Reframing Histories

Join Aperture for an online program celebrating “Counter Histories,” the spring 2024 issue of Aperture magazine, produced in collaboration with Magnum Foundation. This conversation will bring together Abdo Shanan, Cédrine Scheidig, and Lindokuhle Sobekwa, artists featured in the issue, for a discussion moderated by senior editor Brendan Embser. From building a speculative archive about citizens in Algeria to engaging with legacies of the African diaspora, these photographers question dominant historical narratives to create layered portrayals of place, culture, and community. 

What creative possibilities are offered by the gaps, absences, and silences in historical records? “Counter Histories,” an issue informed by Magnum Foundation’s ongoing Counter Histories grant initiative, features photographers from around the world who tell powerful stories about complex social and political histories—and tell new stories about how the past informs the present.

This program is free and open to the public. Advance registration is required. Please register here.

A recording of the event will be made available on the Aperture YouTube channel.

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Cédrine Scheidig is a French-Caribbean photographer who graduated from the École nationale supérieure de la photographie d’Arles. Her work, anchored between Europe and the Americas, explores blackness and the spaces where it is inhabited, redefined, and transformed daily. In 2021, her work was exhibited at the Rencontres d’Arles, where she won the Prix Dior de la Photographie for young talent.

Abdo Shanan was born in Oran, Algeria, to a Sudanese father and an Algerian mother. In 2015, Abdo received a nomination for Magnum Foundation Emergency Fund, the same year he cofounded collective220, a collective for Algerian photographers. In 2016, his series ‘Diary:Exile’ was selected for the Addis Fotofest. In 2018, he was one of ten photographers selected for the Arab Documentary Photography Program. Abdo won The Contemporary African Photography Prize in 2019 for his project “Dry”. In 2020, he was the winner of The Premi Mediterrani Albert Camus Incipiens. In the same year, he co-curated “Narratives from Algeria” at Pasquar Photoforum in Bienne, Switzerland. In 2022, he was one of Sheikh Saoud Al Thani Awards for his project “A Little Louder, and he had his first solo show at Center Photographie de Geneve. 

Lindokuhle Sobekwa is a South African photographer born in Katlehong, Johannesburg. Sobekwa came to photography in 2012 through his participation in the Of Soul and Joy Project, an educational program run in Thokoza, a township in the southeast of Johannesburg. In 2017, Sobekwa was selected by the Magnum Foundation for Photography and Social Justice to develop the project I Carry Her Photo with Me. In 2018, he received the Magnum Foundation Fund to continue with his long-term project Nyaope, and has been selected for the residency Cité des Arts Réunion. Sobekwa became a Magnum nominee in 2018 and a member in 2022.

Brendan Embser is senior editor of Aperture magazine. He is also editor of books including Deana Lawson: An Aperture Monograph (2018), Ming Smith: An Aperture Monograph (2020), and Philip Montgomery: American Mirror (2021), among many others. Formerly director of exhibitions at the Walther Collection, New York, he has contributed essays and interviews to Apartamento, Contemporary And, n+1, Objektiv, and The PhotoBook Review. He holds an MA in Africana studies from New York University and a BA in English from Haverford College, Pennsylvania.

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The “Counter Histories” issue of Aperture magazine is produced in partnership with the Magnum Foundation.

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Image: Lindokuhle Sobekwa, Newly graduated initiates from Qumbu Black Hill village, Eastern Cape, 2021. © The artist/Magnum Photos