Speaking to Dazed on the occasion of her debut solo show back in June, photographer Sirui Ma relayed the guiding principles of her work: “Looking at the world with love,” she explained. “In every image, there is a bit of me, a bit of how I see and care for the world around me.” These sentiments – and indeed, the tenderness exercised in the show’s moniker, Little Things Mean a Lot – reverberate in the practices of the photographers highlighted below, many of whom approach their work with a sense of connection that distinguishes it from other forms of photography. Focused on community, friendship and family – diverse but specific bonds that generally manifest with care – their bodies of work are largely removed from more traditional documentary styles for example, swapping out the ‘grab and go’ attitude for something typically built on unity and understanding. 

This consciousness feels especially pronounced in a year when the political landscape has so often turned arduous, even vicious. From Alessandra Sanguinetti’s reflection on her long-term project with cousins in Buenos Aires, to Emily Dodd-Noble’s portraits of Berlin’s queer communities; Angela Cappetta’s series following a youngest daughter on the Lower East Side, to the Bengali Photo Archive’s group show at Four Corners, these photographers have responded to the moment by also ‘looking a the world with love’ – which is to say nothing of print sales such as Watermelon Editions, for which acclaimed image-makers like Gabriel Moses, Maripol and Carlijn Jacobs have donated pictures to support charities working in Palestine.

Below, we’ve gathered ten photo galleries that appeared on Dazed in 2024, each built around a sense of community, friendship and family. 

SIRUI MA, LITTLE THINGS MEAN A LOT

A keen sense of community is at the core of most things Sirui Ma does – from her recent ‘visual ode to New York City’s MTA subway conductors’, the book Subway Portraits, to 2018’s zine of iPhone pics, capturing the street style of Chinatown’s elderly population (republished in 2021 to raise funds for the non-profit Asian Americans Advancing Justice) – born in Beijing and brought up in Queens, the photographer’s approach is one dictated by warmth and curiosity. With her summer show Little Things Mean a Lot, shot around in and around her current London neighourhood, Ma married her love of nature with a portrait series foregrounding other young women from the east Asian diaspora, with whom she’d developed a kinship since moving to the UK.

ALESSANDRA SANGUINETTI, THE ADVENTURES OF GUILLE AND BELINDA

Magnum’s Alessandra Sanguinetti has been photographing cousins Guillermina Aranciaga and Belinda Stutz for more than two decades, producing the books The Adventures of Guille and Belinda and The Enigmatic Meaning of Their Dreams in 2003, and more recently, The Adventures of Guille and Belinda and the Illusion of an Everlasting Summer (published by MACK in 2020), establishing, along the way, a unique, familial-coded relationship that has afforded her stunning intimacy with the pair’s lives. “Belinda doesn’t have Instagram and she’s not interested at all but Guille loves the attention,” the photographer shared with Dazed earlier this year, as a collection of the images went on display in Paris where, she added, “They were amused that people were so interested in them.”

Read the full story here on Dazed.

JULIAN SLAGMAN, LOOKING AT MY BROTHER

“I have this idea that somehow they founded this idea of a relation between love and seeing,” German-Dutch photographer Julian Slagman told Dazed in May, recalling his grandparents’ relationship (also photographers, they would often stage pictures of one another). “The camera became a bit like a member of the family.” In his own practice, Slagman has been drawn to his younger brothers Mats and Jonah, shooting the duo over a decade for what would eventually become Looking at My Brother. In the book we’re given access to private moments, such as Mats’ surgery for scoliosis, while Slagman’s survey of these figures and their relationships in many ways mirrors his own exploration of the camera. 

Read the full story here on Dazed.

HAMZA ASHRAF, WE’RE JUST TRYING TO LEARN HOW TO LOVE

The Polaroid, with its sense of immediacy and independent attributes, is perhaps one of the best tools for capturing intimacy – unsurprisingly then, pictures with the tell-tale white borders make a cameo in Hamza Ashraf’s We’re Just Trying to Learn How to Love, a multidisciplinary project published in zine form earlier this year (poetry and hand written notes also feature). Hoping to replicate their uncle’s vast family archive, Ashraf spent three years documenting their journey of first loves and self-discovery for the work, following their arrival in Leeds for study, at age 19.

Read the full story here on Dazed.

ANGELA CAPPETTA, GLENDALIS

For her decade-long project making Glendalis: The Life and World of a Youngest Daughter (published by L’Artiere) – the title of her recent photobook, but also the name and circumstances of her protagonist – Angela Cappetta leaned into her own experiences of growing up the youngest child in a large multi-generational family. “[You can] get away with murder, but you’re also under a microscope,” she told Dazed as the book was released in September. Taking in proms, birthdays, quinceaneras and quieter moments in the Puerto Rican teenager’s life, throughout the 90s Cappetta immersed herself in the rituals and family dynamics that show, she suggests, “how a person evolves in ways that are visible and invisible.”

Read the full story here on Dazed.

EMILY DODD-NOBLE, DANCING OFF BEAT

The dancefloor has long played a significant role in bringing people together – operating variously as a designated safe space and an arena in which to become fully immersed in the magic of a single moment – and while her subjects are largely pictured away from the floor, Emily Dodd-Noble’s photo series Dancing Off Beat owes much to Berlin’s queer nightlife. Borrowing the terminology of the club, the photographer likens a good portrait to a fine tuning of frequencies. “It’s about creating a common space between you where nothing else really matters,” she told Dazed in May, referencing the characteristics of her practice. 

Read the full story here on Dazed.

MOTOYUKI DAIFU, MY FAMILY IS A PUBIS SO I COVER THEM IN PANTIES

Just as intimate spaces can look like many different things, the family album is open to interpretation. In Motoyuki Daifu’s photo book My Family is a Pubis So I Cover Them in Pretty Panties (published by Little Big Man) both arenas are explored, with the Japanese photographer recording his parents, four siblings and cat at home in the suburbs of Yokohama in a project he initiated at age 19. “Our relationships weren’t so good, and it was only when I started taking pictures of them that I took a step back to observe the ecology of my family,” he explained to Dazed in June. 

Read the full story here on Dazed.

I AM WHO I AM NOW, THE BENGALI PHOTO ARCHIVE

Since 1973, Four Corners gallery in London’s Bethnal Green – an area with a long-established Bangladeshi community – has been hosting exhibitions and workshops with a mission to broaden the range of voices within the medium. With I Am Who I Am Now: Selections from the Bengali Photo Archive, the gallery showcased more than 50 years of archival pictures made in the East End, capturing moments of leisure, celebration and protest. “There’s a greater sense of familiarity and ease in how the camera and the lens are employed by the photographers displayed in the show,” noted co-curator Julian Ehsan, alluding to the focus on vernacular photography, and subsequent invitation into people homes, “which allows us to gain intimate visions of life in the East End that others can fail to capture as easily.”

Read the full story here on Dazed.

DEAN DAVIES AND JAMES PEROLLS, LOST AND FOUND

The photo series-as-love letter is a rich concept that most frequently underscores a fondness for a particular area, era or community. In the case of Dean Davies and James Perolls, Lost and Found reclaims the former’s memories of growing up in Merseyside, and the women and fashions he found himself around in the early 00s. “We wanted to show togetherness within friendship but also moments of friction and indifference at this formative moment of adolescence,” Perolls noted in February, recalling the project’s genesis.

Read the full story here on Dazed.

LOST BOIS, DEVYN GALINDO

Premiered at Tribeca Film Festival in June, Devyn Galindo’s Lost Bois is part memoir and part creative nonfiction, and follows three transmasculine friends – Samp, Gant and Tyler – in a tale of contemporary brotherhood. A reference to the 1987 picture Lost Boys, the short film’s moniker furthermore underscores the moments of directionless that each guy experiences, navigating desire and acceptance in New York, as, over a period of 24 hours, they share their thoughts on Grindr, hormone shots, and The Cure. “To witness their connection was an honour and inspired possibility for me,” Galindo explained in July. “As queer people, we create these little bubbles, and that’s where we’re able to thrive and grow.”

Read the full story here on Dazed.