To capture tomorrow, you seize the present: On Der Greif Issue 18, guest-edited by Hank Willis Thomas

Der Greif Issue 18 explores the sustainment of proactivity today as we navigate the fear urgency of the now

“Tomorrow Is Today” – the phrase reads like a declaration, a stark acknowledgment of the state of things we are all witnessing in our present moment. Shakespeare, in Macbeth, lamented how “tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow creeps in this petty pace from day to day, to the last syllable of recorded time.” Yet here, “tomorrow” is not a slow creep but a proposition – a call for immediate repair in a world where the future is already upon us. This urgency prompts the question: how does one sustain such proactivity in their practice? Der Greif Issue 18, guest-edited by conceptual artist Hank Willis Thomas and supported by Alexander Tutsek-Stiftung, addresses this very tension between urgency and endurance, between the impulse to act now and the necessity of reflection. Drawing from Thomas’s long-standing engagement with collective memory, public monuments, and the visual language of resistance, Issue 18 becomes a site to confront how images can serve as both witnesses and agents of change.

Thomas’s name carries a particular weight in contemporary art, evoking both reverence and reflection. His work has become synonymous with probing the visual codes through which identity, history, and power are constructed and consumed. Thomas first rose to prominence with his "Branded" series (2003–2008), in which he appropriated the seductive language of advertising to reveal how images shape notions of belonging, value, and visibility. This was followed by "Unbranded: Reflections in Black by Corporate America" (2005–2015) and "Unbranded: A Century of White Women, 1915–2015," where he removed text and logos from decades of advertisements to expose the subtle narratives underpinning cultural ideals.

Over time, Thomas’s practice has expanded into the public realm, most notably with "The Embrace" (2023), the monumental bronze sculpture on Boston Common honoring Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Coretta Scott King – a work that reimagines monuments as vessels of intimacy and collective memory. Ever moving between critique and care, his work leaves an open question in its wake: How do the images that surround us define the freedoms we imagine?

Der Greif Founder and Artistic Co-Director Simon Lovermann got his way into Thomas and his work through “For Freedoms,” the artist-led organization that centers art as a catalyst for creative civic engagement that has been founded in 2016 by himself and a coalition of artists, academics and organizers, including Eric Gottesman, Michelle Woo, and Wyatt Gallery. Ahead of the 2016 U.S. elections, “For Freedoms “set out to explore how artists could be placed at the center of public discourse – expanding ideas of democratic participation and sparking broader conversations about the role of art in local, national, and global politics. What began as a single campaign has since evolved into a sustained movement. The organization has produced artworks and coordinated nationwide initiatives aligned with major election cycles: in 2018, it launched the “50 State Initiative,” described by TIME as the “largest creative collaboration in United States history,” and in 2020, it introduced the 2020 “Awakening,” engaging artists, museums, schools, corporations, and civic organizations across all 50 states, as well as Puerto Rico, Washington D.C., Guam, and the U.S. Virgin Islands. Today, “For Freedoms” stands as the largest community for creative civic engagement in the United States.

“The oceans of history are made turbulent by the ever-rising tides of hate. History is cluttered with the wreckage of nations and individuals who pursued this self-defeating path of hate. [...] We are now faced with the fact that tomorrow is today. We are confronted with the fierce urgency of now. In this unfolding conundrum of life and history there is such a thing as being too late,” as Martin Luther King Jr. urged – and as Thomas emphasized in his call for Der Greif 18, searching for single photographs seizing the present while imagining tomorrow.

Thomas’ selection delves into an expression of forces shaping today's global narrative. The pages of Der Greif Issue 18 juxtapose images of tenderness, longing, care at times of violent images circulating, flooding and flattening, in a world in a state of perpetual turbulence. Across these single images and pairings, the photographic tool functions as evidence and representation, less to witness speculations on the now than to be direct documents of contemporary upheavals and quiet statements through approaches that range from documentary to conceptual, or process-based through the re-reading of archives. A similar interiority surfaces from the images, which collectively state the need for reimagining repair not as a singular act, but as a sustained practice of care, collaboration, and creative persistence.

Der Greif Issue 18 will launch on November 13, 2025, at the Paris Photo Media Lounge. Join the Der Greif team from 5:00 pm to 7:30 pm for an evening celebrating conversation, connection, and the community spirit that defines Der Greif.