The MOVEMENT issue - Community, momentum, motion.

PhotoED Magazine
6 hours ago
5 min read

photo by Margaret Mulligan / @mulligan.studio

“Every avalanche begins with the movement of a single snowflake, and my hope is to move a snowflake."

— Thomas Frey

For our 75th edition in print, we felt it was only fitting to celebrate the concept of movement and forward-facing momentum.

The word “movement” encompasses social change, migration, and all forms of physical motion, and this edition celebrates it all.

For many creatives, pushing forward can feel like an arduous journey against an incoming tide of obstacles and challenges. But movement may also manifest as a flow of positive energy. All the work leading up to this milestone edition has frequently aligned with the former.

However, the incredible momentum generated by our supporters and contributors propels us forward, allowing us to celebrate in the latter.

A flip through the MOVEMENT edition

If you’re a print edition subscriber or Patreon supporter and have received your personal copy of this print edition in the mail, you will likely already be enjoying a lovely 3D tactile photographic print we inserted into your magazine. As a special limited edition offering to our print readers, we produced a run of three unique images. A sample print has been randomly inserted into each copy of the publication sent to our supporters. These images come to us exclusively from Japanese photographer Mariko Tagashira, AKA ©Singraphy+. As you’ll read in the feature story “An Inclusive Ode to Joy,” by Corinna vanGerwen, Mariko has been working with the White Hands Chorus NIPPON to produce incredible exhibitions and performances from around the world.

A 3D photograph insert in the MOVEMENT edition for PATRONS and subscribers

The choir is made up of two parts, a singing group and a gestural team that performs songs using sign language. The 3D print you may be holding now is a copy from a series of tactile photographs created for a special exhibition and performance the choir participated in. In 2024, the choir travelled to Vienna to perform as part of a special anniversary celebration — 200 years since the premiere of Beethoven’s 9th Symphony. The WestLicht Museum for Photography mounted an accompanying exhibition, Visible An die Freude, which included tactile prints as a way of making the exhibition experience more accessible to people with different levels of vision. We’re thrilled to share this 3D printing technology sample with our readers and hope the story inspires more people to consider how their own photography might be experienced in a new way, moving forward.

This edition also features the story behind another very different photography exhibition project that took place on a busy downtown Toronto street in a beat-up, graffitied, 1970s RV. We’re excited to feature a far from typical buddies road trip story. In the summer of 2024, Daniel Ennett, a quadruple amputee artist and director, and Frederick Kroetsch, his friend, creative collaborator, and caregiver, embarked on a road trip across North America. Followed by a film crew, the Crip Trip team share their adventures, highs, and lows, in what is now a TV series. Our writer Gladys Lou spoke to Daniel and Frederick about how making photographs on their trip (developed and printed in the RV) really shares a larger story about making art within and against the constraints of ableist structures.

Ruth Kaplan and Isabelle Hayeur BORDER stories feature

We also consider migration as movement in this edition. Ruth Kaplan and Isabelle Hayeur share their compassionate images and perspectives on the surreal experience of people desperate to move themselves to a better safer life by crossing international borders. What lines represent, the crossers’ experience with officials, and how these two artists approached this topic from a humanitarian perspective is a lot to take in. Although they work independently and observe the crossing experience from two very different climates, Ruth at Roxham Road in Quebec, and Isabelle documenting along the U.S. border with Mexico, their work shares a sort of kinship. Neither are employed as journalists seeking breaking news shots, but both present viewers with images that aim to inspire bigger questions about human migration, politics, and how we treat people that uproot their lives, in many cases just to stay alive.

This issue makes time to celebrate the forward momentum of optimism we can find through photography, and seeing beauty and peace around us. Lori Ryerson and Stuart Robertson work in very different ways to share images that take viewers to new places with an aim of calm, introspection, and unity. Stuart’s Peace in 10,000 Hands project has taken him around the world and is spurred on by his own incredible ambition to do good in the world. Lori’s work takes viewers to new emotional places by presenting the beauty of quiet movement in nature.

From roller skaters in London, to equestrian events in Morocco, to shopping cart pinhole experiments in Winnipeg, contributors from our international call for submissions came through with wonderful and diverse contributions to our theme for our PORTFOLIO pages. I hope you enjoy the curation by our editorial advisory jury that showcases how the simple idea of forward motion may be interpreted in so many unique ways.

PORTFOLIO featured artists

Lorena Zschaber
Amy Heller
Yasser Alaa Mobarak
Roland Ramanan
Nika Belianina
Xiatong Cai
Ed McDonough
Peter Dušek
Julia Nathanson
Jonny Silver
Paul Mitchnick
Lesley Nakonechny
Ashot Harutyunyan
János Lakatos
Andre Conceicao
Paul Bolasco

AND this edition also features...

Change Made with JAYU by Sid Naidu

Mattie Gunterman: Playful Pictures by Cassandra Spires

Thinking Outside the Cube: SPAO Photo Walk by Alan Bulley

Tilly Nelson: Authentic Rrepresentation by Hazel Love

I’m incredibly grateful to everyone photoED Magazine has worked with to showcase photography crafted with intention over the course of our 75 editions, and the momentum we’re now building towards sharing even more inspiring stories ahead of us!