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The Guardian - Back to homeThe Guardian

Sean O’Hagan

Sean O’Hagan writes about photography for the Guardian and the Observer, and is also a general feature writer

July 2024

  • Dancers leaping in wild shapes

    ‘My flash kept blinding everyone on the dancefloor’: Elaine Constantine on capturing 90s northern soul all-nighters

    The UK photographer took these powerful shots of northern soul nights 30 years ago. Now collected in a new book and exhibition, they offer an intimate glimpse of a peculiarly British subculture

June 2024

  • Black and white portrait of John Cale.

    ‘Hip-hop is the new avant garde’: John Cale on Lou Reed, anger and continual reinvention

  • Bob Dylan playing chess with his tour manager, Victor Maymudes, at Bernard's Cafe Espresso in Woodstock, 1964.

    Daniel Kramer obituary

May 2024

  • Alvaro Barrington photographed in his east London studio by Suki Dhanda for the Observer New Review.

    ‘Biggie, Tupac, Ghostface – those guys saved my life’: Alvaro Barrington on hip-hop, carnival and his Tate show

  • Prisoner Polaroids all untitled / no captions. These are Sean's favourites / 5 are exclusive

    ‘My role was to be a truthful witness’: photographer Jack Lueders-Booth’s Polaroids of American female prisoners

April 2024

  • birds on a telegraph wire in Three images by Diana Matar of locations where people have died in encounters with police - one in Texas and two in New Mexico

    ‘These people matter’: why Diana Matar photographs the sites where US police have killed civilians

  • Street Street memorial on Lecky Road, Derry, 1971. All images © estate of Akihiko Okamura

    ‘The surreal dislocation of the everyday’: how Japanese photographer Akihiko Okamura captured the Troubles as never before

March 2024

  • An armed soldier sits next to a TV. Rawa, Iraq, 2006

    ‘I was always an uncertain and confused observer’: war photographer Peter van Agtmael on decades on the frontline

  • A line of people walking across sand dunes

    ‘I wanted to humanise those lost in the statistics’: four directors on their new movies depicting refugee journeys

  • Francesca Woodman, Self Portrait at 13, 1972.

    Francesca Woodman and Julia Margaret Cameron: Portraits to Dream In review – an intriguing double act

  • Rose Dugdale, Dublin, 1974.

    The enigma of Rose Dugdale: what drove a former debutante to become Britain and Ireland’s most wanted terrorist?

February 2024

  • Seán Ronayne with his recording gear in a woodland in Cork, Ireland

    ‘Total immersive obsession’: meet the man on a mission to record every bird in Ireland

    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
  • Wim Wenders photographed in his Berlin office by Malte Jaeger for the Observer New Review, November 2023

    ‘All my films deal with how to live’: Wim Wenders on Herzog, spirituality and shooting a movie in 16 days

    The veteran auteur on how film-making has shaped him, the brutal lesson he learned from teacher Werner Herzog, and why his Oscar-nominated Perfect Days will make you yearn for a simpler life
  • Self-portrait with [his sister and first model] Deborah, 1940s.Self-portrait with Deborah, 1940s

    ‘An enigma, an artist who walked to his own beat’: the everyday sublime of photographer Saul Leiter

    The late American photographer, who quietly captured small, luminous details of life on the streets of New York, is celebrated in the biggest UK show of his work

January 2024

  • 1. Josef Koudelka, Romania, 1968; from Josef Koudelka: Next (Aperture, 2023). Romania (Gypsy with Horse), 1968.

    Book of the day
    Josef Koudelka: Next by Melissa Harris review – in praise of a wandering star

    A visual biography of the restless and revered Czech photographer reveals his affinity with the Roma people and his eye for haunting, unforgiving landscapes

December 2023

  • Jonathan Glazer, film director

    Jonathan Glazer on his Holocaust film The Zone of Interest: ‘This is not about the past, it’s about now’

  • (Left to right) Mark E Smith, Sean O'Hagan, Nick Cave and Shane MacGowan photographed at the Montague Arms in New Cross, south London, on 12 January 1989 by Bleddyn Butcher

    ‘Chaos? This is natural living!’ The genius of Shane MacGowan

    Sean O’Hagan

October 2023

  • Thurston Moore photographed in London, September 2023, by Phil Fisk for the Observer New Review.

    ‘The band, the scene… I put it all in there’: Sonic Youth’s Thurston Moore on his memoir of a rock’n’roll life

  • A collage of family snapshots

    ‘I am the witness and the subject’: Magnum photographer Jim Goldberg on telling his own story

August 2023

  • Clockwise from top left: Napoleon, Black Sabbath: The Ballet, Free Your Mind, Olivia Rodrigo and Timothée Chalamet in Wonka.

    30 autumn arts highlights, chosen by Observer critics

    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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