About Photography

Helter Skelter—an exhibition at Fondazione Prada’s Venetian venue, Ca’ Corner della Regina—marks the first creative dialogue between two visionaries of American art, Arthur Jafa and Richard Prince. The show explores the grit, grift, violence, and ingenuity of American culture through more than fifty works, including photography, video, and large-scale installations that interrogate themes of race, gender, media, and politics. In the interview below, Nancy Spector, the exhibition’s curator, speaks about the shared motifs—from apocalyptic sunsets to a fascination with “monstrosity”—that led her to pair these artists for the first time.

For the fortieth anniversary of Nan Goldin’s genre-defining photobook The Ballad of Sexual Dependency (Aperture, 1986), Gagosian, London, will be exhibiting all of its 126 photographs, the first time the entire body of work will be shown in the United Kingdom. To celebrate the occasion, David Velasco looks back to the series’ creation and evolution, considering the radical exploration of seeing and love at the core of The Ballad.

The Fall 2025 issue of Gagosian Quarterly is now available, featuring Andy Warhol’s Blue Liz as Cleopatra (1962) on the cover.

At the center of Andreas Gursky’s new exhibition in Paris at Gagosian’s rue de Castiglione gallery is Paris, Montparnasse II (2025), a reengagement with his celebrated photograph from 1993 of the architect Jean Dubuisson’s iconic building in the capital city. In the new work, Gursky reexamines the subject, tracing the changes time has inscribed on the architecture and its occupants. Here, in conversation with the Quarterly’s Wyatt Allgeier and shown alongside behind-the-scenes images from the artwork’s making, the artist addresses his motivations and interests in this long-term project.

Last fall, Taryn Simon debuted an interactive sculpture entitled Kleroterion (2024). Based on a device from the beginnings of democracy in Athens, the work was installed at Storm King Art Center, New Windsor, New York. As part of that presentation, Simon participated in a panel discussion with Nora Lawrence, Tomás González Olavarría, and Philip Lindsay about democracy, sortition, and art’s place in politics.

Jenny Saville reflects on Cy Twombly’s poetic engagement with the world, with time and tension, and with growth in this excerpt from her Marion Barthelme Lecture, presented at the Menil Collection, Houston, in 2024.

Jeff Wall explains the stories and literary allusions behind two of his photographs that will appear in an exhibition at Gagosian, New York, in November.

The Fall 2024 issue of Gagosian Quarterly is now available, featuring Andy Warhol’s Mao (1972) on the cover.

Sydney Stutterheim has published Artist, Audience, Accomplice: Ethics and Authorship in Art of the 1970s and 1980s (Duke University Press, 2024), a survey of performance art and related practices that involve, in various manners, the figure of the accomplice. To celebrate the publication, the Quarterly is publishing an excerpt that examines Chris Burden’s Deadman (1972).

On the occasion of an exhibition at Fondation Beyeler, novelist Rachel Cusk considers the ethical and aesthetic arrangements that Duane Hanson’s sculpture initiates within the viewer.