Sean O’Hagan
Sean O’Hagan writes about photography for the Guardian and the Observer, and is also a general feature writer
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In the 1970s, the photographer began teaching in a progressive US women’s prison and made moving portraits of many of the inmates. Looking back, he sees how many of them actually felt safer in prison
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The American photojournalist on his new book, which brings together the US’s foreign wars and its divisions at home, with often disturbing results
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How does it feel to risk trafficking and torture to seek a better life in a strange land? Directors including Matteo Garrone and Milad Alami are tackling one of the most pressing issues of our time
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5 out of 5 stars.
Francesca Woodman and Julia Margaret Cameron: Portraits to Dream In review – an intriguing double act
5 out of 5 stars.The Victorian portraiture pioneer and the mysterious 70s American photographer who died at 22 both surprise in a quietly subversive exploration of their contrasting processes -
The case of the English heiress who became an IRA bomber was one of the most confounding stories of the late 20th century. Now it’s dramatised in a new film
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The ornithologist’s all-consuming quest has made him an unlikely celebrity, and his passion for nature is raising awareness about the seriousness of Ireland’s ecological crisis
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A visual biography of the restless and revered Czech photographer reveals his affinity with the Roma people and his eye for haunting, unforgiving landscapes
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The director’s audacious new film about Auschwitz’s commandant was 10 years in the making. He explains how it was made – and the importance of finding light in the darkness
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Our writer pays tribute to the fiercely authentic Pogues frontman he first met selling records in the 1970s
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With cameos from William Burroughs and Iggy Pop, Sonic Life – the musician’s new autobiography – chronicles his long relationship with Kim Gordon and life at the vanguard of US indie-rock
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Now 70, the revered photographer, known for documentary projects such as Raised By Wolves, has turned the focus on himself with a photobook chronicling his own journey via birth, love, death…
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From Scorsese and Madonna to a Philip Guston retrospective, a Maria Callas tribute and Armando Iannucci’s play on Tory chaos, our writers pick the best things to see this autumn
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The musician, who died last week, captured by photographer Andrew Catlin in a series of intimate and unselfconscious images
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The Observer writer first met the young Dublin singer before fame struck. Then they started hanging out together off-duty. He recalls her as a fierce outsider and a beguiling free spirit
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Inspired by the American murder ballad the photographer captures a strangely familiar psychogeography
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If Labour wins the next election, Rayner will be the second most powerful person in the land. She talks about her ‘feral’ childhood, ‘pragmatic’ socialism, and why some Tories are scared of her
‘The surreal dislocation of the everyday’: how Japanese photographer Akihiko Okamura captured the Troubles as never before