Olivia Laing

  • Brush Fires in the Social Landscape

    ALMOST TWENTY YEARS after his death, David Wojnarowicz returned to public view. His renaissance began in 2010, with the uproar that followed the Smithsonian’s banning of his film Fire in My Belly, and continued in 2012, with the publication of Cynthia Carr’s remarkable biography. Now, Aperture’s twentieth-anniversary, expanded edition of Brush Fires shines a welcome light back on Wojnarowicz’s work itself, providing a compelling history of his photographic practice. An artist, writer, and AIDS activist, Wojnarowicz (1954-1992) was also a dazzlingly inventive photographer. In fact, photography