Editorial

Afterimage, Sept-Oct, 2003 by Bruno Chalifour

Summer is traditionally a period of vacations and festivals. It is a time to resume projects left aside, time to go out and see, listen, travel. On the international scene the festival season starts in late Spring and lingers until early Fall. This year was no exception in photography, from the Primavera in Spain to the Rencontres d'Arles in France, and now Visa pour l'image in Perpignan and Le Mois de la Photo in Montreal in September and October. In spite of the heat wave, Paris offered a variety of historical shows from the monumental Cartier-Bresson retrospective at the new Bibliotheque Nationale de France to Jacques Henri Lartigue original albums at Beaubourg, or Li Zhensheng, a Chinese Photographer in the Cultural Revolution at the Mission du Patrimoine Photographique--this latter exhibition is the premise of a whole year of Chinese photography in France. After our special publication on visual studies (Vol. 31.1), this issue is essentially dedicated to catching up with our scheduled actions such as the index to volume 30 and our readers' survey (which will soon be accessible online). Volume 31.3 (November/December) will attempt to encompass the latest trends in photography, video, cinema, and digital media, as exemplified in the various festivals. We wanted to wait and visit Le Mois de la Photo in Montreal as well as Strangers, the first triennial of photography and video at the International Center of Photography in New York, opening on September 13, to complete our analysis. We are also looking for our readers' impressions and feedback on recent and current exhibitions.

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

This month, we are publishing a critical view of the work of Israeli artist Boaz Arad by Gene Ray. In light of events throughout the world, whether in Afghanistan, Iraq, Africa, South America, Israel, Romania, Yugoslavia, Turkey, or Chechnya, Gene Ray's essay on the concepts of violence and forgiveness can be approached as a meaningful if not crucial investigation of contemporary preoccupations. It inscribes itself in a process and initiatives happening in Chile, Argentina, or South Africa, to face and overcome highly traumatic pasts. Illustrating another approach to trauma, memory and pain, Tracy Droz-Tragos's journey into her family past and the death of her father in Vietnam, scheduled to be shown on PBS in the Fall, investigates another aspect of the ramifications of memory. She was interviewed by Christine Sevilla, one of our active collaborators who also worked on composing our readers' survey and posting it online.

The space that we have tried to dedicate to visual statements, namely our front and back covers--and Afterimage's format gives us two back covers--features works by young or new artists: Focus VI, 2002, an installation combining a black and white photograph and silk thread by Lin Tianmiao and Wang Gongxin, a piece from their show in the Arles festival; Corps by Marianne Grimont, six images from a series of life-size self-portraits assembled from scanned images of this artist from Belgium; and finally a series of black and white photographs taken in China two years ago by one new VSW graduate student, Bleu Cease. I noticed Bleu's "eye" last Spring when he showed me the images of an anti-war demonstration in Austin, a reportage he had completed while I and many others were sitting through the SPE conference there. Bleu's images are a perfect complement to our front cover illustrating the emergence of Chinese culture on the international scene, and an homage to Henri Cartier-Bresson's lifelong oeuvre and style.

Bruno Chalifour, editor.