Christopher Gregory-Rivera
Join Magnum Foundation and Aperture to celebrate the release of the Spring 2024 issue of Aperture magazine, “Counter Histories,” and the opening of Counter Histories: Exhibition of Works by Christopher Gregory-Rivera, Abdo Shanan, Prasiit Sthapit, and Agata Szymanska-Medina.
Tuesday, March 26, 2024 | 7:00 - 9:00 PM
Magnum Foundation
59 East 4th St, 7W | New York, NY 10003
This event is co-hosted by Magnum Foundation and Aperture and will feature magazines for purchase. We are grateful to our neighbors at Creative Time for sharing their space with us for the evening.
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About the magazine: What could an archive of the future look like? What creative possibilities are offered by the gaps, absences, and silences in historical records? How can found images contribute to a fuller understanding of the past, present, and future? In Aperture’s Spring 2024 issue “Counter Histories,” produced in collaboration with Magnum Foundation, artists from around the world meld the personal and the political—and tell new stories about how the past informs the present.
Informed by our ongoing Counter Histories grant initiative supporting projects that creatively reframe the past to engage with urgent questions of the present and future, this edition of Aperture marks over a decade of collaboration between our organizations and offers an expanded and collaborative approach to historical inquiry and photographic storytelling.
Read more about the magazine here.
About the exhibit: In this exhibition, four photographers respond to state archives, unveiling them not as records of truth, but of power. In Puerto Rico, Christopher Gregory-Rivera uncovers the hidden stories found in government files, documenting decades of surveillance against independence activists. In Poland, Agata Szymanska-Medina makes visible the apparatus of state power in the present, exposing a nationalist party’s campaign to undermine an independent judiciary. In Nepal, Prasiit Sthapit preserves a history of activism against the state, collecting the stories of musicians who energized the country’s Maoist revolution. And in Algeria, Abdo Shanan fills gaps in the national record, responding to a public iconography dominated by independence heroes with his own speculative archive of ordinary citizens.
Together, these artists offer a range of approaches that challenge the power structures embedded in archives and suggest the radical possibilities of alternative narratives. On view April 3 to June 26, with open hours Wednesdays 4-6 PM.
Read more about the Magnum Foundation exhibition here.
Also on view: This is the second of two Magnum Foundation exhibitions on Counter Histories. The first, which featured artists responding to family archives, will move to the Center for Photography at Woodstock, and be on view from March 23 to May 26, with an opening reception March 23.
Read more about the CPW exhibition here.
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Venue accessibility: Magnum Foundation is in an elevator building and has a restroom that is wheelchair accessible and gender-neutral. For access requests or questions, please contact events@magnumfoundation.org. As a small team, we will better be able to respond to requests made at least one week in advance.
Masks are currently encouraged, but not required. We may provide additional instructions ahead of the event.
Magnum Foundation’s Counter Histories initiative is supported by The Henry Luce Foundation. Additional support for Counter Histories is provided by The Fledgling Fund, the Phillip and Edith Leonian Foundation, the Andrew W. Mellon/ACLS Early Career Fellowships, the William Talbott Hillman Foundation, and Columbia University’s Brown Institute for Media Innovation.
Support for the magazine has been provided by members of Aperture’s Magazine Council: Jon Stryker and Slobodan Randjelović, Susan and Thomas Dunn, Kate Cordsen and Denis O’Leary, and Michael W. Sonnenfeldt, MUUS Collection.
Magnum Foundation events are made possible by the Henry Nias Foundation and our Circle of Friends.
