Micamera

On Thursday, June 18 at 6.30 PM Matthew Connors will be at Micamera to launch 'The Axe Will Survive the Master' (MACK / SPBH, 2026). ✍️📖

On his own website, the author writes: Matthew Connors is an artist whose commitment to the medium of photography has been propelled by the revelatory potential of the public sphere. Rooted in specific currents of history, his bodies of work create a new visual encyclopedia of forms, portraits, symbols, and residues that emerge from protest movements, war, and oppressive systems of governance. His lyrical yet methodical approach resonates with political documentary and street photography, but continually challenges and transforms these categories.

The title of his new book doesn’t exactly inspire much hope: “The Axe Will Survive the Master” is a quote from “Secondhand Time” by the Belarusian-Ukrainian writer (and Nobel laureate) Svetlana Alexievich, published in 2013, the same year the images in Connors’s book begin.

The publisher writes:
“Bringing together photographs made between 2013 and 2025, this volume concludes a trilogy – following General Assembly (2013) and Fire in Cairo (2015) – meditating on power, resistance, and the fragile fate of democratic ideals. His images move between the geopolitical and the intimate, drawn as much from the fabric of daily life as from the front lines of history. They depict a world defined by conflict and uncertainty, yet charged with beauty, threat, and consequence.”

In 1904, in a letter to his friend Oskar Pollak, Kafka wrote: “A book must be an axe for the frozen sea within us.”

With this hope and an unshakable faith in the power of books, we look forward to seeing you on Thursday, June 18, at 6.30 PM at Micamera.

Admission is free. 🌆👥

Matthew Connors MACK Self Publish, Be Happy

PHOTOBOOK OF THE DAY 📚

Stray Sod – Maria Lax (Signed Copy)
Setanta, 2026

'Stray Sod' investigates the phenomenon of the same name in Irish folklore: enchanted patches of earth that will lead astray whoever steps on them. Inspired by first-hand accounts found in the Irish National Archives, Maria Lax reimagines rural Irish landscapes through this otherworldly lens.

The stories therein describe instances in which individuals are forced to navigate a world characterised by sudden shifts into unfamiliarity and strangeness. A world in which established reference points distort and slip away, causing great distress to those experiencing it. Stray Sod draws timely parallels between these stories and the destabilizing effects of the fast-changing political and technological environment of today.

Buy the book on micamera.com or at the store in Milan 🌆

RARE BOOK 📚✨

Pearl – Tiago Casanova (Signed Copy)
XYZ Books, 2014

Throughout the centuries, the concept of Landscape has been transformed by distinct interpretations that the artists of each age have instilled in their works of art. In Antiquity and until the 15th century, we can find, most of all, the landscape as an element of the Historic Painting, which sought after the ideal of “Natural Beauty”. With the scientific achievements of the Modern Age, our knowledge of Nature and of its phenomena — and its “objectivization” — made it possible for landscape to establish itself as an autonomous artistic genre, yet still very classic and naturalistic. Throughout the following centuries, and until the early 20th century, landscape painting was approached by great masters like John Constable, J.M.W. Turner, and Jean-Claude Monet, one of the icons of Impressionism. During this period, as a consequence of the industrialization and urbanization of the modern world, artists developed a different sensibility and awareness of what “landscape” was. We keep finding, in modern and contemporary art, the presence of Landscape as a genre, influenced by other social and geographic events. After all, it has always been there and it is what the Earth has the most...

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