What creative possibilities are offered by the gaps, absences, and silences in historical records? This spring, Aperture magazine presents “Counter Histories,” an issue produced in collaboration with Magnum Foundation and informed by our ongoing Counter Histories grant initiative, featuring photographers from around the world who tell powerful stories about complex social and political histories.

ATLAS is the title of the 33rd edition of SI FEST – one of the longest-running photography festivals in Italy, directed for the third year by photographer Alex Majoli – inspired by the encyclopedic atlas of memory, Bilderatlas Mnemosyne , by the German art historian and critic Aby Warburg (Hamburg, 1866-1929). From 13 to 29 September 2024 – on the weekends of 13-15, 21-22 and 28-29 September – ATLAS will bring to Savignano sul Rubicone (Forlì-Cesena) exhibitions of national and international authors, meetings, portfolio readings, workshops and research on the broad and multi-readable theme of the archive. Involving international artists such as Richard Billingham, Adam Broomberg & Oliver Chanarin, Stacy Kranitz, Abdulhamid Kircher, Billy HC Kwok, Adam Rouhana, Roland Schneider, Lindokuhle Sobekwa and internationally recognized Italian photographers such as Francesco Lughezzani & Archivio San Servolo and Maurizio Montagna , the 2024 edition of SI FEST presents itself as a visual atlas that offers a look at contemporaneity, exploring the continuities and transformations of society and its symbols, suggesting new possible interpretations .

The 20th edition of The Sovereign Asian Art Prize presented the public of Hong Kong at H Queen’s - featuring shortlisted artworks from 30 contemporary artists from regions across Asia-Pacific, with Hong Kong being the most strongly represented with 9 artists shortlisted.

The thickness of the photos accumulated over the years comes from the unknown origins of each subject. They are the ignored invisible masses, someone's son. This may be the rare portrait taken in their lives, but it is also Yu Ma's imagination and inner projection of the real situation of her missing son.

In the context of this final exhibition chapter, ‘here and there’ evokes migratory movements, both historical and contemporary, within the context of Hong Kong’s transformation as a city. Such movements not only refer to the migrations of individuals, but also encompass the continuous changes that evolve with the concept of ‘home’. As such, the exhibition frames a fluid conception of ‘here’ from ‘there’ to negotiate the divide separating various histories as well as geographical distances.

A photograph, a moment captured. A pair of eyes opens and closes. A story of how a mother searches for a son who got lost, and another individual’s attempt to make sense of the worlds that are built and fabricated, how they collide and weave into each other.

What is photography if not the evidence of a moment transpired? For Hong Kong-based photographer, Billy H.C.Kwok, this is the aspect of photo-making that fascinates him the most. Along with uncovering trajectories of historic events, in a conversation with the 2019 Magnum Foundation Fellow and Grantee, we discover aspects of storytelling that are often lost in the pursuit of a ‘decisive moment.’

“She would see a homeless person, approach him and, after checking that it wasn’t her son, she would take a portrait of him. She would write the name, place and date on the Polaroids,” explains Kwok. “The disappearance of her son had led her to use techniques that resemble artistic practice,”

The international artists in this exhibition confront difficult histories by reconstructing perspectives that have been omitted from previously accepted or official accounts. Their deeply personal visual narratives are reconstructed out of found images derived from family photo albums, books, magazines, or community archives. The works in Counter Histories ask probing questions about our construction of the past, such as, What new meanings are suggested by the absences and silences one finds in archives and historical records? How can artists engage with histories that are not photographed? How can these revisionist archives contribute to fuller understandings of the past and future?

談論紀實攝影（Documentary Photography），當攝影技術於十九世紀中葉誕生後，正值寫實主義的藝術思潮。香港早期以沙龍攝影為主流，隨歷年大量新聞事件，社會政治意識增強，追求真相，加上技術普及等因素，更多人投身紀實攝影，重視當中所記錄的歷史意義及人道關懷。 新聞與紀實攝影以現場目擊方式精確記錄真實，那麼在新聞自由、言論自由受壓的時代，又面對怎樣的掣肘或自主空間？ 在香港紀實攝影的作品中，郭浩忠（Billy H.C. Kwok）走一條不一樣的影像追尋的道路，從傳統的新聞紀實方式，轉到嘗試結合檔案的實踐和展陳，組織圖片故事，為求一針見血地把事實呈現眼前。 ...

These letters come from all over the world, and the senders are from all provinces and counties across the country. When I opened the letter, the first thing that caught my attention was a portrait, followed by a handwritten letter. Sometimes you will find that the photos are portraits of the same person, but sent from different provinces, and sometimes they are the expressions and gestures of the same person in the previous and next photos, also from different addresses. The senders all claimed that the person in the photo was the missing person himself. They were all playing another person and at the same time presenting their imagination of another identity. An identity constructed in this way makes a person seem more dehumanized. I remember reading a very earnest sentence in a letter: "You will treat him as an object and cannot let him go."