CUTICLE
MESSY ISSUE III. WINTER 2018-19
CONTRIBUTORS
Iuna V. Marlene Ronstedt Kieran Fitzpatrick Lydia Hounat Fiona Glen Tom Glen Krysten Krulik Liz Lvov Katerina Orfanos Mike Cunliffe cover images & page 2: Krysten Krulik pages 3 & 28: Fiona Glen https://issuu.com/cuticle cuticlezine@gmail.com
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4. 8. 10. 14. 16. 20. 22. 29. 32. 36.
This is the most geographically rangy edition of Cuticle yet, with entries arriving digitally from China and Cornwall, Malaga and Morocco, Jerusalem and New Jersey. Some tell tales of travel: translation, transformation, disorientation. Perhaps new places alert our eyes more easily to to the uneven or irregular; to the debris. Perhaps we see ourselves reflected rawly in the mess of others. Or perhaps we simply are undone by distance. As ever, a big thank you to all our wonderful contributors – whether new names or regulars – for daring to share their intriguing and enigmatic hidden images. From London, with love, Fiona
MESSY MESSY MESSY MESSY MESSY MESSY
When I asked for mess, these photo stories were everything I hoped to encounter – fascinating chaos in all its forms. Animal, mineral, vegetable, always deeply human. Where some series frame the sublime mess of devastation, disconnect or neglect, others uncover the generatively resistant potential of all that is organic, erratic, and alive. All that we are.
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WHAT WAS ONCE A PRINT SHOP, WHAT WAS ONCE A SHELTER, WHAT WAS ONCE A HOME.
Canon 5D Mark III September 2018
Silwan, Nabi Samuel, Khan Al Ahmar – many neighborhoods in East Jerusalem are affected by housing demolitions. UN OCHA counted 178 demolished structures, affecting 918 people in East Jerusalem last year.
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IUNA V.
THE MESSY EAST
Israeli authorities issue demolitions orders for any ‘structures’ that have been built without a permit, yet building permits – even for the smallest changes to your home – are almost impossible to obtain. In many cases, owners are given a choice. They can either demolish their buildings themselves or take the risk and pay a large sum when authorities come to conduct the demolition. Like the owner of this print shop, Palestinians are often given little time to collect their belongings when the bulldozers come. What stays behind is the mess.
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Tourists are an important source of income for Palestinians in East Jerusalem. Only a small number among the masses who visit Jerusalem set out to explore the East beyond the walls of the old city. Those who do may leave with one main impression: East Jerusalem is messy. And it is. For many reasons more reasons than demolitions. But the next time you see a mess, don’t always assume that you know why it is there.
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MARLENE RONSTEDT
DEMOLITION LAX, DEMOLITION AGP
That weekend in Malaga I had initially intended to visit a conference in LA. My proposal for a talk got into the last round but didn’t make it into the final selection. Here, I’m trying to pretend to be somewhere else. iPhone 7 (pink) 4th November 2018
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Rome, the Eternal City, is surely one of the most beautiful places in the world. Everywhere you go there is something wondrous to see. History and tradition are as present here as anywhere, and Romans are among the proudest of peoples. As a newcomer to Rome I spend my days walking, with a camera, looking up at its epic sights in amazement. But it is the views that one sees when they look down that are at the forefront of most Romans’ minds right now. Their city, home to some of the world’s most famous monuments, is now also covered in monuments such as these. The city is being neglected and is decaying. But its proud people say enough is enough. Roma dice basta. Nikon D7000 October - November 2018
KIERAN FITZPATRICK
ROMA DICE BASTA
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This is about juxtaposing different kinds of ‘trash’ in age, relationships and landscapes, and the changing of that ‘trash’. These were taken during a time where I moved from Cornwall to London and left behind a lot of ‘mess’. Messy relationships, feeling like everything was a bit of a mess in a transitory period, moving out of an old house and into a new house, growing away from childhood, growing away from being someone who used to party way more, feeling isolated to the point of feeling overcrowded, being overcrowded to the point of feeling isolated.
Kodak Portra 400, Ferrarria Supasnaps XR, Ilford FP4 Olympus OM-1, Mamiya C330 Professional TLR September - October 2018
LYDIA HOUNAT
SPACES UNKEMPT
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with camerapparatus and appetite for accident in search of (de)structure, eye-scratching surface
texture_irregular_tone_intonation [messages in modulation] – a spectacle of spectres.
FIONA GLEN
GEIST LIGHT
Canon A-1, Kodak T-MAX London, March-April 2018
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back from the lab, the prints were streaked: pock-marked, light-blighted, dashed. a cracked cannister leaks, unevenly. (ghost in the material, ghost in the machine). reminder: a photograph is simply a ‘light drawing’.
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iPhone 6s Plus October - November 2018
TOM GLEN
CHAOS ESTIMATION
MY MIND SEES NOTHING, AS EYES DART AND STRAIN, SHAPES FORM DETAIL, SUBSTANCE UNFOUNDED. We ‘see’ with our brains... As a controlled source of noise, chaos provides the system with a deterministic ‘I don’t know’ state within which new activity, new patterns, can be generated. 21
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THE SIGNING OF A CARD, THE DEDICATION OF A NOVEL. TO THOSE WE LOVE, OUR ENDLESS MEMORIES, OUR INTERTWINED HISTORIES THAT TOUCH ALL OF THE SOFTEST SPOTS. TO OUR MESSY LIVES, OUR SCATTERED MEMORIES, AND ALL OF THE WAYS WE VIE NOT TO REMEMBER, AND YET NOT TO FORGET.
KRYSTEN KRULIK
ALL MY LOVE
Canon AE-1 35mm, Cinestill 800T & Fujifilm Superia X-TRA 400 June 2018
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LIZ LVOV
OVERLEAF
SARA’S MOUTH/ LAST NIGHT YOU ASKED ME TO BE HONEST
iOS New York City November 2018
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THE TIME I SPEND WITH YOU BLURS AND STRETCHES. IT STARTS OFF WITH THE COMPROMISE OF ME WALKING YOU HALFWAY HOME LATE AT NIGHT, SO THAT YOU DON’T HAVE TO WALK IT ALONE, AND I WALK BACK STARING UP AT THE WINDOWS STILL ALIGHT, CATCHING GLIMPSES OF STRANGERS’ PLANTS. IT BECOMES AN ISSUE OF CONVENIENCE, GIVING UP THE WALK FROM MY BED TO YOURS, TONIGHT AS AN EXCEPTION, OR MAYBE JUST FOR THE WEEKEND SINCE WE STAY OUT LATE ANYWAYS. SUDDENLY YOUR FRESH LAUNDRY STACKED ON MY DRESSER DRAWER. A SERIES OF NIGHTS. THE NIGHT WE WATCHED JENNIFER’S BODY AND YOU SAID YOU DIDN’T KNOW IT WAS A SCARY MOVIE. THE NIGHT YOU SAW A MOUSE EMERGE FROM UNDER THE STOVE AND DISAPPEAR JUST AS QUICKLY. THE NIGHT WE SWIFFERED THE FLOOR AND WALKED AROUND BAREFOOT. THE NIGHT WE TOOK CUPS OF TEA OUT TO THE ROOF AND IT WAS FOGGY AND WE TALKED ABOUT ALL THE EMPTY PENTHOUSES OF NEW YORK CITY WITH THE FOG PRESSED UP AGAINST THEIR WINDOWS, SILENT AND ORNATE. THE NIGHT THE RADIATOR CAME ON WITH A CLATTER LIKE THE SKY FALLING DOWN. THE NIGHT WE THREW A PARTY AND GRINNED AT EACH OTHER ACROSS THE ROOM WHEN PEOPLE STARTED DANCING IN THE NARROW SPACE BETWEEN THE FRIDGE AND THE STRANGE LEATHER-TOPPED TABLE. THE NIGHT WE ARGUED OVER WHO WOULD GET UP TO PUT THE COOKIE DOUGH IN THE OVEN, AND I GAVE IN, AND WE FORGOT THEM, AND THEY BURNED. THE NIGHT WE PUT LIPSTICK ON EACH OTHER.
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Fujifilm X-A1 January - April 2018
KATERINA ORFANOS
HANOI, HONG KONG, CHIANG MAI .
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There’s not enough space in a frame to capture this bridge on stilts This one lane bridge that holds one thousand motorbikes A woman sitting between her knees with steaming noodle soup In place yet parallel to a train connecting Hoan Kiem to Long Bien An overpass of overflown fruit stores with no divide by dotted lines
One often stores or in other words hides the clutter away Collections bordering accumulations Placed in boxes attracting dust and attic bugs Out of sight until there’s this time to address it But here, a man faces and embraces a lifetime of miscellaneous 35
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These are from the first time I went to Morocco, mostly shot in a small town in the South called Mirleft. For the whole trip there was a problem with my lens which meant I couldn’t get it to focus, but this added to the messy feeling of the photographs. Mirleft has a lot of ruins of French colonial castles and the towns appear half-built. The local people hang out outdoors a lot, and we loved how friendly and eccentric they were. The arid land had wealth in the people and their willingness to overcome.
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MIKE CUNLIFFE
DESOLATION OVERCOME Kodak Portra, 120 Mamiya 645 February 2012
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AN EQUILIBRIUM OF ENVIRONMENT AND ORGANISM. A STRUGGLE THAT ONCE WAS, BUT NOW RELAXED, OR, FOR THE MOMENT, WITHOUT SIGNS OF CHANGE.
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