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THE STORY OF SWIMMING
SUSIE PARR In recent years, ‘wild swimming’ – a movement that has inspired people to plunge into river, lake and sea in search of natural or challenging swimming experiences – has become extremely popular in Britain. But this phenomenon is only the latest episode in a long, fascinating and hitherto untold story. Passionate outdoor swimmer Susie Parr sets out to trace the social history of British swimming, from the earliest references in Roman and Anglo Saxon literature to the decline of British seaside resorts and traditional bathing clubs in the late 20th century. The Story of Swimming reveals discoveries in medieval and Elizabethan literature and tells how medicinal sea-bathing flourished in the 18th century, leading to the rise of elegant watering places such as Scarborough. The book examines the role of bathing in the Romantic Movement and in the works of a line of literary swimmers from Wordsworth to Iris Murdoch. It explores the political aspects of swimming too: when the masses descended on Victorian seaside resorts, class-based conflicts – centred on bathing – were played out on the beaches of Britain. Over the centuries, swimming has even reflected changing perceptions of the role of women. Each phase of this extraordinary story is captured in different swimming experiences across the British Isles, from Orkney to Tenby. Comprehensive and lavishly illustrated with woodcuts, engravings, cartoons, paintings and photographs (some by acclaimed photographer, Martin Parr), The Story of Swimming is a must for everyone who enjoys bathing out of doors. |
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A NEW KIND OF BEAUTY
Photographs PHILLIP TOLEDANO Afterword by W.M. HUNT Phillip Toledano believes that we are at the vanguard of a period of human-induced evolution. A turning point in history where we are beginning to define not only our own concept of beauty, but of physicality itself. Beauty has always been a currency, and now that we finally have the technological means to mint our own, what choices do we make? Is beauty informed by contemporary culture? By history? Or is it defined by the surgeon's hand? When we re-make ourselves, are we revealing our true character, or are we stripping away our very identity? Phillip Toledano was born in 1968, in London to a French Moroccan mother, and an American father. His work is primarily socio-political, and varies in medium, from photography to installation. His installation project, 'America, the gift shop', was shown at the Center for Photography at Woodstock. The premise: If George Bush's foreign policy had a souvenir shop, what would it sell? Toledano has published three previous books: Bankrupt (Photographs of recently vacated offices) published by Twin Palms in 2005, Phonesex (Twin Palms, 2008), and Days With My Father (Chronicle, 2010). His work has appeared in Vanity Fair, The New York Times Magazine, The New Yorker, Harpers, Esquire, GQ, Wallpaper, The London Times, The Independent Magazine, Le Monde, and Interview magazine, amongst others. W.M.Hunt is a photography collector, curator and consultant who lives and works in New York. Founding partner of the prominent photography gallery Hasted Hunt (now Hasted Kraeutler) in Chelsea, Manhattan, and former director of photography at Ricco/Maresca gallery, Hunt has been collecting photography for over 35 years. His recent book The Unseen Eye (Aperture, Thames & Hudson, Actes Sud) focuses on Collection Dancing Bear, currently his largest collection of photographs. |
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Published November 2011 |
SAVOY | THE RESTORATION
Photographs SIOBHAN DORAN Siobhan Doran has photographed the ambitious restoration of The Savoy, the world-renowned hotel on London’s Embankment. Built by impresario Richard D’Oyly Carte with profits from his Gilbert and Sullivan operas, the hotel opened on 6 August 1889. It enjoyed a resurgence of fame during the 1920s with both major art deco redecoration, and guests as varied as Noel Coward, Igor Stravinsky, Josephine Baker and George Gershwin. The book traces the work through four periods of the restoration project. It opens with the process of stripping out, which in many instances exposed original detail. The two following sections follow the painstaking structural restoration and its progression into the new designs. The final section covers the finishing touches of decoration and furnishing. As the project developed Siobhan Doran became captivated by the hotel’s fifth-floor River Suites with their varied views across the Thames. Revisiting these rooms many times in the course of more than 100 visits to the hotel, she developed the concept of returning and remaking images, which she then expanded to embrace to other areas in the building. This approach also unconsciously reflects the many views and insights that the now-reopened hotel’s customers observe daily – depending on the season in which they visit, the length of their stay, the areas that they frequent and whether it is their first visit or one of many. Born in Ireland, Siobhan Doran initially trained in architectural technology, and worked in building design for over ten years combining this with her photographic work. In 2003 she began a degree in photography at the University of Westminster where she graduated in 2006. Since 2007, she has focused exclusively on photographic projects working primarily with the design community, photographing interiors and exteriors of recently completed buildings as well as creating commissioned artwork. |
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PALOMA AL AIRE
RICARDO CASES Ricardo Cases’ third photobook deals with an unusual subject: a unique form of pigeon racing which is practised in the Spanish regions of Valencia and Murcia. The sport consists of releasing one female pigeon and dozens of males. Painted in combinations of primary colours, reminiscent of flags or football kits, these pigeons chase the female to get her attention. None ever manage to get too intimate, and consequently the winner is the one that spends the most time close to her. The winner is not necessarily the most athletic, the toughest or the purest in breed but the most courteous, the one that shows most constancy and has the strongest reproductive instinct. This is the one that is seen as the true embodiment of ‘macho’. The pigeon handler invests time, money and hope in his young pigeons. He raises them, gives them names, trains them and has faith in them. When competition day arrives he is full of childlike illusion and uncertainty. Known as colombiculture, it is a sport with rules and referees. The price for young pigeons can reach thousands of euros and betting involves large amounts of money. The male pigeon becomes almost a projection of the pigeon-keeper himself, who embodies its sporting, economic and sexual success or failure in the community. Raising a male champion can bring both prestige and profit. Far from the harsh reality of his daily life, the colombaire has a second life where all is possible – he can reach the top. He just needs a champion pigeon. In Paloma al Aire, Ricardo Cases explores the sport as a symbolic act, a projection and a way of relating to the world. It is an ethnographic documentation as groups of men run through the countryside behind their male pigeons, observing their mating performances, discussing the rules and the decisions. It could almost be a study of the rituals of a remote tribe or of a group of children who, in the process of discovering the world, invent a new game. Ricardo Cases was born in Orihuela, Spain, in 1971. He originally studied journalism at the University of The Basque Country. He has exhibited widely throughout Spain as well as in China, Poland and Peru, and has won several awards. He now lives and works in Madrid and is represented by La Fresh Gallery, Madrid. |
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JOHN BLAKEMORE
PHOTOGRAPHS 1955-2010 with an essay by Jane Fletcher Photographs 1955-2010 is the major retrospective book of the renowned British photographer John Blakemore. The book explores the extensive range of work that Blakemore has undertaken over a period of almost 60 years of visual exploration. |
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£45 clothbound hardback
272 pages, 245mm x 300mm over 280 duotone & colour photographs ISBN: 978-1-907893-12-4 ORDER NOW A special collector’s edition slipcased hardback is also available. Limited to 100 signed and numbered copies it includes a 10 x 8 silver print handprinted by John Blakemore. The launch price is £150.00 including UK shipping. ORDER NOW |
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BURKE + NORFOLK
Photographs from the War in Afghanistan by JOHN BURKE and SIMON NORFOLK Simon Norfolk’s 2002 book Afghanistan: chronotopia is now recognised as a classic of photography. It established Norfolk’s reputation as one of the leading photographers in the world and has been exhibited at more than thirty venues worldwide. |
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THE BROTHERS
Photographs by ELIN HØYLAND introduced by GERRY BADGER When Elin Høyland heard about two elderly brothers, Harald and Mathias Ramen, living together in Tessanden, a small hamlet in rural Norway, she approached them to see if they would collaborate with her on a photographic project about their lives. The result is a fascinating and warmly human study of a way of life that has now almost entirely disappeared. Harald (75) and Mathias (80) had always lived on the small farm in which they were born. Neither had married. Mathias once worked in Oslo for two months, but hadn’t like it, whilst Harald spent one night, ‘the worst of his life,’ he would say, in a hotel in Lillehammer, some three hours away. They’d worked for an electricity company, as loggers and also as carpenters, but now much of their time was taken up just managing firewood for their home. As Harald said, they chopped wood, carried wood and burned wood. At least twice a day, they also fed wild birds in the twenty bird boxes that they monitored. Their days followed a predictable and comforting routine. In their free time they each listened to a radio or read the local paper. In the 1960s they rented a TV for a one month trial but returned it after deciding that it took up too much time. Little changed from year to year, though Mathias once said that changes were happening the whole time and it would probably end up with them getting an inside toilet with running water. Harald died from an asthma attack while shovelling snow in conditions of –20C. Mathias continued to live alone in the house until he moved into an old people’s home. He died in 2007. Norwegian photographer, Elin Høyland has freelanced for several major newspapers including The Guardian. She is currently photographer with the Norwegian Business Daily and her work has been widely exhibited in France, USA, China, Scandinavia and the UK. Gerry Badger is recognised world-wide as one of the leading writers on photography. Amongst his many projects he wrote the TV series The Genius of Photography and was co-author with Martin Parr of the two volume The Photobook: A History. |
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£30.00 Not available in the USA |
FALLEN EMPIRES
SHAI KREMER texts by Shai Kremer, Meron Benvenisti, Anne Wilkes Tucker, Talya Sasson, Amiram Oren, Ariella Azoulay Israel’s history can be understood through its vast archaeological heritage. Its past exists not only in the written word but also in its land, in the architecture and ruins, in the stones themselves. Each civilization overwrites another, layer upon layer – a sophisticated palimpsest. A single frame can expose the sediment of thousands of years. The recycling of spaces, from one empire to the next, shows how each sought to conquer and rule the land, all with a similar outcome: eventual failure. Kremer shows the vestiges of this complex multicultural saga, testimonies unearthed from the past that show a different perspective. It is landscape as a place of amnesia and erasure, for Israel is a strategic site where the past has been buried and history veiled by natural beauty. Kremer’s Israel exists beyond the media headlines and tourist hotspots: it is landscape as cultural force, an instrument in the construction of national and social identity. For Kremer, it is a provocation to critical debate about a country where different perspectives existed, and continue to exist, and where new possibilities can be reflected upon. Born in 1974 and raised in Israel, Shai Kremer currently lives in Tel Aviv and New York. He has exhibited widely internationally: Tate Modern, London; Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; SF MoMA, San Francisco; Chicago Museum of Contemporary Photography; Tel Aviv Museum of Art; The Israel Museum, Jerusalem; the Red Cross Red Crescent Museum, Geneva; Guangzhou Photo Biennale, China; Omotesando Gallery, Tokyo; Vittoriano Art Museum, Rome; PHotoEspaña, Madrid. His work is held by several major museum collections including The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; SF MoMA, San Francisco; the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; the Israel Museum, Jerusalem and the Tel Aviv Museum of Art. |
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DIRECTION-SPACE!
Photographs by MARIA GRUZDEVA Introduced by MATTHEW SHAUL Fifty years ago, on April 12th 1961, Yuri Gagarin became the first man in space. His orbit of the Earth made him a celebrity worldwide. His name is still synonymous with the Space Race and with Russian space exploration. Half a century after the legendary flight, Direction–Space! looks at two of the sites that were key to the Soviet Space programme: Star City and Baikonur. Cosmonauts have lived and trained in Star City since the 1960s. In the Soviet era, it was a top secret location. Now also known as ‘The Yuri Gagarin Russian State Science Research Cosmonauts Training Centre’ it is still a military research centre and consists of a training facility and a residential area for the cosmonauts and their families as well as the military and civilian personnel serving the facility. Baikonur, situated in Kazakhstan, was the world’s first space launch facility and it is still the largest. Nowadays, the site is rented and administered by Russia. Direction–Space! is a fascinating study of Star City and Baikonur. Incorporating unique archive materials, it explores the reality of the space community at first hand, investigating the physical and psychological space as well the routine and lives of its residents. It offers a new insight into a subject central to the Cold War history of the Soviet Union, and raises questions over attitudes and perceptions that have been formed over past decades. Maria Gruzdeva is a young Russian photographer. Based in London for the past three years, she is able to offer a unique perspective on her country of origin, its post-Soviet history and aesthetics. She held her first major solo exhibition in Moscow in 2010 and has shown her work in several group exhibitions as well as at art fairs such as VOLTA6 in Basel and Art Moscow. |
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THIS IS NOT A HOUSE
Photographs EDGAR MARTIONS Essays by SACHA CRADDOCK, PETER D.OSBORNE The US subprime mortgage crisis, which had its roots in the closing years of the twentieth century, exposed pervasive weaknesses in the regulation of the financial industry and the global financial system. At the end of 2008, as the fall-out from the crisis became increasingly widely felt, Edgar Martins was commissioned by the New York Times Magazine to photograph across the US in eight separate states and across sixteen different locations. These carefully researched sites exposed the extent and impact of the crisis on the US construction industry. Martins approached the project as a photographic intervention into a crisis and the resulting images go beyond pure formal investigation or documentation. His interest lay in summoning a disquieting conjunction of realism and fiction by ‘cutting into the real’. As the writer Jacques Ranciére states, the real can only be unravelled and understood if it is first fictionalised. And so the real must be transformed to be understood. The houses depicted in this series do not refer to just the particular. They are images of spatial assemblages, of kinds of stages on which a number of quite different (and perhaps incompatible) narratives might be enacted. These images, these houses, these ruins, reflect back at us the human constructs that we project and impose on them. This Is Not A House emerges precisely at that juncture where clear words falter, where language is disturbed. The meaning of the world is no longer carried on its surface, if indeed it ever was. Internationally recognised, Edgar Martins has won several awards for his work including Portugal’s BES Photography Award, The UK’s National Media Museum Terry O’Neil Award, and a Jerwood Photography Prize. He has exhibited throughout Europe and the United States and has published several books, the two most recent being Topologies, (Aperture), and When Light Casts No Shadow, (Dewi Lewis Publishing). |
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IN THE FACE OF SILENCE
Photographs by CHRISTOPHE AGOU Story by JOHN BERGER In The Face Of Silence is a powerful and moving portrait of the hard lives of French family farmers living and working in the Forez region, on the eastern side of the Massif Central. Born and brought up in the area, photographer Christophe Agou travelled to the less-known parts of the region, where he felt inspired by the silence and moved by the authenticity and charisma of the people he encountered. Over time, and through the gradual process of building trust and friendship, the farmers and their families accepted him and allowed him to both photograph and film their daily existence. The challenge was to go beyond just documenting their labour-intensive lives and present a deeper, more intimate portrait. The resultant work is a meditation on life and death as well as the silence and solitude that are ever-present in our lives. Winner of the 2010 European Publishers Award for Photography, Christophe Agou, is noted for his personal documentary-style in both black-and-white and colour photography. His intimate images both haunt and intrigue – and create an intensely rich, layered, visual language that triggers thoughts and emotions. Christophe Agou moved to New York in 1992 and came to prominence with his compelling body of work made in the New York subway – published as ‘Life Below’ in 2004. He was a finalist for the prestigious Eugene Smith Award (2006), for Le Prix de la Photographie de l’Académie des Beaux-Arts de Paris (2008) and received a ‘Mention Spéciale’ for le Prix Kodak de la Critique Photographique (2009). His photographs have been widely published and exhibited including shows at MOMA, New York; Jeu de Paume, Paris; Museum of Fine Arts in Houston; Les Rencontres D'Arles, France and Noorderlicht Fotofestival, The Netherlands. John Berger, art critic, novelist, painter and author, was the 1972 winner of the Booker Prize with his novel G. His book on art criticism Ways of Seeing is recognised as one of the seminal texts on the subject. |
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LONDON STREET PHOTOGRAPHY 1860-2010
From the MUSEUM OF LONDON'S PHOTOGRAPHIC COLLECTION Selected by Mike Seaborne, Senior Curator of Photographs and Anna Sparham, Curator of Images at the Museum of London. London Street Photography is published in association with The Museum of London to coincide with the major exhibition on show at the Museum until September 2011. Street photography thrives in London today. It documents the movement, diversity and seeming incoherence of the most multicultural city in the world. Its defining characteristic is the keen eye of the photographer catching the moment of a chance encounter, a fleeting expression or a momentary juxtaposition in a decisive click. However, photographing life on London’s streets is nothing new. The first ‘instantaneous’ London street scenes were taken in the early 1860s, and by the 1890s candid street photographers were snapping Londoners unawares. The 20th century saw many photographers, famous and lesser-known, continue to capture the daily life of London. London Street Photography showcases the Museum of London’s unique historic collection of photographs. It contains the work of more than seventy photographers and is a fascinating view of London street life of the last 150 years. It includes the work of well-known photographers such as Paul Martin, John Thomson, Humphrey Spender, Bert Hardy, László Moholy-Nagy, Roger Mayne and Tony Ray-Jones as well as the work of many anonymous photographers whose contribution has been just as important in recording the story of the city. The book includes an introduction by Mike Seaborne, in which he outlines the history of street photography in the Capital, exploring the shifts in approach as well as the impact of new cameras that allowed photographers to capture the wealth of detail to be found in London’s teeeming streets.
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HALF LIFE
Photographs MICHAEL ACKERMAN Essay by DENIS KAMBOUCHNER According to Denis Kambouchner’s introduction, Michael Ackerman’s latest book Half Life is a haunted book. It is certainly disturbing; in Michael Ackerman’s world, something is disintegrating. A feeling of isolation pervades; a space weighed down by history takes over everything. The landscapes are harsh and unwelcoming, combining frozen expanses, blackened houses, vestiges of the mining industry and abandoned cemeteries. But it is the anguish of individuals that stirs us most deeply – their expressions of distress and confusion, their unfinished gestures, the sense of damage. These are people who appear to live in the ruins of a drama. It is as if their whole bodies were given over to a scream. What all these people, these bodies and these images, have in common is the pure situation, that something is wrong – out of joint. Everything in the book is in the form of a response. Ackerman carefully constructs a whole system of recalls and echoes, reinforcing a primordial desolation, set against the backdrop of an entirely fragmented and disordered world. It is an extraordinary and unsettling vision. Born in Tel Aviv, Michael Ackerman moved to New York in 1984. After studying he began to photograph in the city’s streets, nightclubs and on its waterfronts. Between 1993 and 1997 he made several trips to Benares, India. The photographs from that project were published as End Time City by Robert Delpire, the legendary Paris based publisher. A member of Agence/Gallerie Vu, his work has been exhibited internationally and he has won several international awards including the Prix Nadar, the SCAM Roger Pic Prize and the International Centre of Photography Infinity Award. His work is in many major collections and in 2010 it was included in Traverse, the book and exhibition of the collection of Marin Karmitz which was shown at Rencontres d’Arles. Michael Ackerman now lives in Berlin. |
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UNDER GODS
Photographs by LIZ HINGLEY Texts by ELIZABETH EDWARDS, CHRISTOPHER PINNEY Liz Hingley, the daughter of two Anglican priests, grew up in Birmingham, one of the UK’s most culturally diverse cities, where over 90 different nationalities now live. It is hardly surprising therefore that she developed an interest in multi-faith communities and began to explore the complex issues involved, ranging from immigration, through to secularism and religious revival. Between 2007-2009, Hingley focused on the three-mile stretch of Soho Road in Birmingham, one of the most varied and fascinating corners of the country. It is a junction of diverse faith, where Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist and Jain, Rastafarian, Christian and Sikh meet. “Faith is exhibited in all the shops, shown off as symbols on hats and t-shirts, branded in tattoos,” says Hingley. “It is religion rather than race that now defines the local communities.” With more than twenty different religions represented in a single road various buildings are used for religious purposes from churches in a school gym hall, to makeshift baptism tents in the local park. And with so many communities co-existing in such close proximity, the boundaries between faiths can, as Hingley has observed, become exaggerated. “It was as if these religions were challenging each other,” Hingley said “challenging each other to show themselves off the most.” Under Gods is a powerful celebration of the rich diversity of these religions and of the reality and intensity of their different lifestyles. London based, Liz Hingley has won numerous awards for her photography including the Canon AFJ and Figaro Magazine Award 2010, and the Taylor Wessing National Portrait Award, 2009. Her work was highly commended in the 2010 and 2007 Ian Parry Award and she was a finalist for the Eugene Smith Grant 2010. She has exhibited in solo and group shows in the UK, France, Budapest and New York. Under Gods is a project developed during Liz Hingley’s residency at Fabrica, Benetton research centre on communication |
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LAOS: LEGACY OF A SECRET
Photographs by SEAN SUTTON introduced by TIM PAGE texts by Dr Thongloun Sisoulith, Deputy Prime Minister LPDR and Lou McGrath OBE, Chief Executive of MAG, Between 1964 and 1973, during the war with the United States, the North Vietnamese used a network of supply lines, known as the Ho Chi Minh Trail, running from North Vietnam through the jungles and mountains of neighbouring Laos and Cambodia. In an effort to staunch the flow of troops and weapons the U.S. dropped more than 2 million tons of bombs on Laos, including more than 270 million cluster bomb submunitions. Kept secret from Congress and the American people, full details of the scale of the bombing sorties only becoming declassified in the 1990s. By the time the aerial campaign ended in 1973 more bombs had been dropped on Laos, since renamed Lao People’s Democratic Republic (LPDR), than the Allies dropped on Germany and Japan combined during World War II. Many failed to explode when they hit the ground, leaving the landscape littered with hundreds of thousands, perhaps even millions, of unexploded bombs, as lethal today as when they fell from the sky three decades ago. Dubbed ‘bombies’ by Laotian villagers, these often brightly coloured cluster bomb submunitions are still found in the clefts of bamboo branches, by children playing in shallow dirt, or in the fields where farmers till the soil by striking the earth with a hoe. Since 1974 more than 20,000 people, many of them children, have been killed or injured by bombs or other unexploded ordnance in Lao PDR. Today, the lives of about 300 Laotian people are still devastated each year by the deadly remnants of this war. For the past nine years photographer Sean Sutton has travelled with MAG’s projects (Mines Advisory Group), from Kosovo to Sri Lanka and Iraq, Lebanon and Sudan, documenting the humanitarian impact of armed violence, landmines, unexploded ordnance and other deadly remnants of conflict as well as the solutions that MAG provides. The book includes texts by the Deputy Prime Minister of LPDR, Dr Thongloun Sisoulith; the Chief Executive of MAG, Lou McGrath OBE; and world renowned war photographer, Tim Page. |
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LOVE ON THE LEFT BANK
Photographs ED VAN DER ELSKEN This is a facsimile edition of one of the ‘classic’ photography books of the 20th century. Originally published in 1956, the book focuses on the Left Bank of Paris at the time when the area was a centre of creative ferment and the home of the artists, writers and aesthetes who would determine the cultural agenda of a generation. With its unconventional, gritty, snapshot-like technique the work was widely acclaimed as expanding the boundaries of documentary photography. Born 1925, in Amsterdam, Ed van der Elsken is recognised as one of the great photographers of the 20th century. During his lifetime he published over 20 books. In recent years his work has been exhibited widely throughout the world. Ed van der Elsken died in 1990. Vali Myers, who features as ‘Ann’, was born 1930 in Sydney, Australia. A dancer and artist, she arrived in Paris in 1949. During the post-war years, living in the streets and cafés of St. Germain des Prés, she continued to dance and to draw – her drawings feature in the book. She later travelled extensively, becoming internationally known as an artist. Vali Myers died in 2003. |
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GUANTANAMO: IF THE LIGHT GOES OUT
Photographs EDMUND CLARK Texts by JULIAN STALLABRASS & OMAR DEGHAYES 'When you are suspended by a rope you can recover, but every time I see a rope I remember. If the light goes out unexpectedly in a room, I am back in my cell.' - Binyam Mohamed, Prisoner #1458 For eight years the American naval base at Guantanamo Bay on Cuba has been home to hundreds of men, all Muslim, all detained in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks on suspicion of varying degrees of complicity or intent to carry out acts of terror against American interests. Labelled ‘the worst of the worst’, most of these men were guilty of nothing more than being in the wrong place at the wrong time. Many fell prey to a US military policy of paying bounty money for anyone the Pakistani secret service, border guards or village leaders on both sides of the blurred Afghan-Pakistan border considered a possible or potential ‘suspect’, thereby becoming currency in the newly defined ‘War on Terror’. Held in legal limbo for years and repeatedly interrogated, almost all have been released without charge and only a very few have been tried in the special military commissions set up for the purpose. |
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BABYLON
Surreal Babies From the collection of JAMES BIRCH With an introduction by GEORGE MELLY These weird and wonderful postcards show babies as never seen before. Babies hatch from eggs, bubble from cauldrons, are fished from rivers, emerge in the cabbage patch, sit atop clouds, and ride in zeppelins. They play instruments, drive automobiles, fly in balloons, harvest the fields; an anarchistic world of baby heaven. James Birch first came across the postcards when he was a student in Aix-en-Provence. “A froth of smiling babies boiling away in a cauldron” caught his eye and he bought a small number of cards. He didn’t really pay much attention to the cards again until years later in the 1980s when he visited the Pompidou Centre for an exhibition on Surrealism. There in one of the display cases was a collection of fantasy baby postcards shown for their inspirational importance to both the Dadaists and the Surrealists. He became hooked and started collecting. Despite the immensely varied subject matter of the postcards little is known of their history. They were produced from around 1900-1920 and were found from Russia, to Spain to Great Britain and most countries in between, however the majority appear to be from Germany. The postcards were a source of inspiration to many artists in the 1920s and 30s, in particular to both the Dadaists and the Surrealists. They were collected by Paul Éluard, André Breton, Salvador Dali, Hannah Höch, Herbert Bayer, and Man Ray. The popular images excited inspiration in these artists because of their boundless inventiveness. A foreword is written by George Melly whon was an acknowledged expert in the field of surrealism. Best known as a jazz and blues singer, writer and broadcaster, he was also an art critic and a devotee of the Surrealists. This is one of the last pieces he wrote before his death in 2007 at the age of 80. |
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ISBN: 9781904587958 |
BINGO & SOCIAL CLUB
photographs MICHAEL HESS texts by MAXINE GALLAGHER & MICHAEL HESS Around 1pm, every day of the week, nearly 600 bingo halls across the UK open their doors to thousands of loyal customers. But, although they can be found on almost every British high street, surprisingly few people ever see what goes on inside. In Bingo & Social Club, photographer Michael Hess opens up this world to a new audience. Behind the often-crumbling exteriors, he finds vibrant places full of strong characters, quirky details and more than a hint of nostalgia. In his own words: “I want people to feel that they’ve spent a night at the bingo – to sense what it feels like to be there.” Michael explains how the project started. “I played bingo one night in 2005, just out of curiosity about what went on inside the big old converted cinema near my house. I was instantly fascinated by the characters. And so the next time I visited, I took my camera. 4 years and more than 60 bingo halls later I was ready to make Bingo & Social Club.” Michael Hess and Maxine Gallagher spent many nights in the clubs, playing bingo, chatting with the managers and customers, and collecting stories from the people they met. They wanted to find out who these people really were. “Bingo halls are not just about gambling; they’re about human beings. They really do act as social hubs for many communities.” Jack, the manager of a bingo club in Newcastle, forms the backbone of the book.“He’s quite a character – tough and yet extremely dignified – and I knew straight away he could add the extra dimension I was looking for. I’ve always been inspired by classic movies, and he suited the enigmatic lead role perfectly.” Michael Hess was born in 1977 in Eisenach, Germany, and now lives in London. His work has been exhibited in Host Gallery, London; The Millennium Centre, Cardiff; and Picturehouse Cinema, Southampton. As well as his own projects, he has freelanced for corporate publications and music magazines. Bingo & Social Club is his first book. |
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ISBN:978-1-904587-97-2 |
AN ENGLISHMAN IN NEW YORK
photographs JASON BELL interviews by GUY HARRINGTON Introduced by ZOË HELLER In 2008 Jason Bell undertook an assignment for American Vogue at ‘Tea & Sympathy’, an English tea room in the heart of Manhattan. In conversation with the owner, Nicky Perry, he was astonished to discover that over 120,000 British men and women lived in New York City. As an Englishman, himself living in New York, Jason was inspired by this and decided to investigate further. His latest book An Englishman in New York is the result. The book documents a wide cross-section of English people living in the City. It features taxi drivers, cops, construction workers, divers, helicopter pilots, chefs, burlesque dancers, drug dealers, UN ambassadors and even dog walkers. Jason was also struck by the significant influence that many Brits exercise on New York’s cultural agenda, which led to him to include amongst his subjects: writer, Zoë Heller; director, Stephen Daldry; artists, Cecily Brown and Bill Jacklin; Director of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Thomas P Campbell; historian, Simon Schama; actor, Kate Winslet; and the musician, Sting. The book offers an extraordinary insight into the British sub-culture which forms an intrinsic part of everyday life in New York City. As Bell says, ’I went for a walk in Central Park with Sting, for a cup of tea on Kate Winslet’s roof terrace, sat on Zoë Heller’s stoop and watched Stephen Daldry cycle down 8th Avenue. I was given a private tour of both the Metropolitan Museum and Barneys’ shop windows. And amidst all the questions about why people had come here and what they had left behind, I learnt a little bit more about what it means to be English, what it means to be a New Yorker, and where the two intersect.’ Born in London, Jason Bell’s work regularly appears in the world's leading publications including Vanity Fair and Vogue (US & UK) and he has shot the film posters for Billy Elliot, About a Boy, Bridget Jones, Love Actually and Golden Compass amongst others. Critically acclaimed, he has been the recipient of several awards including a New York Photo Award, The Royal Photographic Society Terence Donovan Award and a US National Press Photographers Award. Many of his photographs have been acquired by the National Portrait Gallery for their permanent collection. Jason now lives in both London and New York. This is his fourth book. |
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ISBN: 978-1-904587-83-5 |
WASTELANDS
photographs DAN DUBOWITZ The nature of any society and its future can be read in its entrails – in what is left behind, what is discarded. Each creates, uses and casts aside its wastelands in very different ways and it seems that a proportion of every city is always wasteland. These neglected or abandoned places are fragile and ephemeral, a transient aspect of a changing, living city, yet development appears unable to clear them away for good, only to move them on to a different site. This book explores some of these wastelands that collectively form a sustained and permanent feature of the modern city. An artist and photographer, Dan Dubowitz originally trained as an architect. He is also a well-respected specialist public arts consultant and has worked on projects both in the UK and Europe. His photography has been exhibited in the UK, Italy and the United States. His last book Fascismo Abbandonato was published by Dewi Lewis and looks at the ‘colonia’ – holiday centres for children which were established on the northern Italian coast during the period of Mussolini’s Fascist regime (1923–43). |
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ISBN: 978-1-904587-87-3 |
MISSING LIVES
photographs NICK DANZIGER text RORY MACLEAN design MARK THOMSON Missing Lives brings together fifteen, heartbreaking stories from the Balkans – stories that tell of the immense tragedy that took place between 1991 and 2001 during the Yugoslav Wars when tens of thousands of Europeans vanished. Desperate for news, families of the missing prayed for a message, begged for the truth and often fell prey to blackmail. In almost every case, those missing had been murdered. But without any word, witness or body, the bereaved could not accept their loss. Their torment was to last years – for many it still continues. Children waited for parents to return from the grave. Mothers made up their dead son’s beds. Old men couldn’t bury their descendants. The living also ‘lost’ their lives. For the first time in war DNA has been used to match blood and bone, reuniting families divided by death, enabling survivors to find closure and to begin to live again. Since 1991 the International Committee of the Red Cross in the Balkans has been asked by families to trace 34,384 missing men and women. The remains of half of them – most of whom were murdered over a decade ago – have now been found. Missing Lives gives a voice to the unacknowledged suffering of these families, to all who went missing ‘by force’, and reminds us that in war there is no greater loss than the disappearance of those we love. Nick Danziger’s photographic essays appear regularly in magazines and books worldwide. He has published several books including Danziger’s Britain (1996), a social and political commentary on the state of Britain, described by The Independent as ‘so important that every one of us should read it and weep’. An Honorary Fellow of the Royal Photographic Society, he has also been nominated by the Royal Television Society for the Journalist of The Year Award. Rory MacLean's seven books, including UK best-sellers 'Stalin's Nose' and 'Under the Dragon', have challenged and invigorated travel writing, and according to the late John Fowles are among works that 'marvellously explain why literature still lives'. During his research journeys, MacLean walked through the newly-opened Berlin Wall, met Aung San Suu Kyi in Rangoon and interviewed Pashtun elders at the Kacha Garhi refugee camp after the destruction of the World Trade Center. His books have won awards from the Canada Council and the Arts Council of England, were shortlisted for the Thomas Cook Travel Book Prize and nominated for the International IMPAC Dublin Literary award. He has also written and presented over 50 radio programmes for the BBC and worked on movies with Marlene Dietrich and David Bowie. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and an active member of International PEN. |
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A LANDSCAPE OF WALES
JAMES MORRIS introduced by JIM PERRIN A Landscape of Wales takes an expansive look at the contemporary Welsh landscape. James Morris challenges the tourist clichés and looks at the impact of human presence and the layers of history in the landscape. He reflects upon issues of identity, exploitation and regeneration; it is a land of beauty and of hardship where – in this post industrial, post rural economy – Tesco and tourism are now the great employers. These are the contrasting realities of the Welsh landscape – that seen by the many visitors and that experienced by most inhabitants. Morris moves between tourist hot spots and the terraces and back streets where the majority of people live. The latter are often hard bitten unpretty places, often built for reasons that are no longer relevant. No longer the world’s largest producer of iron, coal, copper or slate, these are places that have lost their historic and heroic status, sometimes even their raison d’etre. Regeneration is taking place, but it is taking its time. By contrast the tourist landscape is one of pleasure seeking and escape – this is the Wales that visitors are sold and want to see. But in a small country, this selling of culture for the tourist pound has complex consequences that add to the other complexities that have shaped so much of the landscape. James Morris is an award-winning photographer of landscape and the built environment. Based in the Wales, his work is in many private and public collections including The British Council; Museum of African Art, New York; Princeton University; Victoria and Albert Museum, London; the National Library of Wales. Brought up in Manchester, Jim Perrin is an award-winning writer of Welsh descent. His books include River Map (Gomer, 2001), The Villain: the life of Don Whillans (Hutchinson, 2005) and Travels with the Flea (In Pinn, 2003). The Climbing Essays won the mountaineering Literature Award at the 2006 Banff Mountain Festival. He now lives in the Pyrenees. A touring exhibition of the work opened at Aberystwyth Arts Centre in late Spring 2010. |
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designed by James Corazzo |
HOME WORK
TESSA BUNNEY Home Work looks at Vietnam’s ‘craft’ villages. These specialise in a single product or activity, anything from palm leaf hats to incense sticks, or from noodle making to snake-catching. Some of these ‘craft’ villages date back hundreds of years, whilst others are a more recent response to enable rural farmers to earn much needed extra income. 75% of Vietnam’s population currently live in rural areas but as the country moves towards urbanisation, its agricultural labour force faces losing its land to urban projects – and its way of life. The country’s growing population is reducing the availability of farming land and rural families, no longer able to sustain themselves from the land, are turning to the creation of various products. These ‘craft’ villages have become the meeting place between rural and urban, agriculture and industry. During the last decade, along with rapid national economic development many craft villages have increased production up to five fold through small-scale industrial development. However, the consequence of this shift is increased waste and environmental pollution with the resources of the landscape becoming overused. Tessa Bunney spent two six month periods in Vietnam and visited many of these villages. The traditional village house is typically single storey and consists of three rooms. The large central room is a multi-purpose living, sleeping and working area and it is in this room where many of Tessa’s images are taken, the mix of work and everyday objects fascinating her visually. Interspersed with images from daily life in the rice fields and in the villages, these photographs depict ‘working from home’ in an unromanticised sense, where their subjects, mostly women, balance childcare with the routine work necessary for survival. Recently shown at The Mercer Gallery, Harrogate, Home Work begins a UK tour in London in summer 2010. Bunney has undertaken artists residences in Finland and Iceland and is currently working on a new project about the ethnic minority women of south west China. |
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CHINA BETWEEN
POLLY BRADEN with essays by DAVID CAMPANY & JENNIFER HIGGIE China Between is a photographic exploration of the modern city culture of contemporary China. When the Peoples’ Republic set up its Special Economic Zones in the 1980s communist China entered into global trade and international capital. The goal was financial but new money also brought new values and new ways of life. Polly Braden’s photography is an intimate response to the material and psychological effects of the changes experienced by the country’s new urban class. Shot over three years in Shanghai, Xiamen, Shenzhen and Kunming, China Between is a revelatory portrait. No longer will images of epic scenes dominate our view of this country. Braden shows how a casual glance, a moment of doubt or a quick trip to the shopping mall can tell us as much about modern China as any image of a dam, a protest or a teeming workforce. … anthropological documents and a personal travelogue; a series of intimate portraits and, more generally, studies of a country undergoing a massive transition from a predominantly agrarian to an urban culture. – Jennifer Higgie, editor of Frieze magazine A winner of the Jerwood Photography Prize (2003) and The Guardian Newspaper Young Photographer of the Year (2002), Polly Braden has exhibited at venues internationally including the Institute of Contemporary Arts (London) and the Museum of Contemporary Photography, Chicago (USA). In recent years she has produced extended photo-essays in the UK, the Middle East, Morocco, Kenya and China and her photography has appeared in The Guardian, The Saturday Telegraph magazine, Ei8ht magazine, Portfolio, ICON, Photoworks, Frieze, The Sydney Morning Herald and D Magazine (Italy). Now based in London, Polly has lived in China and photographed the country over the last decade. The book is accompanied by texts by David Campany, Reader in Photography at the University of Westminster, London and by Jennifer Higgie, editor of Frieze magazine. |
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FASCISMO ABBANDONATO
DAN DUBOWITZ with essays by PATRICK DUERDEN & PENNY LEWIS During the period of Mussolini’s Fascist regime (1923–43) ‘colonie’ – holiday centres for children – were established on the northern Italian coasts. Run by paramilitary youth organisations, they brought together modernist architecture, fresh air and discipline with the intention of converting the body and soul of Italian youth to fascist principles. The colonie were far removed from both the towns of Italy’s past and from the traditional structures of family and community. They offered a dramatic daily programme of activity with marching, synchronised exercise and gymnastics, flag raising, saluting and swearing of allegiance to the regime. It was a programme that in turn inspired architectural features in the buildings – including towers, ramps and elevated platforms – all designed to dramatise the parades and presentations by the young people. Even in the context of massive public works programmes, the building of the colonie offered unprecedented opportunities for progressive architects. They became a distinctive type of fascist building that evolved under the directives of the youth organisations. Despite the spectacle of the buildings, official policy declared luxuries as anti-educational and anti-social. Accordingly only the most basic of accommodation was provided. Dormitories were intimidating, open plan and stark; each might accommodate several hundred children. Italian parents would routinely admonish recalcitrant children with the threat ‘ti mando in colonia!’ (Behave, or I'll send you to the colonia!). For a generation of Italians the experience of fascism was a formative one, from which some never recovered. An architect by training, artist and photographer Dan Dubowitz is also a cultural master-planner who has worked on major public arts projects both in the UK and abroad. Patrick Duerden is a well-respected architect and writer. Penny Lewis was editor of Prospect, the Scottish architecture magazine, from 2003-2008 and now lectures at the Robert Gordon University in Aberdeen. |
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