(After)care

With this new issue entitled (After)care, The Eyes examines the methods and analyses the positions of photographers who work on the most traumatic chapters of our individual and collective histories. After the collaboration with SMITH (Transgalactic, 2020) and Johny Pitts (B-Side, 2021), The Eyes proposed to the Spanish artist Laia Abril to take over the content of the magazine.

This 13th issue is built around a notion that permeates Laia Abril’s practice, namely the question of care in a post-traumatic context, or (After)care. This issue questions readers’ consciences and probes the role of responsibility within the photographic process. Many questions are raised in this issue: how can we put our deepest wounds into images? What is the place of vulnerability in photographic creation? How can we ensure that the violence of the world is not replayed through the violence of images?

The Eyes proposes a dive into a variety of works and books by artists who all embody, in their own way, a photographic practice of “care”. The works deal with subjects as diverse as colonial wars, natural disasters, sexual and gender violence and disability. Texts and interviews with researchers and artists broaden the reflection on this subject, which is still too little discussed.

Laia Abril is a complete artist—photography, text, sound—whose practice is based on research. After a degree in journalism and experience as an editor at Colors Magazine, she focused on long-term projects dealing with worrying and little seen realities related to women’s rights, pain and biopolitics. She is the author of The Epilogue (2014, Dewi Lewis); Lobismuller (2016, RM); On Abortion (2018, Dewi Lewis), nominated for the Deutsche Börse Foundation Award for Photography and winner of the Paris Photo – Aperture PhotoBook Awards; and On Rape (Dewi Lewis, 2022). Her installations have been exhibited in over 15 countries and are included in collections such as Centre Pompidou, FRAC, Photo Elysée, Fotomuseum Winterthur, MoCP and MNAC.

She has been awarded the Prix de la Photo Madame Figaro – Arles, the Hood Medal in London and the Foam Paul Huf Award in Amsterdam, among others. She is based in Barcelona and is represented by the Parisian gallery Les Filles du Calvaire. Laia Abril has just published the book On Rape with Dewi Lewis (2022).