Book cover with purple text over a color photograph of a woman seated on the floor smoking a cigarette.

Client

Aperture

Year

2023

Location

New York

Press

Vogue

Rebecca Bengal
Strange Hours: Photography, Memory, and the Lives of Artists

In Strange Hours: Photography, Memory, and the Lives of Artists, Rebecca Bengal considers the photographers who have defined our relationship to the medium. Through generous essays and interviews, she contemplates photography’s narrative power, from the radical intimacy of Nan Goldin’s New York demimonde to Justine Kurland’s pictures of rebel girls on the open road. Bengal brings us closer to pioneering artists and the personal and political stories surrounding their images. She travels with Alec Soth in Minneapolis, searching for the houses where Prince once lived, and revisits Chauncey Hare’s 1979 protest against the Museum of Modern Art. She speaks with Dawoud Bey about his evocative portraits and explores Diana Markosian’s cinematic take on her family’s immigration to the US. Throughout Strange Hours, Bengal’s prose is attuned to the alchemy of experience, chance, and vision that has always pushed photography’s potential for unforgettable storytelling.

Published by Aperture, Designed by Pacific, Softcover, 5¼ × 8¼ inches, 216 pages

Open book with a black and white photograph on the left page and essay text on the right page.
Open book with a black and white photograph on the left page and essay text on the right page.
Open book with a photograph on either page.
Back cover of a purple book with black text.