As 2022 sprints to an end, the world is filled with more trouble than joy and this is reflected in the submissions we received for this issue. More than before there seemed to be a dominance of introspective and brooding work, if not in theme and concept, then in the aesthetics of the images.
Uncanny were the two A Visual Dialogue responses in this issue. Both pairs, unknown to each other, used Sisyphus as a reference point in their dialogues. Is there a deeper meaning in this? Here are five artists in different corners of the world (Greece, Taiwan, Spain and Chile), and there is this unanticipated connection. What is the role of this creative exchange on a deeper level? That there is indeed connectedness where distance and borders are irrelevant? We hope you find inspiration in both these deeply thoughtful visual dialogues. Read more about that here.
The featured theme queen was an idea triggered by the death of Queen Elizabeth II in September, not long before our first editorial meeting for this issue. For the British this was a major event after her 70-year reign. It was a pivotal juncture in one corner of the world with the beginning of a new era, but as a magazine with global reach we didn't want to limit our feature only to UK artists so we invited a group of photographers from around the world to participate. See more here.
Issue #6 includes the work of artists from some of the most troubled parts of the world, including but not limited to Ukraine, Russia and Iran, who, despite the challenging times in their home countries, still manage to create. It seems there aren’t many bright spots in the world these days but art and creativity remains as a bright spot.
Other artists come from Bolivia, Chile, China, Germany, Greece, Hong Kong, India, Italy, Netherlands, Slovenia, Spain, Thailand and the UK.
Slovenian artist Nibera leads us through her colorful dreamscapes in her collage series Parallel Worlds and reminds us of the beauty of this world and the importance of reconnecting with it.
Journey to Home is Chinese photographer Cora Sun’s four-chapter series about the drastic reshaping of the urban landscape of her hometown while her compatriot Leslie Shang investigates the 600 year history of an ordinary Chinese family in Cypress Slope. In both series we can see the importance of maintaining history to understand identity as China continues to rapidly erase its past as it races towards the future. Italian Miriam Alè also reconnects with her hometown in her essay Prima Ràma as she photographs her blind grandfather and explores her relationship with him. Pavlo Borshchenko looks back on his youth in a provincial Ukrainian town at the end of the Soviet era and how it affected his present persona in Catch The Hero. Sima Choubdarzadeh awakens to the reality of her life of entrapment in patriarchal Iran in The Lotus Seeds Waiting to Sprout. This at a time when we can all witness another revolution, this time led by women.
Ornella Orlandini from Italy takes us on her mythical quest for the universal feminine in La Loba while German Julia Albrecht expresses a dystopian view for the future of reproduction in After Fertilisation. Ekaterina Zhingel plays with the overlapping of time-past, present and future and imagines a future where all are one.
In Bed Checks photographer duo Pratya Jankong from Thailand and Ukrainian Olga Fedorowa document what they perceive as the discriminatory immigration process for mixed couples in the US and what they experienced. A situation millions of immigrants can relate to in many parts of the world.
Out of the ten photographers we selected for this issue, six of them currently live in a country other than their origin.
