Essays
Pull up a chair and stay a while.
Some subjects don’t fit inside an interview. They need room to wander, to connect a lost record in Phnom Penh to a club in Lusaka to a kinetic light box in Paris. These essays are where I give them that room.
After twenty-three years of conversations with artists, I keep noticing the same questions coming back: who gets to tell a story, what we carry from the places we leave, why some images stay with us when most don’t. Here I stop asking and say what I think, drawing on those conversations, on the places I keep returning to, and on the things I couldn’t stop thinking about.
They take a position. You’re welcome to disagree.
New Essay
Art · Movement · Belonging · 2026
Emily Jacir and the Unequal Right to Move
She asked Palestinians who couldn’t travel what she could do for them in Palestine, then did it with her US passport. On borders, archives, Europe’s own migration history, and why the right to stay matters as much as the right to move.
Read the essay ↗What makes these different
01
Access, not access journalism
Not from a press kit. From relationships, travels, and curiosity built over decades.
02
The margins, taken seriously
Underground scenes, lost genres, artists working far from the centre of the market.
03
Connection over coverage
An essay links a sound to a city, a person to a movement, a scene to why it still resonates.
04
Twenty years of attention
Not a new platform chasing relevance. A two-decade archive of sustained, genuine curiosity.
All Essays
22 pieces
A Todd Oldham Cover Shoot for Hotel Venus
How a fashion obsession, a detour into finance, and Patricia Field's magazine converged into one afternoon.
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The Fantastical World of Pierre et Gilles
On the French duo's hand-painted photography and why their work refuses to age.
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The Secret Life of Syrian Lingerie
A personal essay on Damascus's flamboyant lingerie tradition, and the childhood memories it unlocked.
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Jean-Baptiste Mondino
The director who made photography move and proved the music video was always an art form.
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Franca Sozzani's 25 Years of Vogue Italia
On legacy, dissent, and the magazine that refused to be comfortable: Steven Meisel and fashion photography as cultural commentary.
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How Wendy James Paved the Way
A reassessment of the Transvision Vamp frontwoman as an unsung pioneer of female rebellion in pop.
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Music Videos That Rock
The music video as cultural revolution.
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Bliss, Wonder and Awe, with a Side of Baloney
On Jason Silva's live show and the question of whether performance philosophy offers insight or spectacle.
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Floria Sigismondi
The director who built her own visual universe before anyone was watching.
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Sharjah Art Foundation
On what happens when a government decides culture is infrastructure.
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We Intend to Cause Havoc: This Is Zamrock
Zambia's biggest 1970s rock band: their rise, collapse, and rediscovery after four decades of silence.
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Remembering Peter Lindbergh
What it means to photograph a woman without the lie.
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How Music Shapes Our Memories
Body and Soul NYC and the question of what a dancefloor actually does to you.
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Ghosts in the Groove
Cambodia's golden psych rock era, and how the Khmer Rouge nearly erased it entirely.
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The End of an Era: Remembering 18th Street Lounge
A farewell to the Washington D.C. venue that ran for 25 years and gave birth to Thievery Corporation.
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Mainstream Mindfulness
What happens when a practice built for silence gets packaged for everyone.
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In a Sweet Harmony
On sound, collaboration, and the things music does between people.
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Pics or It Didn't Happen
Fatima Malki on documentation, presence, and what we choose to record.
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The Most Interesting Book in the World
The Codex Seraphinianus: a 300-page visual encyclopedia of an imaginary world, written in an untranslatable language since 1981.
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Palestinian Artists in Exile (1975-1986)
Falastin is an initiative rooted in the pursuit of human dignity.
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Sam Bassett's Changing of the Guard
A collaboration at the Hotel Chelsea, and what happens when a building's mythology outlives the people who made it.
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Travel
Notes from twenty years of going somewhere to understand something else.
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