The Annex Gallery

05/27/2026

05/17/2026

We accept this kind of photograph before we understand it. That is why we are here. They are striking, drawing on the same formal vocabulary inherited from Irving Penn and Richard Avedon, the great schools of studio portraiture on a flat ground. Ever since, we have surrendered to the magic of high contrast, to the shameful retreat of the second plane, of the surroundings, of the context. As though none of that added anything to the emotion or to a denser reading.

We accept this kind of photograph before we understand it. That is why we are here. They are striking, drawing on the same formal vocabulary inherited from Irving Penn and Richard Avedon, the great schools of studio portraiture on a flat ground. Ever since, we have surrendered to the magic of high c...

05/01/2026

Before art, there was the image. The wind has been drawing linear patterns on the dunes for millions of years, always different and yet always recognisable. Water has polished stones into lovely pebbles, full of nuance. Polyps shape the corals themselves, raising branched, almost labyrinthine structures of extraordinary beauty out of blind secretions of calcium carbonate. Arabesques that art can imitate but never surpass. Like the veins of a mineral cut in half, the stains rust leaves on iron, the texture of a lung seen under a microscope. All of them images no human designed, and which nevertheless produce in whoever looks at them something close to recognition. Like remembering something we never saw. So that what we call abstract in art has been practised by nature forever, and effortlessly.

Before art, there was the image. The wind has been drawing linear patterns on the dunes for millions of years, always different and yet always recognisable. Water has polished stones into lovely pebbles, full of nuance. Polyps shape the corals themselves, raising branched, almost labyrinthine struct...

04/26/2026

Though it isn't always evident, behind every prize-winning photograph several images coexist. The one captured by the photographer, perfectly visible, and the ones the system of recognition produces over time, deciding what that image will end up meaning.

Though it isn't always evident, behind every prize-winning photograph several images coexist. The one captured by the photographer, perfectly visible, and the ones the system of recognition produces over time, deciding what that image will end up meaning.The winning photograph of the World Press Pho...

04/24/2026

On December 10, I published a text on a photograph that, to my eyes, could stand without difficulty among the best of the year. Not long after, I encountered another article presenting the final selection for the World Press Photo Exhibition 2026. The photograph in question was among them. What remains now is a single doubt. Whether it will ultimately be chosen as Photo of the Year.

On December 10, I published a text on a photograph that, to my eyes, could stand without difficulty among the best of the year. Not long after, I encountered another article presenting the final selection for the World Press Photo Exhibition 2026. The photograph in question was among them. What rema...

04/15/2026

Chernobyl: A Photographic Memory of Nuclear Catastrophe

On April 26, 1986, I was almost certainly bored out of my mind, sprawled in some corner of my apartment in Havana’s Vedado district. What I remember from those days is fear. A dense, persistent fear. The certainty that I could be swallowed by three years of mandatory military service. I clung to a...

04/10/2026

April 10, 2026 marks the long-awaited return to Earth of the astronauts from Artemis II. The mission set out to perform a lunar flyby that reached the Moon’s far side. Reid Wiseman, Christina Koch, Victor Glover, and Jeremy Hansen traveled farther than any human beings in history, a detail irresistible to sensational headlines. In keeping with the logic of a world shaped by social media, they took several photographs. A few selfies as well, which, out of discretion or contract, will not appear in scientific journals.

April 10, 2026 marks the long-awaited return to Earth of the astronauts from Artemis II. The mission set out to perform a lunar flyby that reached the Moon’s far side. Reid Wiseman, Christina Koch, Victor Glover, and Jeremy Hansen traveled farther than any human beings in history, a detail irresis...

04/10/2026

On March 25, we published a commentary on a prize awarded to a retired British schoolteacher for a photograph taken in Southeast Asia during an ordinary vacation. The image presents the face—deeply etched by the wrinkles wrought by sun and exposure—of an elderly man with a faintly wry expression. He holds two small silver fish before his eyes, aligned in such a way that they replace them. A playful illusion that, at another moment, might have unsettled.

On March 25, we published a commentary on a prize awarded to a retired British schoolteacher for a photograph taken in Southeast Asia during an ordinary vacation.The image presents the face—deeply etched by the wrinkles wrought by sun and exposure—of an elderly man with a faintly wry expression.

04/05/2026

Next Wednesday at The Annex Gallery

Rigoberto Mena is an artist with a solid career spanning more than three decades. I consider him the most important Cuban abstract artist working today, and I am not willing, in the presence of such a figure, to write a definitive text without having this exhibition before me. Above all because this...

03/25/2026

The winner of the 2026 London Camera Exchange (LCE) Photographer of the Year competition is a retired teacher who captured the award-winning image while on holiday in Southeast Asia. The scene was shot in Hoi An, on Vietnam’s central coast, as she photographed a fisherman at work. The author notes that the moment in question sealed the playful end of the encounter and helped her stand out among more than 14,500 participants.

The winner of the 2026 London Camera Exchange (LCE) Photographer of the Year competition is a retired teacher who captured the award-winning image while on holiday in Southeast Asia. The scene was shot in Hoi An, on Vietnam’s central coast, as she photographed a fisherman at work. The author notes...