | In his new book, Hardtack, Rahim Fortune compiles nearly a decade of work, blending documentary with personal history within the context of post-emancipation America. Through coming-of-age portraits that traverse survivalism and land migration, Fortune illustrates African American and Chickasaw Nation communities. As Taous R. Dahmani observes in her piece, the iconography of the American South is drawn between Fortune’s Hardtack and Beyoncé’s Cowboy Carter, released only a few days after — both of which raise questions that serve to redefine ‘Americana’.
About 1000 Words Magazine
1000 Words is a leading online contemporary photography magazine. It commissions exhibition and photobook reviews, essays and interviews in response to the visual culture of our present moment. Founded in 2008, the editorial commitment has always been to explore the possibilities for the medium whilst stimulating debate around current practices, curation, discourses and theory internationally.
Operating out of London, but with a global perspective, the magazine has built a substantial archive of knowledge from culturally diverse worlds of photography and is considered an invaluable resource for artists, educators, researchers, historians, critics and curators working today. It supports and provides a platform for an esteemed roster of contributors, having showcased and published both established names as well as new writers and artists at critical stages in their careers.
Tim Clark is Editor in Chief of 1000 Words and Artistic Director for Fotografia Europea in Reggio Emilia, Italy, together with Walter Guadagnini, Director of CAMERA, Torino and Luce Lebart, curator, historian and researcher for the Archive of Modern Conflict. Tim Clark was also on our panel for OD Photo Prize 2022.
There has never been a better time to submit your projects to OD Photo Prize. With more opportunities on offer than ever before and a proven record working with artists, this open call offers a unique platform for emerging and early career artists of all ages, backgrounds & styles… We can’t wait to see your work.
OD Photo Prize was founded by Open Doors Gallery, UK, in 2021.
Header Image | © Rahime Fortune