Curating & Repair is a publication exploring contemporary curatorial practices and exhibition-making as contexts for dialogue, exchange and the remaking of social and cultural relations through repair. It seeks actionable insights into how artistic work, its mediation and the institutions that support it might be mobilised toward more sustainable and interdependent worlds.
The publication is a result of a three-year, collaborative project, Out of the Metropolis – Art Exchange Across Borders. Co-founded by Creative Europe, the project supports innovation and knowledge exchange in the co-creation and circulation of contemporary visual art, with a particular focus on photography. It explores transnational mobility, new models of international collaboration and the role of micro art institutions in Europe’s peripheries. The project includes seminars, exhibitions, international exchanges, and an open-source digital platform. Emerging as a central outcome of the project, this publication articulates curating as a practice of care, repair and institutional responsibility, foregrounding solidarity across borders as fundamental to Europe’s shared cultural future while also speaking far beyond Europe itself. The project is initiated by NŌUA (Bodø, Norway), Double Dummy (Arles, France) and The Finnish Museum of Photography (Helsinki, Finland).
Featuring Lisa Anderson, Aruna D’Souza, Taous Dahmani, Farbod Fakharzadeh, Maen Hammad, Steffi Klenz, Elisa Loncón, Francesca Marcaccio, Tanvi Mishra, Jaakko Pallasvuo, Orlan Ohtonen, Anna-Kaisa Rastenberger, Dina Salem, Sami Rintala, Michael Raymond, Batia Suter, Sergio Valenzuela-Escobedo, SMITH
Curating & Repair Lead Editor Orlan Ohtonen is a curator and writer based in Helsinki, Finland. They currently hold the position of Chief Curator of Exhibitions at the Finnish Museum of Photography, and have previously been building self-organised platforms for intersectional curatorial practices as part of the collective ‘nynnyt’ (2014-2021); as Co-Founder of feminist and anti-racist workspace Poimu (2018-2022); as Co-Founder and Co-Director of Feminist Culture House (2019-2022); and as co-organiser of trans inclusive sauna events called Sweat and Tears (2022-). Ohtonen has written about the relationship between activism and cultural politics for publications such as EDIT, Mustekala, NO NIIN, and Taide.
Curating & Repair Editor Anna-Kaisa Rastenberger is Director at the Finnish Museum of Photography, Helsinki. From 2016–22 Rastenberger worked as Professor of Exhibition Studies at the Academy of Fine Arts, the University of the Arts Helsinki, being responsible for the MA programme in Exhibition Studies. She is also Artistic Director and Co-Founder of the Festival of Political Photography. Rastenberger works at the intersections of new forms of photography as contemporary art, exhibition as critical practice and feminist curation. She has written in several publications and is Co-Editor of Why Exhibit? Positions of Exhibiting Photographies (2018) and Why Exhibit? vol. 2: On Curating Photography (2024).
Curating & Repair Editorial Manager Tim Clark is Editor in Chief at 1000 Words. Alongside the magazine, he is also Artistic Director for Fotografia Europea in Reggio Emilia, Italy, together with Walter Guadagnini, Luce Lebart and Arianna Catania. He has previously been involved in a wide range of projects including curatorial advisor for the Discovery section of Photo London 2022 and 2023 and adjunct curator on Masculinities: Liberation through Photography (2020-22) at the Barbican Centre London, an exhibition which travelled to Gropius-Bau, Berlin, Les Rencontres d’Arles and FOMU Antwerp.
The Out of the Metropolis team
Marianne Bjørnmyr, Project Leader and Dan Mariner, Head of Exhibitions / NŌUA, Bodø, Norway; Mathieu Asselin and Sergio Valenzuela-Escobedo, Heads of Seminars / Double Dummy, Arles, France; Orlan Ohtonen, Head and Editor of Publication, Anna-Kaisa Rastenberger, Editor of Publication, and Tiina Rauhala, Helsinki team / The Finnish Museum of Photography, Helsinki, Finland.
1000 Words
1000 Words is an online magazine and publishing platform dedicated to contemporary photography. It commissions exhibition and photobook reviews, essays and interviews in response to the visual culture of our present moment. Founded by Tim Clark in 2008, the editorial commitment has always been to explore the possibilities for the medium whilst stimulating debate around current practices, curation, discourses, and theory internationally. Operating out of London, but with a global perspective, the magazine has built a substantial archive of knowledge from culturally diverse worlds of photography.
It was described by Gerry Badger in Another Country: British Documentary Photography Since 1945 (Thames & Hudson, 2022) as ‘a successor to Creative Camera’ and noted as ‘standing out for the quality of its writing’ in the Guardian.
Nominated as Photography Magazine of the Year (2014 and 2016) and Photo Content of the Year (2023) at the Lucie Awards, 1000 Words was also named as Photography Magazine of the Year at the Media Innovator Awards 2023. The 10-year anniversary print edition was released in 2018 followed by a series of paperback editions, including Curator Conversations (2021), Writer Conversations (2023) and Photobook Conversations (2025).