Includes visual essays by João Penalva, Jörg Sasse, José Luís Neto, Robert Zhao Renhui, Sjoerd Knibbeler, among others.
Texts by Walter Benjamin, Maria Filomena Molder, Soraya Vasconcelos, Brad Feuerhelm, talk with Lauren Henkin and Sofia Silva.
Cover by Valter Ventura and works by Alex Gomez-Marin, Douglas Collins and Sónia Marques.
When we chose to dedicate Propeller’s No. 1 issue to the “Stain”, we were moved by a desire to think about abstract photography. Above all, we wanted to investigate the morphological nature of photography, not only in terms of matter but above all in what transcends the same matter, transforming photography into an artistic entity.
On the one hand, we were interested in thinking about a photography less dependent on the lines that circumvent the universally coded elements – human figures, natural elements, etc. – on the other hand, we wanted to venture into the depths of the mechanism of photographic representation and, there located, think how the absolute stain of photography is constituted: how is photography an image? How is photography pictured from, with and in addition to the elements that are imprinted on it?
