Mladen Bizumic (b.1976) began documenting his life as a teenager in New Zealand using now-extinct Kodak film. Decades later, in his 2018 book 

, Bizumic reflects on the rise and fall of Kodak, the giant of the industry that put cameras in the hands of millions and made "Kodak moments'' a part of everyday life.

These days, you can find Mladen working on his multidisciplinary practice from his airy, immaculate Vienna studio, exploring cultural shifts through the lens of photography with poetic precision. His work delves deeply into the intersections between the material and digital, often using the history of photography as a means to explore broader societal issues.

Through a series of photographs, collages, and installations that spanned over several years, Bizumic plays with the formal qualities of image-making, creating hybrid images that blend the material and the digital, the historical and the contemporary. His lens-based works are conceptually driven, using the history of Kodak as a means to explore larger questions about the impact of technology on society, memory, and identity.

, held at Georg Kargl Box in Vienna, it is noted that “Kodak invented its own "death". It is this death that Bizumic brings to life, exploring the cadaver of Kodak with a morbid and sometimes violent interest. On the one hand, he turns it into a contemporary morality tale … and on the other, he re-engineers its corpse, Frankensteining it into a new and artistic form.”

By revisiting Kodak’s legacy, Bizumic invites us to reflect on how we engage with technology, nostalgia, and visual culture as a whole. Personally, I haven’t been able to stop thinking about Mladen’s work since I first visited him in Vienna three years ago. I speak with the artist again for DoBeDo in order to ask him about his undying interest in Kodak’s past, his extensive photographic projects, as well as what lies in the future.

Your interest in Kodak started early in life, and you shot on Kodak 160 VC and 400 VC until they went extinct. How do you think shooting on film has influenced your - and your generation’s - visual habits?



 Kodak was everywhere in the 1990s. I began shooting with Kodak when I was fifteen. I recall the profound slowness of analogue photography—a process so deliberate and measured that it strongly contrasts with the rapid immediacy of today's digital imaging. My early fascination with Kodak 160 VC and 400 VC wasn't just a commitment to a medium but a deep immersion into a realm where each photo demanded careful thought, each click of the shutter a conscious act of faith. It is a well-known fact: Kodak now exists in a state of near-extinction. In terms of the analogue production, there was a temporal delay between capturing a photograph and revealing its content, dictated by the development process. It could take a day or even two to obtain my negatives.

Today, the pace is incredibly fast; everything has accelerated. This change is of course extended to how we relate to each other. I cherish analogue qualities, yet every generation has its own language, its own means of representing the world. For the painters of the past, the advent of photography presented a multifaceted potential, a transformation that irrevocably altered the course of art history. We have been living through a similar upheaval, one driven by the relentless advance of digital cameras and iPhones and, increasingly, the looming spectre of artificial intelligence. The slowness of analogue photography, with its inherent demands for patience and contemplation, has left an indelible mark on my visual habits. It taught me to cherish the unique textures of reality. For me, art, at its core, offers an empathic engagement—an invitation extended to others, enabling them to partake in the very experiences I hold dear.


Yours is a conceptual study of a medium, a monopoly, and its demise. You are also interested in what followed; that interest is expressed in works such as ‘Where Instagram Lives’ or ‘Kodak Employed 140,000 People, Instagram 13’. What interested you most about photographing these sites of production?



My works are deeply personal explorations of the seismic shifts within the world of photography. Kodak, once a titan with a workforce of 140,000, now reduced to a faint echo amidst the roar of digital progress, serves as a poignant reminder of how fleeting a monopoly on culture can be. But my fascination goes beyond the relics of fallen giants; it's about the haunting silence left behind. How do we create something new on the ruins of the past?

"Where Instagram Lives” is particularly close to my heart. It features hundreds of shredded CMYK photographs, each depicting the Luleå Data Centre, one of Meta’s many holdings isolated 150 km south of the Arctic Circle, symbolising the dystopian reality of our digital age. In this sterile fortress of the contemporary image factory, the ghost of analogue's past confronts the terribly unified image resolution of our Instagram present. What captivates me most about these data centres is their tangible physicality. They are built from countless servers, cables, and hard drives, making them the infrastructure of our new digital era. Today, human labour is replaced by automated processes, and the personal connection to each photograph is supplanted by the hidden logic of algorithms. Through my art, I seek to bridge these worlds—it's a highly experimental take on the transformation of photography.


 You have said that you choose to use analogue photography as a tool to communicate a distance between the moment of capture and analysis, even when the subject matter is digital, as opposed to it being a nostalgic decision. Are you personally ever nostalgic for material processes of the past? Have you ever explored that relation in the reverse?



That's a great question! The material processes, with their deliberate slowness, aren't relics to be mourned but integral parts of a rich, intricate tapestry that still shapes my reality. The analogue, with its embodied rituals and inherent delays, allows me to engage with time in a way that digital immediacy simply can't replicate. In my series "MoMA's Baby," I've explored the reverse—the infiltration of digital sensibilities into analogue practices. This isn't just simple mimicry but a deliberate interplay, a synthesis where the immediacy of the digital weaves its way into the tactile realm of the analogue. The resulting work is a dialogue between the past and the present. For me, this relationship between analogue and digital isn't one of opposition but of evolving interconnection. It's a testament to how each medium informs and reshapes the other.


 In your book ‘Photo Book Photo Bust’ you touch upon Jacques Derrida’s concept of Hauntology. How does the idea that all photographs are “hauntological”, unable to exist without the trace of an absent past, inform your work? What sets photography apart as a medium in this respect?

From its very inception, photography has been enshrouded in a paradoxical blend of the haunted and the scientific, the objective and the subjective, the past and the present. It emerged as a medium promising to capture reality with an objective precision, yet simultaneously it complicated the meaning of that same "reality" making it intrinsically haunted. The photograph, as an imprint of light, is a scientific achievement that paradoxically reveals the intangible. This hauntological dimension of photography is an attribute that sets it apart from other disciplines. Unlike painting or sculpture, which might represent an idealised version of reality, photography is indexically linked to the real, and the absent underscores its unique place in the realm of visual art. For me, photography, as a medium, is uniquely suited to this exploration of hauntology. It is a testament to the paradox of presence and absence, a tangible artefact that speaks of what is no longer there. That said, I find myself presently engrossed in delving into volumes that contemplate the alternative "futures" of photography, such as Vilém Flusser's 

Potential History: Unlearning Imperialism

. These works, filled with profound reflections, are most worthy of recommendation.

 The book outlines a dramatic cultural shift from “preserve memories” to “share experiences” when it comes to photography as a popular pastime. What are you drawn to capturing and photographing most in your own life.



I enjoy combining relics of past images with present ones, creating a sense of temporal coexistence in my collage series such as 'Heritage Creation' and 'Sometimes Old, Sometimes New.' These images are unfixed and unsettled, visual enigmas. I'm interested in why something becomes a cliché, a collective, popular voice, so obvious that it becomes invisible, fitting perfectly within an algorithmic logic. What's truly interesting is what doesn't fit the existing model—the glitch that, once recognized, becomes fixed. I appreciate the unfixed, the unknown, believing that if it's interesting to me, it might be interesting to others as well.

Currently, I'm captivated by fragile UNESCO sites, which remain vulnerable to the climate emergency despite our preservation efforts. Equally compelling are the manicured lawns of golf courses—meticulously maintained yet starkly contrasting with the natural landscapes they replace. These spaces reflect colonial legacies, illustrating how the West imposes its will on the environment, reshaping it to fit aesthetic ideals and recreational purposes. My focus now extends to how to depict lithium, celebrated as a ‘green’ alternative for batteries yet fraught with environmental contradictions. Its extraction, while ostensibly supporting sustainability, reveals a troubling reality: a deeply taxing process on the environment. This paradox, where a material lauded for its benefits comes at a substantial ecological cost, mirrors the broader absurdity of our time, especially when sodium-based batteries are cheaper, widely accessible, and more sustainable than both traditional fossil fuels and lithium technologies.


 In an interview with Fiona Liewehr, you mention a new term, “nowstalgia”, do you think that a hallmark of today’s culture is a yearning for an idealised present?



Today’s culture is characterised by a relentless pursuit of immediacy. This pursuit often manifests as a desire for an idealised present—to capture and preserve the fleeting moments of now. It is a reflection of our anxieties about the passage of time and experiences that seem more vivid and fulfilling in retrospect. However, art is not about quantity; it is about quality. In this sense, everything remains the same as it was 100 years ago.



 "Lászlò Moholy-Nagy predicted that the illiterate of the future would not be the person unable to read or write, but the person ignorant of how photography signifies.” (p. 113) This prediction holds even more weight in the age of the internet, AI and deep fakes. Do you worry about these new technologies and their impact on our ways of perceiving reality?



I fear that László's prediction has proven to be entirely accurate. The issue extends far beyond the act of perceiving reality; it ventures into the realm of shaping existence itself according to dimensions yet beyond our imagination. May fortune extend its reluctant hand to us all!


Mladen Bizumic On The Intersection of Photography’s Past and Future

Margate-based photographer Jason Evans has been making work along the boundaries of fashion, street photography, and music since the early 1990s. He has exhibited worldwide and his seminal 1991 photo series 

 is held in the permanent collection of the Tate Gallery.

, a website where he posts an image a day of something that makes him happy. It is a deliberate effort to highlight the good and the joyful, a belief that positive will bring positive. The image remains for 24 hours and is then replaced, with no online archive of the photographs.

’s twentieth anniversary, DoBeDo Projects produced five unique sets of playing cards in collaboration with Jason Evans, using his favourite images from the project. Ahead of the release, legendary designer, stylist, and fellow London-to-Margate expat Carri Munden sat down with Evans to discuss 

and the part it has played in Evans’ practice over the last twenty years.

"I love that after years of friends or mutual connections trying to arrange a meeting or working collaboration in London, that Jason and I met organically by both moving to the Thanet coast." Munden says, "I think we both made it home for very similar reasons. Although we still have not worked together, I enjoy the creative collaboration that is our friendship. I have learnt things about myself through friendship with Jason, and I value the inspiration but also his kindness, honesty and protection."

Jason Evans: Hey Carri! I am really glad you were able to fit this in, as our trust and understanding of one another, and the contexts we’ve worked in bodes well for our chat. That’s unusual in these circumstances, a treat.

CM: Clicking through these The Daily Nice images is pure JOY. They are the Everyday elevated. A visual diary with recurring visual forms. I imagine this repetition is unconscious. It feels very pure, a visual stream of consciousness. But are these images also about personal memories and emotions or moments? Or is it purely about the image?

JE: The audience was only ever supposed to see one picture at a time, a bunch of the images can feel like a potentially overwhelming carnival of eye candy, which you were subjected to for the purposes of this conversation. The Daily Nice pictures are the outcome of my compulsively ‘pointing’ at things that give me visual pleasure, and wanting to share that as positive affirmation. The repetition of subject matter or motif was unconscious, but over 20 years it has revealed my obsessions back to me, made me more self aware as a creative. I see that I am more consistent than I realised, which in turn gave me licence to go off piste. Some days I’m more oblique than others with a definition of ‘nice’ just to have fun with my audience.

CM: That is so special to be able to look back and learn something about yourself and your practise from these spontaneous moments. And there are a lot of circles. I use a lot of circles in my graphic design work – a circle is such a pure and pleasing form. It is organic / ancient / sci fi / pagan / powerful / calm. Would you agree?

JE: I know, right!? I don’t know what it is with me and circles, and stripes for that matter. I generally avoid triangles. Circles are definitely a calm thing for me. In ocular or photographic terms the circular is resonant. No Sun, arguably our biggest circle, no light. No light, no photography. And our eyeballs, plus our pupils are round, as are the lenses in our cameras. Our planet and on and on… I’m being a bit loosey-goosey here but I think you get where I’m coming from.

CM: Post covid lockdowns I had social anxiety for the first time in my life. When I left the house, especially on my first trip back to London, I found myself instinctively counting squares and breaking every street view down to its simple geometric forms.This meant I could ignore the humans, the crowds, the threat. A kind of visual disassociation, self-regulation I guess. Is The Daily Nice a form of visual Therapy?

JE: Totally! I too experience social anxiety, in cities anyway, and when I started making pictures, typically in the street, out and about, the camera acted like a bit of a shield, but also kind of gave me permission to go off and satisfy my curiosity and wanderlust. Photography helped me bridge the gap between where I was and where I could find myself, physically and mentally. Later on I got into the idea of photo-therapy from reading Jo Spence’s ‘Putting Myself in the Picture.’ I’ve had this ongoing push-pull with depression through my life, and having the daily nice program of photographing stuff that made me happy has set a positive agenda to my looking, and in turn to my being out in the world.

CM: I love that it has become such a positive daily practise. I really believe humans need ritual. It is powerful. 

As you said, each image only exists online for one day, why did you decide this? And how does it feel now seeing them all together as a collection?

JE: I don’t keep an archive or a record of the images, I’ve lost loads of them on old laptops, but I don’t mind, there’s always going to be more beauty, more inspiration, you just have to be tuned into it. That’s what the no archive policy implies, letting go is a radical act in a consumer culture. It’s about the process, the taking part, not accumulation.

I made an hour-long slide show of ‘nices’ with a soundtrack of ‘nice’ musics, like twinkly ambient and new age stuff, for the Bound Art Book Fair online edition, just to see what it felt like. I called it “too much of a good thing”. Seeing them all together makes me happy, and I was glad to hear you describe it as joyful. So much documentary photography is depressing, or depicts ‘difficult’ subject matter, which serves to reinforce the nervous narratives that keep people anxious. In balance, I need to believe that despite everything there is also hope and beauty. Agnes Martin said ‘beauty is the mystery of life’ and I believe her.

CM: Humans feature randomly and rarely in the The Daily Nice but there is always humour and play and signs of humans. Your portraits and Fashion editorials are the first I knew of your work and are always honest and magic. What attracts you to someone, makes you want to photograph them?

JE: Woah, good question. I am not sure exactly why but sometimes I’m just drawn to a person, not because of how they look, but maybe how they move or carry themselves. How they make me feel. That feeling can be so strong that I overcome social anxiety and go up to them and ask for a picture. In the 90s I used to do street casting for other photographers, and would have to interpret what their requirements were and it got  complicated, really interesting, like a creative social experiment.

CM: The Daily Nice is all about colour, texture, light, patterns and layers of all of these. They are snapshots, unintentional but perfect compositions. The result is sometimes very similar to your artworks made from collage. Do The Daily Nice images ever inspire other later more complex works?

JE: Typically my compositions simply place the visual pleasure in the centre of the frame, and are shot without looking at the screen, point and press. I generally photograph things as I first encounter them. The ‘snapshot’ aesthetic is approachable and signals informality. About 10 years ago I noticed that I was unconsciously playing more with the frame and the subject, the compositions became more deliberate. That coincided with how my other work had become more considered and self aware. I guess that has to do with age and experience and an ongoing exploration of the medium. The things that inspire me in the world have a definite impact on my other making, commissioned and personal. It’s a dialogue.

CM: This collection of images is incredibly personal but also accessible to anyone. Is this important to you? Do you want to talk about the work you do with SEN youth and adults?

JE: Accessibility is important to me, it’s part of why I do so little gallery work, and why I was initially drawn to magazines in the 80s. Having had the life experience of feeling othered, for my queerness and my neurotype, the idea of access became an important drive and led me to community work. Photography for me is an outward facing medium and it’s led me to think about who gets access, and to what, and how that can be broadened. That led to some useful personal development through working with marginalised groups including adults with learning disabilities, recovering addicts, immigrants and the children of refugees. It sounds altruistic, yet I get so much back from it. Those glorious, unselfconscious outcomes of the untrained eye in action reminds me that I can unlearn held beliefs about my process in order to develop.

CM: I absolutely agree I have done a lot of youth and outreach work and it's always a symbiotic experience. I have learnt so much about myself.

The Daily Nice started in 2004 pre-Instagram but the insta “photo dump” with a carefully considered post of memories and still life images is now iconic. I am interested in how Instagram as the first primarily image based social media platform has influenced visual aesthetics. I have a private IG as well as my main and when I first made it in 2013 I had no followers to start with and would post abstract but meaningful images from my day. The abstract narrative created from these posts means so much to me and probably only to me. What is your relationship with social media / instagram? How important was it to you that The Daily Nice was online? And to connect with others?

JE: I wanted to do an online project in 2004 because the internet was there, remember I’d spent like the first 30 years of my life in an offline world. I was curious. It gave me this comparatively cheap access to a potentially international audience. It felt like a no-brainer, the costs and constraints of a gallery show, that might only be seen by a couple of hundred local people, were prohibitive. Pocket digital cameras had become feasible too. I didn’t feel wedded to making physical stuff, there’s enough of that in the world already, and had always preferred the page to the wall. I optimistically thought the internet was going to be like the best library ever, and this was an opportunity to self publish there. Photography online felt like an exciting new frontier then… Now look at us!

Like everyone I struggle with Instagram’s addictive modus operandi and think it’s contributed to a photo-weariness in me. I don’t use a smartphone, I think they are sinister, even though the imaging tech is wild. I’ve stuck with Sony Cybershots for 20 years, the colours are great and the image quality doesn’t feel phone-y.

CM: Your work feels analogue even when shot or altered digitally. What is your relationship to digital technology as a whole?

JE: Technology is mostly inert, it’s just that it ends up in the hands of greedy idiots, guns don’t fire themselves. My practice is hybrid. I’m an either/and, not an either/or person. Sometimes I need the emo-texture that, say, screen print or Riso can give for a project. If I’m going to print or post I have to submit digital files, there’s no escaping that. I do hardly any post production, I just aim to get it right in the studio. I love happy accidents, that’s how we learn. Own a ‘mistake’ and it becomes your technique. Believe it or not, some clients afford me these parameters and trust my judgement. I’m just not a fix-it-in-post kinda guy.

CM: And why cards not a book? Especially cards you cannot potentially play with more than once. Is this intentionally subverting their use?

JE: I like applied photography, and I like playing cards as a format, they are a bit like t-shirts or record sleeves or badges or postcards, analogue holders for images. I love those Eames cards too, and wanted something that felt a bit like that. People often describe my work as playful, I’m serious about having fun I guess. Fun is a very special form of creative glue. If people want to memorise which image is on which card and cheat, well that’s just their problem. At the end of the day cheats are just playing themselves, and there’s no fun in that.

Carri Munden is Designer and founder of CassettePlaya. Cassette Playa was an independent lifestyle brand with a global reputation for cult graphics, progressive menswear, digital print and new technologies. Founded in 2006, Cassette Playa showed at London Fashion Week for 12 seasons, 8 of which were digital presentations. Cassette Playa used film, animation, soundscapes, augmented reality and interactive digital installations, to push the boundaries of Fashion presentation beyond catwalk. Carri is also a freelance Designer, Creative Director, Stylist and lecturer. Originally born in Kent she moved from London to Margate in 2019.

The Daily Nice playing cards are available to purchase from our shop 

Pointing at Joy: 20 Years of The Daily Nice by Jason Evans

We Don't Need a Black Avedon By Adriant Bereal

Albeit his pictorial legacy is proven glinted and inflammable, his actions and life between each frame aren’t. Why are we so obsessed with the idea of a “Black Avedon”, “Black Mapplethorpe”, Black version of the white narcissist? What do we gain by shrinking ourselves into such narrow pathways? It’s probably the most uncool thing ever, aimless even. We’re born cooler than that! As I’m writing this I hear my brother Casey Gerald saying “There are things we should fight about.” as he told me one weekend in Washington Square Park, and Yash saying, “Nigga talk too much, call him Fred Moten.” (We love Fred Moten.) I was born on a Monday. I talk too much, and I like to fight. Today happens to be Monday, which is a great day for fighting.

I’m reminded of Carrie Mae Weems' work, “Black Boy Said” from her “Ain’t Joking” series. No matter how satirical or stereotypical, life is imitating art. Questions like “who/what are you inspired by?” spoil the thrill of learning someone, learning who they are and where they’re going. It is no different than being asked “what do you want to be when you grow up?” It’s a shortcut for reverence to pre-digest what needs time to be realized, a career which can’t be realized in one year. This is the pitfall many Black photographers are falling into by no fault of our own.

This question is premature.

Photography is a portal, a way 

. Committing to an artist’s light is committing to the journey. A lot of young artists are forced into an acceleration period to become all that’s desired from an audience in an instant.

Not only are we obsessed with being the Black-White, so are our beneficiaries who have no problem stuffing us into an acute pathway for commercial success, which I would define as the ability to make some bread not just for yourself but for others whilst cultivating a large audience. The sometimes vapid illuminations we leave on paper last lifetimes. We should realize the Black image beyond imitations of people that aren’t here anymore. There are people and places in the world that need lensing from individuals who care enough to be tender with them before and after the image is 

. Lensing someone is often uncompensable, and taken without care. Unfortunately when we put our eyes to the viewfinder it doesn’t read “Take with care” in the way rear view mirrors read “Objects in mirror may be closer than they appear.”

The power white people hold in photography or any art form is not transferable. This is not wealth transference. You can’t transfer a lack of regard for the need to pan the camera. You can’t transfer careers worth years of relationships from just being around. You can not transfer what can not be given. You 

 transfer access and opportunities to click the shutter and lens the world you live in. You 

 transfer money.

I’ve never heard a white person say “I want to be the white Denzel Washington.” Aspirational bullshit. White people don’t negotiate the real estate of their existence, they expect it. We should expect the same, not because that’s what they do, but because for 400 years we have been playing catch up trying to negotiate the livelihood of our well-being. I fear we’ve already wasted too much time in conversations like this one talking 

 the art, or making art, about how hard it is to make the art instead of 

 the art. There are obstacles such as lack of money or access for artists from lower socio-economic backgrounds which plague them severely more than others. Photography is a pay to play industry, but not all of us need to be photographers. Some of us would make great art directors given that photographers are not the only ones responsible for shaping our realization in the world of commercials. Neither of these truths make up for the fact that much of the success and autonomy of an artist’s career is also based in relationships most aren’t privy to.

And what about the nurturing? Who’s responsible for that? We all are. We owe it to one another to be honest, and pay a debt forward for someone behind us because that is what was done for us. A Black Mapplethorpe, a Black Avedon, it all sounds boring and devoid of real meaning. Our Black predecessors like The Hooks Brothers, James Van Der Zee, Carrie Mae Weems, and Dawoud Bey, who are both still alive, didn’t have Instagram at the start of their careers. They deserve our respect for making space and sending generations of light to the future. We should fight about the uselessness of a Black Avedon or Black Mapplethorpe. 

I’m not punching you in the face, I’m just simply telling you there’s dirt on your shoulder.

 to be a narcissist, carve your vapid illuminations of light in stone. Do it to a degree where we don’t mistake your images for imitations of our explore pages and mood board accounts ripping Weems out of catalogs for content. Commit.

Instead of asking “who do you want to be when you grow up?” let’s ask “where can we help you go?” I reject being crystallized before I’ve had time to fix my eyes on the coast of West Africa, the Tetons, East Texas, the lukewarm apartment in Paris, my niece's graduation, and many nights exchanging oral coordinates with strangers. We don’t need a Black Avedon. Nobody does. Avedon lived. Mapplethrope lived. They turned light to poetry, and it was beautiful. I’m following the light of Elijah Mogley, Casper Kofi, Dean Majd, Casanova Cabrera, Yashaddai Owens, Cassidy Arrington, Ming Smith, Deana Lawson, and those who have something important to say.

We’re at the edge of the frame. The shutter is open. The world is waiting on you to pan the camera. Pan the camera.





Adraint Khadafhi Bereal (he/him) is an artist from Waco, TX based in New York. His work untangles the nuances of American culture by interrogating and provoking the truth to rear its head. Adraint’s work has been published by Penguin Random House and featured by The New York Times, The Atlantic, and Aperture Magazine. He is also showing work with Nina Johnson Gallery for his first solo show, "Different Regard for Life" opening this September. Adraint is a graduate of The University of Texas at Austin with a BFA in Design.

We Don't Need a Black Avedon

Descend the stairs on Bond Street in Manhattan and you will find a tiny mecca of independent publishing hidden in plain sight. Led by David and Miwa’s passionate commitment to curating rare collectors’ editions, unique titles and self-published work. Since opening in 2005, Dashwood Books has had an enormous influence on contemporary photography worldwide. Owner David, originally from England, previously assisted Mario Testino and worked as the cultural director of Magnum Photo for years before realising he wanted to concentrate on books. Manager Miwa also runs her own ‘Session Press’, focusing on Japanese and Chinese photography. Her Instagram, which documents the Dashwood openings, is said to double as a dating site for Downtown Manhattan.

We asked the pair about their lifelong love affair with photography and books.




Is there a photography book you're looking at right now? What page are you on?

Miwa

:  I am currently reading I’m So Happy You Are Here: Japanese Women Photographers From The 1950s To Now (Aperture, 2024) by Pauline Vermare and Lesley A. Martin. I am grateful for Lesley and Pauline's long and hard endeavour to complete this masterpiece. I hope many people will learn more about the variety and beauty of female Japanese photographers' work through this publication.

: I just finished cataloguing some books I picked up in London at the OffPrint fair at the Tate in May. A notable one was Mongrelism by Jono Rotman, published by Here Press. It came out in 2018, but Jono had come to see me for years showing me how the project was evolving.  It’s a really special project and the book is an unusually beautiful and thoughtful treatment of a rough subject, the notorious Mongrel Mob - a violent group of bikers from New Zealand largely made up of indigenous Maori.


What photography book do you most often recommend to customers and why?

Miwa

: It really depends on the person’s needs, but when they are looking for contemporary photography that deals with various issues, I always recommend "Périphérique" by Mohamed Bourouissa. It addresses many social factors that we need to confront, and his work is visually powerful. It's a masterpiece!

I recommend photobooks that have the potential to broaden a customer’s perspective. If someone is only looking for a specific book without being open to exploring new possibilities, it defeats the purpose of having a physical location to serve our clients. By continuously learning and educating myself, I strive to be a better photobook consultant and introduce them to more than what they initially seek.



: There are a few books that come to mind based on genre, but the one I mostly end up recommending is probably Utatane by Rinko Kawauchi. It’s kind of a gateway drug for contemporary photobooks; a book that really opens the novice’s eyes to the possibility of the medium. Beautifully designed with simple elements that really elevate it, and the photographs and pairings have soulful depth to them with a universal appeal.



What sort of work do you like to publish? How do you find it and how do you choose?

Miwa

: For my own publishing company, Session Press, my main criterion is whether the work moves me. I don't mind working with a difficult photographer (though I hope they are nice to work with, he he) as long as I truly believe their work deserves to be published. I tend to be drawn to personal documentary photos, like those by Mao Ishikawa and Momo Okabe.


: I’m looking for artists who are really known for their work through books rather than prints. Ones who bring a lot to the projects and are looking to collaborate with publishers and graphic designers to create unique books. Generally I meet them in person through the store quite casually as they are often collectors as well.



What is the last photograph you took?

Miwa

: I always take photos of people at Dashwood. However, the last photo I received was from my designer, Geoff Han, for our upcoming publication by Wing Shya. It’s a test print, and it looks beautiful and promising. I’m excited to receive the final version of his book soon. Dashwood Project, run by Anne Christensen and David Strettell, will have his show around mid-November, along with his signing event. It will be exciting.

: I’m trying to lose some weight right now so I document my weight daily photographing my scales to keep track.


Do you take pictures aside from on your phone? If so, what camera do you use and why?

Miwa

: Rarely, but I have an old Fujica 6x4.5. I think it’s the smallest medium format film camera out there and it folds to fit in your pocket.



Can you send/scan a photograph or page that represents an important moment or memory related to your book collection?

Miwa

: I own many photobook references in my library, but Martin Parr and Gerry Badger’s The Photobook: A History was the first book that truly inspired me as a publisher, writer, and photobook consultant. While I appreciate criticism and reviews online, I still prefer print for the slow processing of understanding what authors want to convey.



: This was the cover of the first book we published, The Chance is Higher by Ari Marcopoulos. The cover subject is a London based musician called Alice Temple who had just had this large back tattoo completed and I encouraged Ari to photograph her.

The book was masterfully designed and produced by one of my favourite book designers, Gilles Gavillet. Miwa and I are collaborating with him on a book later this year by Takashi Homma.

Did you grow up surrounded by books?

Miwa

: My father, a mathematician, loved reading, and our house was filled with various types of books, including the Bible, the Koran, art history, Buddhist sculpture, literature, and philosophy. He used to buy me beautiful picture books at Sanseido-shoten in Jinbocho, and those early visual exposures certainly shaped my vision. In addition, My grandfather was a painter who aspired to be like Cézanne or Monet. Though he wasn’t as talented as those masters, his painting of the Buddha statue at Senso-ji, the oldest Japanese temple in Asakusa where I grew up, felt more authentic and impactful to me. It was the only time I praised his work, teaching me that true expression comes from within, not from imitation.



: My parents were in advertising and antiques and had a passing interest in art. We had a large house growing up and rented out rooms to students. Some of them were studying art and became friends and I got interested in art through them. My older sister, Jo, was a fashion student at Central Saint Martins in the 80s - she introduced me to a lot of fashion photographers growing up.



What would you be doing if you weren't running Dashwood? Is there an alternate career/life?

Miwa

: That’s a tough question, as I’m deeply immersed in my work at Dashwood and it’s hard to think of anything else. However, I would love to do something meaningful for a larger community while being surrounded by people I adore.



: I’ve worked with photographers in one form or another since I was 19 - first in fashion as an assistant and then in documentaries with Magnum Photos, so Dashwood is really my third career. I’m sure I’d be working with artists in some form or another whatever else I did.

Photobook Recomendations From David and Miwa of Dashwood Books

R&T S1 E3 Abdulhamid Kircher

Filmed over the course of seven years, the photographer Abdulhamid Kircher evolves as his subjects shift from strangers, to nature, to self. His diaristic work becomes a reckoning of masculinity, heritage, and sense of belonging as he addresses his fractured relationship with his father. The film follows Abdul as he builds up to the release of his newly published monograph, 'Rotting From Within’.

Abdulhamid Kircher

R&T S1 E3

For Abdulhamid Kircher, photography is a compulsive act. After picking up a Yashica point and shoot camera as a teenager, he first dabbled in self-portraiture, uploading these images to Tumblr. Later, he began using the medium as a way to get closer to people, capturing his family and taking intimate portraits of people on the peripheries of New York (he cites Diane Arbus as a formative influence). “I have this obsessive nature of trying to document everything around me,” he says. “I was really fascinated by being in the streets and meeting random people. When I had that camera in my hand it made me feel more powerful and gave me more of a reason to go out.”

Over the course of seven years of intermittent filming, a Reely and Truly episode documents Abdul as his hairstyles change over time and his voice drops. With heightened self-awareness, he looks back at the displacement that came with his adolescence. Now, as Abdul releases his work publicly for the first time, he describes his photography as a diaristic processing of relationships. His new book, 

 at carlier | gebauer in Berlin – is a deeply personal masterclass in unearthing and understanding generational trauma and the paternal figures who surround him.

Below, DoBeDo sat down with Abdulhamid Kircher to talk about his approach to the medium, his early days on Tumblr, and his conflicted feelings about commercial photography. 

DBD: Tell me about your new exhibition in Berlin?

AK: It’s intimidating because it’s my first show, and the gallery represents a lot of big artists. I want to make sure it’s done the way it needs to be done, but I also realise that the shows they usually do may not cost this much to produce. And the amount that my work would sell for is not anywhere near their other artists. So it feels like a lot of pressure.

DBD: It’s also a super personal body of work.

AK: Yeah. My best friend is also making a documentary about the people in the work, like my grandparents, my father, my mother, and my aunt. It’s really about understanding the people you see within the book, who come to life on the screen.

DBD: Where did you grow up? And where do you live now?

AK: I was born in Berlin. Around the age of eight, after my mum and my dad split up, and she met my stepdad, we moved to Washington DC because her new husband worked in the Pentagon. After a few months, we moved to New York. From there on out, I lived in New York but would go to Berlin every summer.

DBD: Why would you go to Berlin for the summer?

AK: My family was there, all my grandparents, my mum’s family. And my Turkish side of the family too.

DBD: You mention the “rich kids” at your high school – which school was that?

AK: I went to NYC Lab. Before that, I was in one of the worst high schools called Murry Bergtraum. Luckily my mum pushed me to go to Lab. If it wasn’t for that, I don't think I would've found photography. My photography stemmed from Tumblr. I initially bought a camera to take photos of myself or have my mum take photos of me, and I would upload them on Tumblr. Naturally, from just having the camera on me all the time in the city, I started taking photos of random shit. It really clicked for me when my friend gave me a little Yashica point and shoot. From that moment on, I knew that this was what I was meant to do.

AK: My first film camera was a Yashica T3. And my first digital camera was a Canon Rebel T3i with a little flip screen.

DBD: You said your friend gave you that Yashica?

AK: I'm not friends with him anymore so he doesn't need a shoutout. But he was like a brother to me. I spent a lot of time with people older than me.

AK: Yeah, and he treated the camera very much like a diary. He would basically take photos of everything in his life, and was getting prints made and collecting this huge archive. Seeing that early on really changed the way I treated the camera. And then I would literally just meet people in the street and see how far I could dig into their lives.

DBD: Then, when you were 19, this tall British guy says, "I want to make a film about you."

AK: I was excited. There are two people that have really impacted my frame of mind:  [Nobuyoshi] Araki and Wolfgang [Tillmans]. My way of image-making is very much Araki in the sense that I have this obsessive nature of trying to document everything around me.

DBD: Tell us about your new book, Rotting from Within? You were obsessed with these individuals who were perceived as outcasts, then in San Diego, you started shooting nature and water. Why the change of subject?

AK: San Diego was probably the lowest I've ever been in my life. I had just started dating my partner. As soon as I met her, I knew this was the person I wanted to be with forever. Having met a person like that, leaving my family home for the first time, then living by myself, in a place where you need a car to get around… It just got really bad at one point, but I'm very grateful for my time in San Diego because I tapped into this other side of myself and the way I see my work now. But I do think it had a really detrimental impact on my brain.

DBD: Did that push you to find new subjects to photograph?

AK: I turned to inanimate stuff because I had just built this immense archive of all these people, and all of a sudden, there were no people around me. I had always been drawn to photographing everything around me, and when I started going to the beach, I just noticed the environment evolving or changing every time I went. I felt like I still needed to be taking photos, even if it was just for the act of it.

DBD: Was the program your first time studying photography?

AK: I never went to photo school – I studied culture and media in undergrad and was actually the only photographer in my cohort in grad school. But at The New School, I would take random photography classes that I merely used to get access to the facilities and equipment. I had a few friends in photo programmes and everyone's work just looked the same. I didn’t want to fall into that place because I already had my own vision and how I was making work. I put a lot of energy into making sure that I was staying true to myself and my work.

DBD: How did your girlfriend play a part in Rotting from Within?

AK: In the back of the book, she narrates my diary entries. It was so important to have her involved because she was the catalyst for me understanding my relationship with my father and just the work in general. At grad school, I knew I wanted to focus on that body of work, but I was still struggling with how to grapple it. It wouldn't have been possible without her, so she needed to be part of it because she was there when I was uncovering everything. She understands me almost better than I do myself.

DBD: So she was able to thread it together?

AK: Exactly. Even with my thesis paper, it was all a jumble of thoughts and ideas, and she's very good at bringing it all together and making my brain make sense.

DBD: What does she do? Is she a photographer too?

AK: No, she hates photography. She just likes working on my stuff, which is good for me. She writes and is an actor mainly, but she's working on her own scripts as well.

AK: Hopefully my work picks up a bit after the show and the book, and I can do more shows around the world. Then I can think about restarting the process and focusing on another body of work, zone out for a bit, just scan everything, print everything, make selections, and start from square one. It's just a matter of deciding which body of work is next. It could be the Tony one, or this other part of my family, or an abstract book.

DBD: How have you been able to pay for life in New York while doing fine art photography?

AK: Before grad school I was babysitting while living at home. I would literally just make money so I could pay for film. While I was in grad school, I started assisting Rosie [Marks]. That really changed the way I was able to live my life. My thesis show cost me $20,000. And I did this job with Rosie right before that, I think I made $10,000 or something crazy like that. The overtime was crazy, we were shooting late into the night every day.

That's what I'm still doing now. Somehow every time I'm about to be completely broke, some assisting job comes through. And if you're making $700-800 a day, even if you just do two or three jobs a month, that's enough to cover rent and expenses. Assisting has allowed me to focus on my work and travel and do all these things without being tied to anything.

DBD: Does assisting also help from a technical perspective? Have you learned how to light things differently, for example?

AK: Not really because, funnily enough, I don't use lighting for my work. I've also totally weaned flash out of my work. I love trying to reach the purest form of taking a photo and documenting something exactly how it is being presented to me.

AK: Yes and no. I feel very conflicted. In a way it feels like I'm not succumbing to this capitalistic world. But I am because I'm still supporting it by assisting and reaping the benefits. I've spent a lot of time and energy trying to not make commercial work. And I’m not shunning anyone that does it, but photography plays this very specific role in my life. Once I turn it into this capitalistic tool, it will ruin it for me. I have tried to do some little editorials here and there, and they made me feel really bad. 

Watch Reely & Truly Epsiode 3: Abdulhamid Kircher 

Abdulhamid Kircher (b. 1996) is an artist from Queens, New York. He was born in Berlin to German and Turkish parents, and immigrated with his mother to the United States at the age of eight. His work is a living archive of place and people, as it is also a dedication to the language of photography, the mechanics and aesthetic possibilities of the form. Through his devotion to classical forms of image making and the radical experimentation required for each of his subjects, his process bridges the idea between document and narrative. He received his BA in Culture and Media from The New School in 2018 and his MFA in Visual Arts from the University of California San Diego in 2022.