July 8 & 15, 2024 Issue

I’ve long been a fan of Vince Aletti’s photography writing. I can trace the beginning back to a “Critic’s Notebook” piece on Walker Evans that he did for the July 29, 2013 New Yorker. He was a regular contributor to the old “Goings On About Town.” When that section was downsized last year, I wondered if I’d ever see him again in the print version of the magazine. But here he is, in this week’s issue, with a wonderful review of Lyle Ashton Harris’s current exhibition at the Queens Museum, “Our First and Last Love.” It contains this alluring description of Harris’s installation piece “Untitled (Cape Coast)”:

I took refuge in the exhibition’s last room, where another video, a 2008 installation piece, “Untitled (Cape Coast),” made in Ghana, was projected on large, loose panels of silk organza that emphasized the work’s breezy sensuality. The images on display pick up on that mood. Over an establishing shot of surf surging up a wide, busy beach, Harris layers swaying palm fronds, rustling trees, and handsome young men skating, lounging, and running toward us. A sequence shot from a car puts us in the position of a tourist, but there’s something at once casual and alert here that makes it feel far from a hit-and-run. “Cape Coast” is a pleasure cruise and a love letter—a sweet way to close a show as tender and touching as it is raspingly raw.

That last line is superb. More Aletti, please.