Osama Esid, B&W Magazine 2010

For the past three years, B&W Magazine has generously afforded me the privilege of looking intently into images that I, most often, care deeply about. Now working on my seventh contribution, here is an excerpt from my first essay for them, covering fellow ‘dinosaur,’ and a person more immersed in our medium than anyone else that I know, Osama Esid. 

“Despite the superficial resemblance to a 19th century sensibility which fed the Occident what it wanted to see of the Orient, Esid’s body of work is no mere anachronism or a colonial enterprise. It is of its time with all the graffiti, present styles, and detritus intact. In one image among a series of nudes shot in Lisbon, a figure leans against a doorway. Blurred but definitively feminine, she holds (she is) the source of illumination for both her body and the rooms surrounding her. A surge protector on the floor is given the most prominent focus, which could be a subtle symbol for a conduit of energy, or a clever pun.” December 2010 link