In the mid-1990s, I had many printed copies of the Financial Times in my hands. Probably sometime between 1995 and 1997. I was fascinated by its design, the wan salmon of its pages and Ingram Pinn’s illustrations: its visual identity, basically. As for reading it, very little, I confess. It was an almost purely retinal experience, and little else. But it became clear to me that its texts were written for professionals —people who make decisions on the basis of verified information—

The smell of fresh ink on a print just lifted from the press has a remarkable ability to turn devotees into addicts. So do the uneasy intervals built into the process, which forge a very particular bond with the craft. This lies at the origin of nearly every printmaking and screen-printing workshop. Another trait they tend to share is an unusual capacity for endurance...

Since Wednesday, August 12, Annex Gallery has been presenting Tiger Lily: Collective Impressions. Tiger Lily Press is a cooperative printmaking workshop founded in Cincinnati in 1979, conceived as an open space for practice, teaching, and the preservation of artistic printing techniques. Over several decades, it has brought together printmakers from different generations, providing access to presses, tools, workshops, and shared technical knowledge, while establishing itself as one of the...

Given its scale and significance, I will present my analysis of this project in several installments. These are the ten design proposals shortlisted for the next series of euro banknotes. At this moment, they are under the gaze of millions. Citizens of the euro area have been invited to choose their favorites in a survey that will remain open until September 21...

The Serendipity x Arles Grant has a history of barely six years. It was established in 2020 by the Serendipity Arts Foundation and Les Rencontres d’Arles, with the support of the Institut français en Inde, to foster South Asian artists working with photography, video, artificial intelligence, and other image-based media...

Designing the banknotes destined to circulate throughout a monetary area such as Europe is among the most prestigious and consequential commissions a professional or design studio can receive. Creating an image to be shared by millions of people, condensing an identity into visual form, and meeting complex demands of legibility, security, symbolism, and instant recognition constitute a task at which even a demigod like Hercules might have failed...

Jim Marshall, a renowned photographer celebrated for his iconic rock-and-roll images, captured unforgettable moments in music history. You may recognize his work, such as the famous photograph of Johnny Cash giving the finger at San Quentin Prison, Jimi Hendrix lighting his guitar on fire, or exclusive shots from the Beatles’ last performance...

Yesterday, a video circulated widely across social media showing the arrest of a young transgender person on February 5, 2025, at the University of Central Florida in Orlando. The footage shows a "highly agitated" Jarrett Vick, a 27-year-old transgender student, confronting several officers who were on campus for unrelated reasons...

Science magazines — the serious ones, and even the popular-science ones — very often bring us stunningly beautiful photographs of what actually is. Natural splendor, the marvels of the world. They aren't art photographs; they don't denounce problems, or systems, or the routine aberrations of the human world. They are for the curious, for those with a child's soul. And yet the photographers who take them can be considered full-fledged artists. All the more so in these days of ours, when anything at all lays claim to artistic status.

Maximilian of Habsburg, the emperor whom the French Intervention installed on the throne, built the Paseo de la Emperatriz —modeled on the Parisian boulevards— to link Chapultepec Castle with the city center. Mexico's conservative quarters looked kindly upon it. When the empire fell, the republican governments renamed it Paseo de la Reforma. This Reforma is the Mexican liberal one, the laws driven by Benito Juárez that separated Church from State and consolidated the Republic.

Ai Weiwei's art leaves me with certain reservations. The public figure strikes me as overly polished, burnished almost to excess.
Some years ago he dropped an authentic Han dynasty urn onto the floor. Made sometime between 206 BC and AD 220, its first and only purpose was to shatter. He had bought it in Beijing in the early 1990s, during China's rapid urban expansion...

Call Me Ahmel
January arrived, and so did 2025. Halfway through the month it will pierce my head and my body in much the same way 2024 did—with hypersonic calm. Be careful. In Miami everything happens too fast, a good friend warned me, sounding more alarmed than concerned. Another good friend, one we have in common, calls him my fascist friend. Cuba, the way tango does to the men—and to the women—in Borges's magnificent story The Man on Pink Corner, has its own way with him.

This photograph set off my alarms at once. Not to the degree of a contemporary First World mother, of course, though enough for me to notice. Whenever I took Yoko—my dog—for a walk, I watched to make sure she never put anything in her mouth. Nothing. So I share, in moderation, the collective hysteria that has turned hygiene into a cult of asepsis.

Among the most rewarding things about running an art gallery is the chance to meet extraordinary artists. In the past two months, for instance, I encountered for the first time the work of two important American photographers who share a great deal, Matt Herron and Jim Marshall.

On June 21st we discussed a beautiful photograph, winner of the Grand Prize in the 2026 edition of the Environmental Photography Award, organized by the Prince Albert II of Monaco Foundation. Every time one of these images triumphs, I ask myself which ones fell short. Which failed to stand out, which came so close to unseating it. Here are the ones that came closest.