From Cate Blanchett and Maggie Nelson’s evocative discussion on power and ambiguity to Dominique Sisley’s fascinating conversation with Naomi Klein, we look back on our most popular features of the year
On Power and Genius: Cate Blanchett and Maggie Nelson in Conversation
When Tár actress Cate Blanchett sat to speak with The Argonauts author Maggie Nelson for the Spring/Summer 2023 issue of AnOther, she mused on how narrative can derail the more complicated aspects of the artistic endeavour. “People have got bound up in the narrative with Tár, which is quite enigmatic and elusive.” To Nelson, this is parallelistic to writing, as “there were a lot of options for delivering a worthwhile aesthetic experience that wasn’t necessarily narratively driven.” Together, they discuss power and ambiguity, and the conflict between man’s innate curiosity and the inadequacies in the systems and societal structures from which one hopes to extract knowledge.
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Naomi Klein: “I’m Trying to Have a Little Compassion for Myself”
Naomi Klein, the Canadian author known for her social activism and prophetic wisdom, has long been a source of insight for the political left. In 1999, when the tech industry was in its nascency, she published No Logo, a polemic attack on the relationship between consumer capitalism and relatability; in 2007 came The Shock Doctrine, an examination of neoliberalism and the ways in which it exploits public disorientation. Recently, her work has centred around the climate crisis, and her latest book, Doppelganger, blends political analysis with personal essays to explore how humans navigate an unprecedented global landscape. Here, Klein, in an interview with AnOther’s senior editor Dominique Sisley, dissects the writing process, social media, and how to engage with real-world issues in a compassionate and meaningful way.
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The Inside Story of the Blistering New Documentary About Nan Goldin
To the formidable image-maker Laura Poitras, whose films include the Oscar-winning documentary Citizen Four, the photographer and activist Nan Goldin is “driven to tell her story, [and] also make a record that can’t be changed, can’t be fucked with.” In anticipation of the release of the Oscar-nominated film All the Beauty and the Bloodshed, we caught up with Poitras to discuss the story of Goldin’s unflagging crusade against the Sackler family, the process of capturing the activist’s radical life and ensuring its translation on screen was as true as it was captivating.
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Home and Away: Alasdair McLellan’s New Book Is His Magnum Opus
Alasdair McLellan is the Doncaster-born photographer whose career has spanned nearly four decades, and has captured the likes of Kate Moss for AnOther and Kaia Gerber for Marc Jacobs. He is, as Ted Stansfield writes, the “premier photographer of British youth culture.” His latest book, Home and Away, shares over 500 images across two volumes, and while he captures his country’s sublime, bucolic beauty in his presentation of British culture, he also reveals a portrait of himself. “I wanted to create something that was just about me; where I came from and what my influences were,” he says. “It’s important that you draw from yourself.”
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Passages: The Story Behind the Costumes of 2023’s Most Stylish Film
Passages is Iris Sachs’ fiercely sexy and poignantly tragic film about love, lust, and desire – one that is bolstered gloriously thanks to costume designer Khadija Zeggaï. “I work with people like Ira who are auteurs; people who love cinema like they love painting or art,” Zeggaï says. “It’s the most important thing for me: to work with people who can be moved by everything.” In Madeleine Rothery’s interview with Zeggaï, the inimitable talent discusses how she developed the film’s costumes and how Passages’ visual aesthetic is profoundly connected to its identity.
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On the Joy of Creativity: Hunter Schafer and Viviane Sassen in Conversation
Model and actress Hunter Schafer has always sought to forge her own path. After signing with world-renowned Elite Models at 18, she modelled for Miu Miu, Rick Owens and Dior, before reaching global stardom as Jules Vaughn in HBO’s Euphoria – which was, incidentally, her debut acting role. For AnOther’s Autumn/Winter 2023 cover shoot, the disruptor was photographed by Viviane Sassen, the Dutch artist whose surrealist creations are lauded for their ability to balance rational vision and the otherworldly. On the eve of Sassen’s 30-year retrospective, the pair sat down to talk about the joys of creativity, the act of creation, and the ways in which both can be compromised.
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50 Questions With Caroline Calloway
“People already think there is nary but tinsel and fluff in my pretty, evil mind,” Caroline Calloway confesses in her long-awaited memoir, Scammer. A legend – in both the mythological and iconic sense – she’s someone everyone has heard of, but that very few truly know. And now, thanks to her book, us mere mortals can gain closer proximity to this shrouded figure, as she lets us in on the Calloway we don’t know – the woman whose twenties were blighted by a destructive Adderall addiction and her father’s suicide, as well as the witty 30-something who still basks in the afterglow of virality. From a balcony in Florida, exile Colloway answers AnOther’s 50 questions on everything from the biggest misconception about her to whether she believes in love at first sight.
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The Fraught Relationship Between Girlhood and Ballet Shoes
The ballet shoe, in all its baby-pink satin glory, is deeply evocative of femininity and inextricably linked to notions of girlhood. Equally true, is its ability to conjure images of pain, such is its function to allow ballerinas to perform their most damaging and superhuman of movements: pointe work. Though frail looking, it is the modality through which the most powerful moves in ballet are enacted. In this essay, Claire Marie Healy excavates the history of the iconic shoe to explore how and why they are a powerful yet pernicious symbol of the sorts of expectations placed on young girls and women.
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“I Go Very Deep”: Joanna Hogg on Her Gothic New Film, The Eternal Daughter
British director Joanna Hogg has “always [been] interested in doing something about my family, particularly the relationship between myself and my mother.” She had, in fact, written The Eternal Daughter soon after the 2007 hit Unrelated, but couldn’t bring herself to continue with the project; she simply wasn’t ready. “My mother was alive at the time and I felt like I was trespassing on her life,” she divulges. In the end, it took 15 years for the film – which is a haunting rumination about familial bonds and the intrinsic unknowability of the people closest to you – to hit UK cinemas. In speaking to Violet Conroy for AnOther, she ruminates on the making of the film and how intrinsically personal the filmmaking process is for her.
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Kehinde Wiley: “My Figures Demand to Be Taken Seriously”
“When thinking about breaking through western, romantic notions of the landscape and man’s relationship to it, I wanted to be able to draw upon non-western models of freedom of space and figuring Black bodies within that space” Kehinde Wiley, the acclaimed LA-born, New-York-based artist explains. Here, Wiley talks to Alayo Akinkugbe about Japanese Edo period landscaping and imagining a new type of freedom for Black bodies, as well as how these ideas are expressed in his latest exhibition at Roberts Projects in LA.
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