Aperture No. 261 – The Craft Issue (Winter 2025)

Aperture No. 261, the Craft issue, is about photographs made slowly and by hand: camera obscuras, photograms and long hours in a traditional darkroom, producing handmade, unrepeatable forms. The artists use novel printing processes and techniques that put the physical material of photography first, and some work alongside ceramics, glass, textiles, design and other forms of object making.

Ekow Eshun talks with Theaster Gates about the polemics of craft. The issue also covers Ann Weathersby and expanded female consciousness, Jungjin Lee's landscapes of introspection, and the darkroom alchemy of Aspen Mays, whose photogram is on the cover. Alistair O'Neill talks with Christophe Lemaire and Sarah-Linh Tran about fashion, movies and everyday gestures. Other pieces look at how Lucia Moholy immortalized the Bauhaus, Troy Montes Michie's collages of queer history and desire, and Erin Jane Nelson, who combines ceramics and photography. Michael Famighetti talks with Irina Rozovsky and Mark Steinmetz about attention, focus and darkroom magic, and John Chiara's custom camera obscuras close the features.

Edmund de Waal writes the final note, on a life among archives and vessels. The PhotoBook Review has Brendan Embser in conversation with curator Oluremi C. Onabanjo, Natasha Stagg at Climax Books in New York, Vince Aletti on Mark Borthwick's early fashion photography, and reviews of photobooks by Nick Haymes, Nikolay Bakharev, Alanna Fields, Donna Gottschalk and Yung Lean.