The Atlantic

Steve McQueen's Unblinking Look at Life and Afterlife

The <em>12 Years a Slave</em> director’s video installation <em>Ashes</em> highlights that death is narrative but existence is not.
Source: Rebecca Fanuele

The miracle of filmmaker Steve McQueen’s work is the miracle of not blinking. For 2008’s , he recorded a 17-minute uninterrupted shot of a tormented political dissident in Northern Ireland; for 2011’shis camera stayed with a sex addict through every excruciating pause in conversation on a first date; for 2013’s cinematic landmark he depicted the abuse of black men and women in bondage so exhaustively that it dared the audience to turn away. Even his simply trained its eye on the rapper for nearly

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