The treachery of human memory, as is the impermanence of our existence, is perhaps best known, comprehended, and articulated through written, recited, or visual documentation. Of these, the visual medium of photography, with all its limitations and possibilities, has been instrumental in pausing time, through countless revelatory records of people, places, and phenomena. These are visual journeys, fastened with undertones and lessons in human authenticity and curiosity, the bad, the beautiful, the contemplative, and the provocatively necessary.

Within the creative circuit, these mnemonics often epitomise harsh truths, teeter dangerously on being manipulative or publicly incentivising, or, hold what’s dear to someone—a reminder of things lost, loved, or needed to be exposed, learnt and questioned. Photographers, across myriad mediums, spectators, skill levels, and subject matters, embody the quest to capture, to know, and freeze in time, a few fleeting moments of significance—from a distant celestial being to personal vignettes of living, this is one of the most effective agencies central to the act and practice of creativity.

As the year comes to a close, STIR reveals a selection of substantial and stirring photographic works from 2023, which are expressed through the creative prisms of art and architecture, ventures of capturing what it means to be human and creative while demonstrating the disruptive role of the visual medium.

1. STIR and FCB India win Gold at Cannes Industry Craft Lions 2023

On June 20, 2023, at the prestigious 70^th Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity, the campaign Untangling the Politics of Hair, produced by FCB India for STIR, and created and conceived by Rohit Chawla and Swati Bhattacharya, was announced as the recipient of a Gold Lion in the Industry Craft Lions category.

With haunting visuals of a woman draped from head to toe in a prison of her hair, the potent campaign emerged from Bhattacharya (CCO, FCB India) and photographer Chawla’s deeply affecting India Art Fair (IAF) 2023 exhibition titled Hair and Her, utilising the art exhibition and the stellar examples of Indian photography and short film that it presented, raising awareness around the Mahsa Amini protests that erupted across Iran in September 2022. Through social art, Untangling the Politics of Hair boldly spoke to power, even as politicians from the world’s largest democracy chose to stay silent on the atrocities being borne by the women of that nation, and horrifyingly, by many across the world.

2. Navigating the visual vocabulary of romantic relationships through ‘Love Songs'

Love Songs: Photography and Intimacy, curated by Sara Raza, was recently displayed at the International Center of Photography, in the heart of New York. The group exhibition showcased photographs from 16 artists from the world over, and through their lenses, captured various stages of love, including budding romance, marriage, the simplicity of domestic bliss, the anguish of separation, and the terror of one's partner’s mortality. Within these photographs are aesthetic glimpses of poetic adoration, passion, unprocessed emotion, and other facets of the deeply human experience that is love.

The photographic displays spanned 70 years, from 1952-2022, all highlighting the softness, the profundity, and certainly, the complexity of human romantic relations. The sublime curation felt deeply hopeful, even as it presented glimpses of devastating personal losses as well. Many who experienced this artistic offering would most likely be left with a resounding reminder, that love sustains life, despite death.

3. Jim Stephenson on joy and the value of 'use and mess' in architectural photography

"What constitutes the idea of architectural joy for you?" STIR asked photographer and filmmaker Jim Stephenson in a conversation that discussed his experiential audio-video installation, The Architect has Left the Building. Previously hosted at the RIBA gallery in London, the exhibition is currently on view at the Farrell Centre in Newcastle, and Stephenson hopes to take it to a new spot very soon.

"Joy in architecture for me is found in user activity," he says, adding, "the thing that makes me smile is seeing buildings used, sometimes misused." With The Architect Has Left the Building, Stephenson weaves together moments of architectural joy and intimacy as cinematic vignettes from his personal archive shed light on the importance of ‘use and mess’ in architectural photography. In the video installation, works of UK and Ireland based practices such as Grafton Architects, Henley Halebrown, Carmody Groarke, and Jamie Fobert Architects, stand in contrast to the ‘neat’ visions of empty buildings that have populated mainstream media for a very long time.

4. Architectural photographer Ezra Stoller "felt a responsibility to record history"

The introduction of STIR's streamlined interview with American architectural photographer Ezra Stoller and his daughter mentions, "In a 2012 book, Ezra Stoller: Photographer, authored by Nina Rappaport and the photographer’s daughter, Erica Stoller, architectural critic John Morris Dixon writes, "Stoller became the photographer of choice to record many of the outstanding design accomplishments of the twentieth century." He documented many masterpieces by some of the most prominent architects of the 20^th century—Frank Lloyd Wright, Mies van der Rohe, Le Corbusier, Walter Gropius, Alvar Aalto, Louis Kahn, Eero Saarinen, Marcel Breuer, Philip Johnson, Paul Rudolph, IM Pei, Richard Meier, Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, and many others. As Erica told me during our recent interview over a video out of her house in Rye, New York, “We see those buildings, not the way they were but through his eyes.”

5. Architecture, nature and climate define the Sony World Photography Awards 2023

Sony World Photography Awards announced the winners of its 2023 edition, in categories of Architecture, Environment, Landscape and Wildlife and Nature, with the winning photographs being displayed at London's Somerset House until May 1, 2023.

Edgar Martins from Portugal bagged the Photographer of the Year title for his series named Our War, dedicated as a self-portrait of Martins' dear friend and photojournalist Anton Hammerl, who travelled to Libya to cover the conflict between pro-regime and anti-Gaddafi forces. In the Architecture and Design Category, Cement Factory by Fan Li was awarded first place, while in the Environment Category, Marisol Mendez and Federico Kaplan took first place with the series Miruku, which focuses on the Wayuus, an indigenous population from La Guajira, Colombia's coastal desert. Event Horizon by Kacper Kowalski was awarded the first prize in the Landscape category, Corey Arnold’s Cities Gone Wild won in Wildlife and Nature.

Furthermore, in the other categories of the 2023 Professional Competition, The Right To Play by Lee-Ann Olwage won first place in the Creative category, The Women's Peace Movement in Congo by Hugh Kinsella Cunningham won in the Documentary Projects category, and The Sky Garden by Kechun Zhang won in the Still Life category. In Portfolio, James Deakin won with his Portfolio shot in the first half of 2022 in Saudi Arabia, and in the Sports category, Female Pro Baseball Player Succeeds in All Male Pro League by Al Bello won the first prize.

6. Enter the Huxleys: The fantastic performance art couple from Australia

'Creating a queer wonderland' are The Huxleys, a dynamic duo performed between visual artists Will and Garrett Huxley from Melbourne, Australia. Their loud, garish, campy, and surrealistic spectacle dazzle the creative world, through incorporations of photography and videography accompanying the Australian artists' flashy costume designs, creating a sensorial attack of absurdity.

As Will Huxley told STIR, "Our message is about escapism and providing a magical detour from everyday life. We are all about giving people a glimpse into another world, if even for just a moment. Growing up in places where we didn't fit in and couldn’t see ourselves around us meant that we had to dream and make up a fantasy world where we did fit in. Glam rock, Bowie, Prince, Grace Jones, Leigh Bowery, and art in all its forms saved us and gave us hope. We set out to make a magical world where we did feel fabulous and glamorous and safe.”

7. Per Carlsen’s digital renderings play with the possibilities of imaginary architecture

Encountering Per Carlsen’s surreal digital renderings puts one in a contemplative, captivated state. Born and raised in Oslo, the 32-year-old Norwegian architectural designer has built his digital photography portfolio over six years, chock full of imaginary architecture that thrives on motifs of recurring lines and free-flowing geometries, subtle colour schemes, and a modest yet essential play of light, testing and stretching the limits of architectural imagery—from dystopian buildings towering against a backdrop of calming sunsets to mammoth, undulating monoliths on the verge of plunging into the sea, Carlsen’s photography, at once familiar and uncanny, takes one on cinematic visual journeys, touching upon the celebrated principles of Scandinavian design and architecture, replete with simplicity and minimalism.

With a background in graphic design, art, and illustration, Carlsen often calls upon childhood memories of growing up in Norway: rich and vastly stretching natural landscapes and their staggering scales contrasting with the reduced ratio of humans, abundant nature, and the freedom of not worrying about worldly responsibilities.

8. Cody Cobb dovetails solitude with nature in his landscape photography

Intentional isolation serves as a conduit for profound connections, enabling a creative mind to keenly observe not only the external grandeur of untamed landscapes but also the inner journey of solitude. This is witnessed in abundance within the photographic works of Cody Cobb, standing out as a testament to the power of simplicity and contemplation, and whose lens is firmly focused on the American West. His photographic mission is to capture fleeting moments of tranquillity amid the wild tumult of nature. By meticulously crafting the interplay of light and geometry, Cobb conjures an enigmatic sense of order from the wilderness. His photographs are visual dialogues that aim to encapsulate the intricate dance between the observer and the observed.

His work reminds us of the importance of reconnecting with nature, finding solace in its grandeur, and preserving the fragile landscapes that inspired his art. Through his lens, one is invited to explore the quiet corners of our planet, reflect on our place within it, and appreciate the profound beauty that surrounds us.

9. Zofia Kulik’s photography combines the body, the church and communism

For the first time, artist Zofia Kulik put portions of her own workshop on display as part of the exhibition The Splendor of the Artisan this year in Arles, France. The show drew from her self-portrait, which was inspired by the book Splendours of the New World, highlighting the influence of Spanish costume on other European countries, where lavish aesthetics were emulated as a symbol of status.

Between the art of producing luxury and the lacklustre manufacturing process, Kulik presented a juxtaposition and reified the craftsman or artisan. At the Église des Trinitaires, as part of the photography festival Rencontres d’Arles, Kulik presented a set of analogue photomontages made in a classical darkroom. Kulik studies the body as a recurring element, as a site of protest, a place of lavish splendour, and as a decorative form, examining the multifaceted readings of the figure.

10. Pao Houa Her tells the story of the Hmong diaspora and their surveilled image

American photographer Pao Houa Her presented a new body early this year, consisting of photographic works produced during the global pandemic in her solo exhibition at the Walker Art Center, Minnesota. Titled Paj qaum ntuj / Flowers of the Sky, the series was primarily shot in Northern California, around Mount Shasta, an active volcano in Siskiyou County. Her tells the story of her community, the Hmong diaspora in the United States, highlighting lived experiences of land and migration, surveillance and targeted violence, agricultural sustenance and resilience, allowing the landscape to speak through her photographs.

The photography exhibition’s moniker referenced a phrase in the Hmong language, for growing the cannabis plant and cultivating marijuana. Tracing a regional history, she put on focus, the mass migration of the Hmong diaspora to Northern California in recent history, their illegal cultivation of the plant, and its repercussions. 

11. Examining 'A World In Common' at the photography exhibition at Tate Modern

Earlier this year, the Tate Modern exhibition, A World in Common: Contemporary African Photography, explored the dynamic landscape of contemporary Africa through photography and video. The exhibition delved into varied themes of cultural heritage, urbanisation, spirituality, and climate change, presenting shared artistic visions that aimed to reclaim Africa's histories while imagining more hopeful futures. The art exhibition challenged the dominant Eurocentric lens through which African societies have been represented through photography, by featuring around 100 works that illuminated alternative visions and spoke to a larger global recognition of the need to shift this focus.

12. 'Visual Spaces of Today': an anthology of photographs at MAST Bologna

German photographer Andreas Gursky’s Visual Spaces of Today was an anthological exhibition covering over four decades of his monumental oeuvre of panoramic, large-scale photographs showing the anthropological footprint across the world. Gursky’s solo exhibition, co-curated by Urs Stahel and himself, displayed images interpreting the human systems of connectivity as calculated, homogeneous, linear, and predictable, as opposed to naturally existing mechanisms of ecological networks.

"To this day, Andreas Gursky’s enormous visual power is such that entering into the universe of his images becomes each time an experience and a step towards awareness,” remarked Stahel in the press note. The collection enables a grasp of the systems of reality, encompassing visually beguiling pieces that encapsulate the panoramic view of micro facets of production, consumption, and globalisation.

What’s NEXT?

Looking back on this year’s salient creative photography spanning across the realms of art, design, and architecture, which immersed us in myriad ways and shared differing perspectives, we are reminded to reckon with its influence and role. Many endeavours encouraged a focus towards the human and humane, concerning its subjective environs. By capturing the essence of life itself, admiring and revealing its virtues and vices, the visual medium meditates, assays, dictates, and propagates themes of hope as much as performing as wake-up calls, through its lens of aesthetics and realism.

Most works of dynamic photography require deep thought and utmost preparation, and it is this way of thinking NEXT that could further formulate how we see the world. As the new year dawns, let us ruminate on how the photographic vocation can dwell on thinking creatively and developing a keen, critical eye, and a mind that observes before launching into action.

STIRred 2023 wraps up the year with compilations of the best in architecture, art, and design from STIR. Did your favourites make the list? Tell us in the comments!