As the US Presidential election approaches in just a few weeks, Musée revisits past articles that explore themes of power and control. Here’s a look back at our 2018 interview with Platon from Issue No. 19: Power.

We are still condemning the art world for its lack of ethics, tokenism, and other bad behavior.

I believe a certain form of ignorance can be empowering. Not knowing can be a motor for curiosity and in turn, fuel creativity.

I realized two important things: that I feel uneasy when I intrude upon people and how important the physical spaces in which people meet are to me.

Simpson’s work culls from our shared history, echoing themes and power dynamics within gender, race and culture and how these elements combine in our manifestation of memories and creating identity.

"I’m not a savior. I’m just me, and I’m just doing my thing."

I was always aware of my plight and displacement. I am from an area known as “the bottom.”

To celebrate Women’s History Month, we are sharing articles from Musée No. 13 — Women.

Meatyard “was a picture maker, not a picture taker.” To the veil of appearance, he brings more veils. Behind his masks, there is always another mask – or nothing at all.

“Interiors are an inexhaustible resource; there are still so many places I want to see.”

“I’ve been collecting for over twenty five years. The medium is changing so rapidly, that’s one of the reasons I started collecting photography. This is the medium of our lifetime. It’s wild to live in the era of this photographic revolution.”

“My process is playful. There is no clear plan or story I am trying to tell. I manipulate photographs which evoke a familiar feeling — something I have a deep connection to.”

I always think my work is very clear. It’s clear to me, apparently maybe not so clear to the viewer, and that always puzzles me...because I think I’m very clear. But, is the point to be clear at all?

“What I was struck with was the power and poetic nature of having last words at all…which if you think about it, is a very rare opportunity for any human being to have.”

“I tend to think cinematically, particularly when sequencing images – meaning I’d like to think I know how to tell a story in purely visual terms. Using cinematic vocabulary – such as wide shots, medium shots and close ups – that syntax helps people understand where they are and what’s going on.”

“Sometimes images function best when stripped of all contexts, as well as with the physicality and scale of the print. Sometimes you need that.”

“What photography does is capture life in such thin slices that everybody is off balance and everybody is in motion. In snapshot photography everybody is slumping, turning, twitching, closing an eye – doing something animated.”

“There are more questions than answers. But the answer would be, I am not as I used to be. I am struggling. But I will soon come out to continue what I was doing”

“I would define the mental space of loss as a place where one is powerless over the void that is present in one’s mind and heart.”

“I enjoy that with the ever presence of technology and the collective expanding and elastic archive of the Internet, certain ways of learning or communication have changed – breaking down disruptive hierarchies. Figures lost on the fringes are remerging to create a more complex understanding of our history.”

“I got into photography because one of my very first boyfriends was a photographer. We spent most of our hours in the dark room. He taught me everything about the dark room. Then, I just started taking photographs.”

“I think that is the point of art: to create something that engages people and then gives space to reflect.”

“I began seeking out people who were engaging in S&M activities in order to compare the spaces they used for living with the spaces that they used for pleasure with the hopes that the domestic space would look like constructed spaces as well.”

“The face is such a signifier, it is so specific. It immediately makes it personal, and I wanted to remove that from this work.”

“A lot of coffee, a half a pack of cigarettes, and the New York Times. Then, I’m ready to take a shower and head to work.”

“I always wanted to make photographs for myself and impress myself more than anybody else. I’m always in search for that feeling of knowing how to make a photograph that will interest me to look at.”

“Everything begins with a personal narrative and self-exploration. I really love acknowledging the actual physical space that’s between a viewer and an artwork, and the psychic and potential energy in that space.”

Whether or not things are ‘good’ is a subjective point, anyway. . . I think criticism is something that happens within an academic trajectory . . . art [criticism] is different because it often occurs within a specific academic and historical conversation.