From nudes that challenge the status quo to loving portraits of ‘dangerous’ dogs, 2023 saw photographers push political boundaries and spark vital conversations about culture and identity
Photography has the power to open eyes and change minds, from documentary images that shine a spotlight on important stories across the globe, to portraits that can change the way we look at an individual and force us to question assumed knowledge. In 2023, in a culture where meaning is mediated primarily through images, this is as important as ever, and photographers themselves are keenly aware of the importance (and pitfalls) of the pictures they share. What do they say about the people on the other side of the lens? Do they surrender to the status quo, or stand up and challenge it? How are they provoking, or moving the conversation forward?
These questions have been explored by numerous photographers whose work Dazed has had the pleasure of showcasing this year. Take Yolanda Y Liou, for example, who published an intimate glimpse into the lives of two plus-sized models, celebrating the beauty of body diversity. Or Liza Kanaeva-Hunsicker’s aptly-titled NYC Girls, which captures the titular city’s “non-conformist femininity”. Or the work of Austn Fischer, which presented a world beyond gender binaries.
Find all of these, and more of this year’s most provocative photo projects, below.
Yolanda Y Liou’s journey as a photographer is mixed up in a struggle with low self-esteem about her own appearance, a hangover from her upbringing in Taiwan, and how she learned to break free of society’s rigid beauty standards. Over time, she told Dazed earlier this year, she realised that these standards didn’t have to be a burden: “I’m a photographer. I create images. Images don’t create me.”
In Thank You For Playing With Me, this attitude manifests via images of two plus-size models, Enam Ewura Adjoa Asiama and Vanessa Russell, capturing intimate moments of joy, grief and even childbirth. “By showcasing this diversity,” the photographer says, “we hope to offer people a broader spectrum of representation and empower people to embrace their uniqueness.”
Earlier this year, a fierce debate about “dangerous” dogs erupted in England and Wales, leading to legislation that outlawed breeding and discouraged ownership of XL Bullies. Just a few months earlier, though, photographer Charlie Birch had showcased another side to the controversial animals in Loaded Gun, a short film and photo book that documents the relationship between Joseph, a young ex-offender from Liverpool, and his beloved dogs.
“I wanted to portray the erratic nature of rehabilitation for him and so many others – someone trying to carve out a brand new life on their own, with no adult figures to help guide them,” Birch told Dazed around Loaded Gun’s launch. In this sense, the title of the project – which places serene images of Joseph and the dogs alongside pictures of holes punched in walls during “moments of rage” – takes on a double meaning. In the film, “[Jay] says, ‘It’s like having a loaded gun, but it hasn’t got a safety,’” the photographer explains. “Although Jay is talking about the dog, sometimes it seems he could be talking about someone like him. You can swap dog for man and the narrative stays the same.”
Sabiha Çimen had always been interested in photography, but only picked up a camera at the age of 30, after completing her master’s thesis, which focused partly on the plight of Syrian women refugees in Turkey. Over the next five years she would put together Hafız: Guardians of the Qur’an, a photo project that revolved around young girls learning to recite 604 pages of the religious book.
Although it was an “exhausting” part of Çimen’s life from the age of 12, this historic practice is often hidden from broader view, and her depiction saw her win 2022’s prestigious First PhotoBook award at Paris Photo, following her first solo show as a Magnum photographer in 2020. At the project’s heart, though, is a boundary-pushing desire to showcase an often-underrepresented culture from the inside out. “I wanted to give Muslim women a chance to speak for themselves,” the photographer tells Dazed, adding that all of her work is founded on a lesson that she herself took away from hafiz school: “Don’t obey the rules.”
Beginning in November 2023, and running through to 2024, Tate Britain’s Women in Revolt! Art and Activism in the UK 1970 – 1990 showcases more than 100 influential feminist creatives and collectives, from punk and post-punk pioneers like Marianne Elliott-Said (AKA Poly Styrene) and Cosey Fanni Tutti, to artists including Linder and Lubaina Himid.
As the first major exhibition of its kind, it showcases many artists who went their whole lives without any institutional support, yet used art as a tool to create conversation and change minds about political causes, from the end of the Thatcher regime to the AIDS crisis and Section 28. Spanning documentary photography, acts of protest, and more traditional forms – such as painting, sculpture, and textiles – the show is an important reminder of the ongoing possibilities of art as a tool to provoke.
Sarah Piantadosi’s 2023 project Bone was rooted in a wide-reaching shift in the way young people think and talk about the politics of their bodies. “So many people all over the world were making poignant critique and commentary on oppressive white patriarchal structures,” as the photographer explained in an interview with Dazed this March. “Having your selfhood ‘othered’ is simply not something young people are willing to tolerate anymore.”
As a result, the photographer’s new book, Bone – which comprises photos of more than 50 twenty-somethings in both London and Paris – showcases a defiant generation with its gaze turned squarely on the camera, challenging the viewer beyond the frame.
“Mad” is a controversial term. “The word has mainly been portrayed as referencing dangerous individuals or somebody with no autonomy,” says Broken Grey Wires founder Lizz Brady. “A person who cannot function in the world without support.” In Two Plus Two Makes Four, though, the creator sought to reclaim the language of madness by showcasing the work of artists often dubbed outsiders, like Daniel Johnston or Jochen Gerz, alongside others whose art explores mental health and identity as subjects, such as Gillian Wearing and Pipilotti Rist.
The exhibition also brought in psychological theory, with films featuring the likes of radical psychiatrist RD Laing, but Brady’s interest in madness didn’t stop with the artists or subjects themselves. It also extended to the presentation of the show, which offered a radical new approach to gallery-going that placed mental health and accessibility front and centre.
“Our team is a group of Black 20-something-year-olds with a history of family, friendship, nightlife, pop culture, love, heritage, tradition, creativity, and – most importantly – with a voice,” said India Mitchell, creative and artistic director of Atlanta’s Jusu Studio, in an interview with Dazed earlier this year. As such, DREAM (co-directed by creative director Dauda Jusu) aimed to carve out a space in the art world away from the dominant influence of the white gaze, “a space for Atlanta’s African diaspora to talk and create freely”.
The result is a series of images that spotlights a young, trailblazing generation of African-American artists, including photographer Abdul Bangura, multidisciplinary artist John Adams, and writer, photographer and filmmaker Philip Swaray. These are set amid a context of Black emancipation pioneered by larger-than-life figures like Angela Davis, Theaster Gates, bell hooks, and James Baldwin, but the project’s gaze is also set firmly on the future, and what this could look like for Black people after the dismantling of existing systems of oppression.
Taking inspiration from Judith Butler’s Gender Trouble – a seminal critique of societal gender norms that continues to provoke fierce controversy today, 30 years after it was published – Austn Fischer’s Jesters Gender Game explores the many facets of gender expression he discovered after moving to London from small-town Wisconsin. In stark black and white photographs, the photographer presents ideas about identity and liberation via make-up, clothing, and performance, channelling a tradition established by the likes of Claude Cahun and Marcel Moore that invites viewers to embrace their authentic selves.
“The concept for the shoot is never really decided... it comes to fruition after exploring,” Fischer told Dazed of his work earlier in 2023. “I’ve always been interested in gender performance and find my work reflects on the nuances of gender expression with everything I do.”
At first glance, Karla Hiraldo Voleau’s Another Love Story might have seemed like an intimate photo diary from the photographer’s relationship with an anonymous man dubbed X. In truth, though, the intimate images are reconstructions – taken with the help of an actor – that tell the story of their romance right up until the point Hiraldo Voleau discovered his hidden relationship with another woman, exposing an insidious second life.
“The blurring of reality and fiction in this project mimics what I lived through,” the photographer told Dazed back in September, adding that she hopes it will provoke viewers to take a closer look at their own lives and relationships. On the other hand, the project also brings to light an “allyship” between cheated lovers, via a transcript of her revelatory phone call with the “other” woman, known as A. “It is a real and intense conversation where you’re experiencing two women finding out that their lives are shattered,” she says. “Everything that they believed in their relationship with the same man is a lie.”
“New York City is unforgiving, very poetic, dark, humid, lonely, magical and mad,” said the Moscow-born photographer Liza Kanaeva-Hunsicker when asked what drew her to the city earlier this year. As for the cast of girls that fill her first monograph, NYC Girls, she explained: “I met my subjects throughout the years under different circumstances. Agency models, IG, friends, street casting, family, strangers. Each of them intrigued me.”
Having explored themes of sexuality and womens’ identity as a fashion photographer earlier in her career – in photo series such as Napoli Beach and California Cowgirls – the overarching theme came naturally, blended with an interest in skate culture from her teenage years in the early 2000s. The results? A non-conformist, at times NSFW, survey of all the city’s varying shades of femininity.
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