TD 1
ROADMAP MY LITTLE PONIES ON MARS In 2022, the New
York Times sent six photographers around the world “in search of animal encounters” for their Voyages edition. One of these assigned to the project was Northern Irish photographer Gareth McConnell who ended up dispatched to Iceland. He travelled to Skeiðvellir about 50 miles east of Reykjavík which is home to Icelandic Horseworld, a tourist attraction on the premises. “I really wanted to summon up the more mystical, fluid, wild aspect,” McConnell says of his decision to infuse his shots with vivid flares of colour. “I thought the horses were such a contemporary metaphor,” McConnell says. “There’s the sense that we are looking at the specter of nuclear war and environmental catastrophe and societal breakdown — and there’s the horse being a symbol of that lost link between humanity and nature.” He has now brought out an accompanying book of these large format saturated colour images or “My Little Ponies on Mars” as Sam Anderson, who wrote the accompanying article, describes them. You can see Garret’s latest body of work ‘Paramilitaries’ in our In the Frame section. Sorika, £47.95 (limited edition of 1000) garethmcconnell.com iceworld.is nytimes.com/interactive/2022/09/21/magazine/icelandic-horses-photos.html DISRUPTIONS In Disruptions, Palestinian artist Taysir Batniji collects fragmented screenshots taken between 2015 and 2017 during WhatsApp video conversations with his mother and family in Gaza. Settled in Europe and unable to return to his homeland for years, this digital communication provided a crucial meeting ground for Batniji and his family: a space nonetheless shaped and destabilised by the same forces affecting the artist’s relatives in everyday life. Through resolution and compression, Batniji’s poor images politically visualise how communication and daily life in Gaza are compromised by conflict, control and surveillance. In their noise and visual obliqueness, Batniji creates a thread between common intimacy and the colonial, now genocidal violence imposed upon Gaza to date, while evoking the physical and emotional separation that occurs across borders. Publisher Loose Joints will be donating 100% of the profits from Disruptions will towards the NGO Medical Aid Palestine. Loose Joints, €40, Limited edition with prints, €150, shipping January 2024. loosejoints.biz/products/disruptions taysirbatniji.com 6