Affinities
An overview of a recent series on Tender Photo, and what's next.
From June 3 until last Saturday, I wrote micro-essays that aimed to find affinities between photographs featured so far on Tender Photo.
I called the series “concordance,” with the image of my boyhood in mind, when I’d pore over the large Bible concordances that belonged to my father, for the simple thrill of seeing how words and phrases were networked.
Here’s a link to the 12 essays, where you can find reflections on photographs of empty chairs, pedestrians, spectators, aftermaths, sitters, roads, and so on.
There were, of course, many wonderful photographs that didn’t fit into a sequence— for instance, Lidudumalingani’s mesmerizing aerial shot of Johannesburg, the perfect shot of a networked city. CONCORDANCE was, in fact, a sequel to CORRESPONDENCES, a series of commentaries by 13 writers, the depth and acuity of which convinced me to push the format further.
At the beginning of the year, I wrote that I was thinking of Tender Photo as a digital library of mainstream photography criticism, and a space to deepen and expand the scope of a correspondence with photography. That remains true.
The next series, KINDRED, will launch next Saturday, September 2, and last for 8–10 weeks. Each contributor has been asked to select a photograph from their family or personal album, pair it with another photograph from the Tender Photo archive, and write a short reflection on why they have selected both photographs. The idea is to find an analogy between two photographs that might be similar or dissimilar, but which are connected to an experience, emotion, or idea.
If this kind of pairing (and writing) interests you, please drop me a line, as I’m hoping to add a few more writers to the mix.
Thank you for your continued engagement with this project. Forward ever!
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