The Easel

8th April 2025

Mahtab Hussain: What Did You Want to See?

Veronica Simpson | Studio International | 7th April 2025

British Asians in Birmingham – predominantly Muslim – have long suffered racist stereotyping. Having been criticised for being either too Asian or too British, Hussain has had to think hard about identity. A solo show features portraits of individual British Asians together with images of Birmingham’s 160 mosques. Far from confirming the usual stereotypes, it’s a study in “mind-boggling diversity”, which is Hussain’s point. Perhaps like himself, “Birmingham [has] a very messy identity. It doesn’t know who it is.”

At Yale, a David Goldblatt retrospective bears eloquent witness to apartheid-era South Africa and beyond

Mark Feeney | Boston Globe | 3rd April 2025

Goldblatt photographed apartheid-era South African society. In doing so, he “bore witness” with distinction. His interest was in the commonplace – churches, mines, people at home and in the street – where “nothing ‘happened and yet all was contained”. Combining a humanist outlook with “visual simplicity”, he articulated the moral dilemmas that attended daily life under apartheid. Goldblatt’s images, says the writer, are “eloquence of a very high order”. Gushes another, his work is “magisterial”.

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