by Edel Assanti, London
Soleimani writes the story of her parents – pro-democracy activists in exile from Iran who came to the US – in a series of clear and complex tables. The pain of the past behind him, embodied in the hand clutching the suitcase, collides with determination to nurture and heal. With a sense of vibrancy and hope, birds, fruit and flowers explode against dense collage backgrounds made up of layers and layers of photographs. Soleimani’s sculptural, expressive handling of photography is superb.
TJ BoultingLondon
This was the year everyone started AI in photography, but Cousins embraces the technology with irrepressible wit and unbridled joy, recreating her childhood memories with Dall-E software. The results are quirky and funny images made to look like they’ve been plucked from a family photo album from the 1990s – think karaoke nights in Butlin’s with Mr Blobby.
Stills, Edinburgh
The average exposure speed of the Leica Luskačová camera is 125th of a second – “there is no time to think about any feelings, but they are there”, said the 79-year-old Czech photojournalist. Emotions, many of them timeless and universal, were in 50 works from 50 years presented at this exhibition, focusing on Luskačová’s paintings of children, from remote Slovakian mountain villages to Spitalfields market. A fan of Weegee and a friend of Chris Killip, Luskačová has stood out from her colleagues despite their softness and vitality. Her own infant son makes a cameo in the pictures here and there – the mothers and children she adopted also helped to watch him, enabling Luskačová, a single mother working in a foreign country, to work. It is thanks to their tenacity and their own that we have this comprehensive half-century document.
Martin Parr Foundation, Bristol
When the Martin Parr foundation commissioned Rene Matić to create a body of work, there was one request: the work had to be done in Bristol. The city is a backdrop in the 35mm diaristic photographs that Matić made there – most of them taken in the home of the wonderful performer and playwright Travis Alabanza. Matić and Alabanza met on the dance floor of a queer night in 2017, but the portrait that develops of their relationship is soft and tender – and defiantly humdrum. The unequivocal right to a quiet life, the pictures suggest, is freedom. Matić grapples with the unhappy nature of being British; he is a worthy successor to Parr himself.
Eastern Gallery, Norwich
Violence against women is a global epidemic and it’s hard to make great art about it. After ten years of documenting the lives of women who suffered patriarchal assault, for the first time Basu tells her own story as a survivor of abuse. Basu gently handles the difficult subject with sensitivity and imagination, drawing on ancient myths and science fiction, while experimenting with different photographic techniques, as well as moving image and sound. A vital and unexpectedly exciting account.
Impressions Gallery, Bradford
Morrissey’s contribution to photography has long been overlooked. This two-decade survey moves from early staged portraits to contemporary collaborations with her sister, reenacting photos from old family albums, to later self-portraits in lockstep. An incisive and satirical portrayal of the place of women in British society.
Tate Modern, London, until 14 January
A continent-themed exhibition in 2023? It can be done without being corny. From the glittering splendor of Nigerian monarchs in George Osodi’s life-size portraits, to the quiet beauty of families immortalized in black and white by Lazhar Mansouri’s studio in the mountains of northern Algeria in the 1960s, this exhibition moves across genres and through nations with real people. diverse histories and cultures to reach a common understanding of independence and self-invention. Curated with scholarship and soul, the show proves that the pulse of photography can be found in Africa.
Barbican, London, until 14 January
Alona Pardo’s swan song as curator at the Barbican, this exhibition is a generous parting gift: an unprecedented look at the relationship between women’s bodies, the Earth and the camera. Moving from the protest movements of the 1960s to the present day, this is a vast, multi-layered exploration of the possibilities of photography as a form of activism, and is as visually engaging as it is deeply informative.
V&A, London
The Prix Pictet is the world’s leading photography prize. It’s not the 100,000 CHF prize money that made this exhibition great – it’s the funding that made it possible to pour every effort into it, from months of extensive curatorial work with the shortlisted photographers and artists (some some of whom were not used to exhibiting their work in galleries) to the excellent design of the exhibition. But then there’s something that money can’t buy in photographs – such as those made by 2023 winner Gauri Gill, who document the Indian desert with notes of magical realism: the beauty and pain of the devastation we face as a human race.
The Photographers’ Gallery, London, until 11 February
An intelligent, intoxicating and intense dive into the seemingly endless work of the enigmatic master of Japanese photography. Moving between erotic vignettes, poignant pictures of nature and piquant political peeks at life in post-war Japan, this exhibition proves that there is much more to Moriyama than fishnet stockings and street scenes. Ambitiously curated by Thyago Nogueira, the paintings here do not hang nicely on walls; they jump out and bite you by the throat. Incomprehensible.
