Monthly Design Review April 2016

Richard Ross curated a collection of his photographs that represent structures of power. The unnerving thread that runs through the diverse places photographed - from prisons to high-schools, sets of TV cop shows to the UN council - is their similarities. Ross comments on the post-9/11 world of increased surveillance and the erosion of individual liberty by juxtaposing images of spaces not often associated together, then showing their striking connections.

Guy Tillim, a South-African photographer who spent years documenting Apartheid and other conflicts on the African continent, turns in this book to the exploration of post-colonial architecture. His pictures portray the crumbling institutional buildings—post offices, schools, hotels, and offices—that were built by colonial governments in Angola, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Madagascar, and Mozambique.

In his words: “There’s a ten-year period in the late modernist world where there was this grand colonial architecture built in Francophone Africa and Lusophone Africa. It was this strange contemporary mythological time. These buildings are impressive, for all their inappropriateness they nonetheless form part of a contemporary African stage. If you look at them in a certain way, they’re just kind of floating worlds.”

Inspired by the writings of Richard Hugo and others, Bryan Schutmaat's Grays the Mountain Sends poetically delves into the landscapes, faces, atmospheres and lives of small mountain towns and mining communities throughout the American West. In Schutmaat's words: "Perhaps like an endangered species, it's the increasing scarcity of this subject matter that has renewed an interest in it. The majority of today's population is living in a homogenized and demoralizing atmosphere, thus we turn to what's in the distance, in the past, or in our imaginations, for respite from the drabness we regularly encounter."

For a few months in 2010/11, Antonio Faccilongo photographed mothers, wives and daughters of Palestinian political prisoners in Israeli prisons. Waiting for the return of their men, these women are photographed in their homes in various cities and refugee camps in Gaza and the West Bank. The photographs offer a rare glimpse of intricate interiors, giving us an opportunity to study the complex history of the conflict through the diverse landscapes of Palestinian homes.

Archphoto 2.0 is a book series created by the now well-established Archphoto.it, an Italian digital webzine started in 2002 as a critical review of architecture and design issues. This issue explores the idea of the American Frontier from various art, architecture and design perspectives. The issue features articles about Frank Lloyd Wright's Ocatillo Desert Camp, Paolo Soleri's Arcosanti settlement and John Ford's Frontier Myth among other illuminating critical pieces.

The Hermès and Aperture Foundations are presenting the first mid-career survey of Doug DuBois’ photogprahy, containing three different bodies of work: All the Days and Nights, Avella, and My Last Day at Seventeen. DuBois' work moves from the very personal portraits of his family to beautifully rendered images of a small Pennsylvania town and intricately composed shots of Irish teenagers.