Deana Lawson and Charlotte Gainsbourg on Photographic Pursuits
By Wim Langedijk for HURS
Deana Lawson and Charlotte Gainsbourg on Photographic Pursuits
HUR Reads is our definitive shortlist of the most prominent articles from around the web.
By HURS Team
1
‘Take These Pictures and Run’
Deana Lawson has built her reputation on meticulously staged portraits that elevate everyday lives into something almost mythic. Her latest series, “Edge Control,” takes a strikingly different approach: Lawson rephotographs surveillance images from beauty-supply-store “walls of shame,” turning grainy photographs of alleged shoplifters into large-scale works of art. The series examines surveillance, beauty, shame and power while asking a more personal question: Why them, and not me?
T MAGAZINE
At 29, Jacques Testard founded Fitzcarraldo Editions after struggling to find a job in publishing. Twelve years later, his independent house has become a literary force, known for its striking blue-and-cream books and unwavering commitment to ambitious fiction, essays and translated literature. With Nobel and Pulitzer winners among its authors, Fitzcarraldo has made a virtue of trusting its taste over commercial convention, and Testard has no interest in selling out, even as the publisher’s cult status grows.
HOW TO SPEND IT
Autumn Sonata founder Lilli Elias draws on antique textiles and patterns for a collection of modern home linens. After struggling to find a bathmat she liked for her own small apartment, Elias began translating the character of historic fabrics into towels, tablecloths and bathmats. She researches textile archives, auctions and collections for patterns, then works with mills in Portugal and India to recreate their aged, distinctive appearance.
THE NEW YORK TIMES
Charlotte Gainsbourg discusses her photography exhibition 5bis, created from intimate photographs of her father Serge Gainsbourg’s preserved Paris home. She describes taking the images instinctively and privately, during her final moments alone in the house before it opened to the public. For her, each object carries a piece of her father and the photographs evoke “solitude in silence.” She hopes visitors experience their own emotions and memories rather than simply inheriting hers.
A RABBIT’S FOOT
Mary Gabriel’s Ninth Street Women tells the intertwined stories of five pioneering women—Lee Krasner, Elaine de Kooning, Grace Hartigan, Joan Mitchell, and Helen Frankenthaler—who transformed postwar American art. Working within a male-dominated Abstract Expressionist movement, they fought sexism, social expectations, and personal struggles to establish themselves as serious artists. Through their relationships, ambitions, rivalries, and creative breakthroughs, Gabriel reveals how these women helped reshape modern art and challenged the cultural boundaries imposed on women.