We Are Looking into It
Arts Illustrated|June - July 2020
Swiss-based artists Jojakim Cortis and Adrian Sonderegger talk to us about the evolving meaning and purpose of photography and the many perspectives it lends to history
Vani Sriranganayaki
We Are Looking into It
When this lockdown started, my family went on a cleaning spree, which, by the way, is still ongoing. For days now, we’ve been pouring over boxes of old toys, baby clothes, books and countless, countless photographs, including a large unframed photograph, too big for albums, and carefully packed between mattresses. It was a self-portrait – my late grandfather’s. I discovered that he used to own a photo studio back in the 1940s, when only newly married couples and newborns got their photos taken in studios. I then learnt that this particular self-portrait, taken much later, was one of his life’s last works and that it was all the more special for a technique he had used: no matter where we put the photo, his eyes were always on us (the lasting legacy of a man famous for his rather ‘strict’ personality).

This story is from the June - July 2020 edition of Arts Illustrated.

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This story is from the June - July 2020 edition of Arts Illustrated.

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