Frieze #252 Jun./Jul./Aug. 2025

‘Ambiguity is, in many ways, art’s most subversive if overlooked quality’ David Campany

 The summer issue of frieze magazine is dedicated to the artists and writers working and living across the Mediterranean. David Campany contributes an essay on the historical and contemporary photographic representations of the region. Plus, Taous Dahmani, Oriane Durand, Cristina Sanchez-Kozyreva and Wilson Tarbox each share a personal postcard from Marseille

Thematic Essay: Mythic Shores

‘It’s the way a sea connects disparate places that gives it an unstable and disruptive power. It can sweep you away.’ David Campany writes an insightful essay on the Mediterranean’s conflicted iconography and how it reflects 21st-century values through a selection of striking photographs.

Dossier: C’est Marseille, bébé

‘Marseille itself feels like a city of fugitive trajectories – a port of arrival and escape, where layered histories, migrations and reinventions convene.’ Four curators and writers pen love letters to Marseille, celebrating the cultural and political spirit of France’s second city.