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March/April 2023

How can photography foster a response to the socio-economic challenges we are living through today – at home, and globally? The photographers featured in this Money + Power issue show the myriad ways in which the medium can comment, criticise, and engage with how wealth and influence shape the world we live in.

Craig Easton’s Thatcher’s Children illustrates the insidious cycle of intergenerational poverty, photographing two generations of one family in the north of England. “Photography can’t change the world,” says Easton, “but it can change opinions”. Mathieu Asselin also prefers a direct approach. Known for investigating the conflict between capitalism and the environment, he shares a new body of work, True Colours, exposing the violent relationship between car manufacturers and the natural landscape.

Our cover photograph is by Ezio D’Agostino, who combines the clinical with the conceptual to visualise the lofty ambitions of nuclear fusion technology. Elsewhere, Aline Deschamps’ employs a slow and nuanced approach to storytelling, following the life of Lucy Turay, a Sierra Leonean woman who escaped kafala: an abusive labour system that exploits migrants in the Gulf states.

Looking within photography, in our Intelligence section Rachel Segal Hamilton asks whether participants in socially engaged photography projects should be paid. Plus, we are in the studio with Trevor Paglen in Berlin, and our Any Answers is the current president of Magnum, Cristina de Middel.