Brendan Embser

1 month ago | aperture.org | Brendan Embser

The best biennials produce an artistic momentthat everyone’s talking about. Often, it’s video that wins the day. Stephanie Comilang makes a convincing case with Search for Life II (2025), a centerpiece of the sixteenth Sharjah Biennial, which opened in February and features two hundred artists in exhibitions sprawling across the city and surrounding areas of Sharjah, in the United Arab Emirates.

Jun 19, 2024 | taustralia.com.au | M.H. Miller |Brendan Embser |Emmanuel Iduma |Lucy McKeon

Let’s get this out of the way first: Of the dozens of photographers not represented here that a reasonable person might expect to have been included, the most conspicuous absentees include Berenice Abbott, Ansel Adams, Robert Adams, Richard Avedon, Dawoud Bey, Henri Cartier-Bresson, Imogen Cunningham, Roy DeCarava, William Eggleston, Walker Evans, Robert Mapplethorpe, Helmut Newton and Irving Penn.

Jun 3, 2024 | nytimes.com | M.H. Miller |Brendan Embser |Emmanuel Iduma |Lucy McKeon

The boy in "Boy With a Straw Hat" doesn't look like a typical Arbus subject. Wearing a prim collared shirt, bow-tie and boater hat, with one American flag at his side and another, much smaller one twisted into a bow on his lapel, the thin-lipped paradegoer seems like the paragon of anodyne conservatism.

Apr 5, 2024 | aperture.org | Brendan Embser

On the day the world shut down, Miranda July received a strange phone call. It was Friday, March 13, 2020, and July was on her way to a café when she learned that her child’s school was going to close “indefinitely.” As she waited for a friend, stunned by the news that the pandemic scare was all too real, a telemarketer from the Philippines called with an offer for “services,” which July learned were related to promotional strategies for self-published authors.

Jan 17, 2024 | aperture.org | Brendan Embser

Gregory Halpern has been making photographs in Buffalo, New York, the city where he grew up, for the last twenty years. You could say that Buffalo has been his muse. It’s also been his crucible. It’s a place known for pummeling blizzards and buffalo wings (invented at the Anchor Bar), the Erie Canal and the Martin House (designed by Frank Lloyd Wright), and, of course, the Buffalo Bills.