COVER STORIES
Latest on ZERO.NINE
Low and High
With a sharp eye for atmosphere and emotion, photographer Burak Yaşar turns his lens toward the hidden world of nightlife. His work captures not only the surface energy of music and movement, but also the fleeting, vulnerable moments that emerge in the shadows.
(Some)bodies and (Some)things
Berlin-based mixed media collage artist Rita Evs explores fragility, trauma, and the notion of “home” within a multicultural context. Her work transforms everyday elements into unfamiliar forms, prompting viewers to look anew at what they think they know.
Fighting for Identity
This shoot, Fighting for Identity, draws a parallel between the boxing ring and the everyday battles of living authentically as a transgender woman. The gloves and gear embody societal pressures, while the model’s presence radiates resilience, vulnerability, and defiance. Juxtaposing strength with femininity, the images challenge outdated notions of gender. It’s a story of exhaustion, courage, and ultimate triumph—the universal fight for respect, dignity, and freedom.
Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mer
Photographer Michéa Nathan captures the soul of Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mer during its annual pilgrimage. Each May, this small Mediterranean village becomes a meeting point for faith and tradition, as thousands gather to honor Saint Sarah the Black in a celebration that unites communities through music, devotion, and shared heritage.
The Body Is Not A Thing
Through intimate portraits of actors, dancers, sex workers, and mothers, the work navigates the raw and often uncomfortable space where desire and maternal identity intersect. “The Body Is Not A Thing” is a photographic exploration of the tensions between autonomy, sexuality, and motherhood. Conceived during lockdown and shaped by a political landscape increasingly hostile to women's rights, the project interrogates how women are viewed and how they view themselves in a culture saturated with the male gaze.
Paw Paradox
Paw Paradox is a thought-provoking project by German photographer Caroline Heinecke that explores the surreal history of animal trials. By blending AI-generated imagery with documentary photography, Heinecke investigates the shifting boundaries of legal rights, ownership and agency between species.
Days on the Way
Shot entirely on an iPhone inside the women-only carriages of the Tehran–Karaj metro line, Days on the Way is Parastoo Ghahremanifard’s raw and poetic study of in-between moments. What begins as a daily commute unfolds into a meditation on silence, repetition, and quiet defiance. Parastoo documents a suspended reality where exhaustion is etched into faces. In this overlooked public space, the everyday becomes a stage for both weariness and resilience.
ENNUI
With ENNUI, Giuliana Borrelli reflects on the quiet weight of disconnection and the search for self within the spaces we call home. Moving between her childhood home in Italy and her current life in Norway, the project traces a deeply personal journey — one marked by silence, longing, and the slow, transformative act of reclaiming identity.
Ash Lambe: Down the Rabbit Hole
For Ash Lambe, the blues isn’t nostalgia, it’s a living language. Fronting the 32-20’s, his sound is raw, reverent, and defiantly alive. In this interview, he talks tone, truth, and wild nights, including Bill Murray, and makes a compelling case for why the blues still matters now.
Soumoud In Dark Times
In Soumoud In Dark Times, Palestinian artist Rehab Nazzal documents life under siege in the West Bank during Israel’s intensified occupation from October 2023 to November 2024. Through 41 poignant images, she captures devastation, resilience, and the visual truth of a people resisting erasure during what many have called a live-streamed genocide.
Bravo
In Bravo, artist Felipe Romero Beltrán crafts a quiet yet powerful meditation on migration, identity, and resilience along the US–Mexico border. Set within the charged landscape of the Rio Bravo, his work captures the tension of waiting, where absence speaks as loudly as presence and time itself becomes a suspended, fragile state.
You Never Walk Alone
You Never Walk Alone, a photo series by Katya Ilina, offers an intimate portrait of London’s K-pop fandom. With warmth and clarity, Ilina captures a vibrant subculture where predominantly female and queer fans reclaim space, challenge gendered biases, and transform shared passion into a powerful expression of identity and joy.
Alana S. Portero: Bad Habit and Beyond
Alana S. Portero’s transgender coming-of-age novel Bad Habit recently celebrated its second anniversary. Praised by director Pedro Almodóvar and recently featured on Dua Lipa’s ‘Service95’ book club, Portero’s book speaks to a vulnerable life lived at a dangerous time. Bad Habit follows the narrator’s life in 1980s post-Franco Spain and the influential people in her life, almost all marred as abject in some way or another.
Chrysalis
Chrysalis is a visual series by Georgiana Feidi, a Cluj-Napoca–based artist whose work bridges digital and analogue techniques. Exploring Earth as a living organism in transformation, Feidi blends surreal imagery, post-processing and ethereal tones to reflect on nature’s cycles, human interconnectedness, and the quiet power of planetary renewal.
The eerie Queerness of Jenkin van Zyl
In Lost Property (2025) video artist Jenkin van Zyl invites viewers into a looping bureaucratic dreamscape where the lost isn’t luggage—it’s selfhood. In our exclusive interview, we delve into the making of Lost Property, the queerness of cannibalism, the politics of overconsumption and how dressing up becomes a form of resistance to our bleak times.
In case you missed it
ICONS – Irving Penn: Still Life and its Pleasures
Penn’s Still Life work, one subsection of an eminent career in photography and the arts, speaks to the power of a genre rarely viewed as gripping. A staple of the arts world for generations, and the throughline through all of Penn’s work, Still Life will always endure. How might Penn’s work allow us to see it for what it is?
Jeanie Crystal: Blood, Sweat, Possession
With raw blues, punk fury, and unapologetic truth, Jeanie’s shows blur the line between ritual and rebellion. As her band Jeanie and The White Boys rise, she talks to us about power, pain, identity, and the beautiful chaos that fuels it all.
Lipsticks
Objects hold stories. Not just in their use, but in their wear, their shape, and the silence they witness. In the intimate space where beauty meets routine, something deeper is revealed. This project by Stacy Greene began with a glance, but quickly unfolded into a quiet investigation of identity, memory, and form.