Your Sunday Inspiration ✨

Hanako Murakami, Thomas Hoepker and more ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ Children in a Bombed Building, Bermondsey, London, 1954 © Roger Mayne Archive / Mary Evans Picture Library After a few weeks of distracting elections, football tournaments and sun-drenched photo festivals, it feels reassuring to be back on familiar ground: touring London in search of excellent photography. There is plenty to be found this week. The first ever photo show to be mounted at The Courtauld is a good place to start, a time capsule into postwar London (and the photographer’s own family) in Roger Mayne’ Youth. Bombsites become precarious playgrounds in Bermondsey and North Kensington well into the 1950s in Mayne’s pictures, which honour the playfulness of childhood while also foreshadowing the British documentary tradition to come. [Markéta Luskačová’s images of children]( come to mind, as does [Tish Murtha’s]( shot of her siblings jumping out of similarly dilapidated buildings onto mattresses in the North East in the late-1970s. Mayne’s images are slightly more choreographed and dramatic (hence their later usage on sociology book covers), but there’s something about the children’s faces – innocent but also bearing dust and darkness – which is common across the artists’ work. And still English doorsteps and terraces provide the stage on which so much of 20th-century life played out. Installation view of Penny Slinger: Exorcism: Inside Out, Richard Saltoun, 2024 © Penny Slinger / Artist Rights Society (ARS), New York The pioneering ‘feminist surrealist’ Penny Slinger is also in town, presenting her solo exhibition Exorcism: Inside Out at Richard Saltoun gallery. The whole space is converted and plastered with imagery from Slinger’s An Exorcism series, an erotic journey of self-discovery located in an empty mansion. An accompanying 2019 film elucidates the work via a haunting voiceover – “Pre-conception – self-image; Gestation, talking to myself” in the “hermetic vessel” of the creaky mansion – while also veering into self-doubt and even self-harm. Plants and the building’s crevices become metaphors for sexual organs, while less is left to the imagination in Slinger’s gender-busting photo collages. (At one point even a group of nuns begin to derobe). Don’t miss it. Rheim Alkadhi draws on the colonial history of photography – and its potential as a tool for future resistance – in Templates for Liberation, their largely sculptural show at the ICA. While early 20th-century publications used photography to exoticise and falsely categorise Iraqi people, Alkadhi creates imagined rebel figures who may provide answers to these centuries of oppression. The documents are shown side-by-side in The Land and the People, a carefully curated reading room adjacent to the main gallery. And finally, Aria Shahrokhshahi’s Sketchbook Volume 2 is open at Have a Butchers, Dalston, presenting ‘duality-focused’ images made while volunteering for NGOs in Ukraine. The country is now a place of counterpoints, the British-Iranian artist says: “where young people contemplate their futures in the face of unimaginable uncertainty, and where natural landscapes and wildlife are documented only by virtue of military surveillance technology poised to bring about their annihilation”. In the studio with Hanako Murakami We visit a bright apartment in the 17th arrondissement of Paris administered by DRAC, an organisation which supports artists [Read more]( [Build the way you want]( Product placement: Commercial photography championed in New York Tracing an alternative history of photography by considering product shots, a new show suggests an intrinsic link between consumerism and image-making [Read more]( [Build the way you want]( Around the world with Thomas Hoepker The German photojournalist spent over six decades travelling the globe, capturing everything from Korean War veterans to the smallpox epidemic in 1960s Bihar [Read more]( Bluecoat Press' latest Kickstarter: The Magic Money Tree by Kirsty Mackay [Build the way you want]( [Bluecoat]( launches the Kickstarter for The Magic Money Tree by Kirsty Mackay, documenting the cost of living crisis and highlighting poverty in the UK. Mackay collaborates with children, families, and youth groups, providing cameras and workshops. The book traces the impact of Conservative government decisions on four communities, serving as a reminder of the real-life consequences of politics and a call for change. Visit the Kickstarter page to learn more and support the project. [Learn more]( [Facebook]( [Twitter]( [Instagram]( [1854 Media Ltd, 244-254 Cambridge Heath Rd, Cambridge Heath, London, E2 9DA, United Kingdom Click here to update your email preferences]( [Click here to unsubscribe from all emails](