A selection of our bestselling photobooks.
546 products
546 products
546 products
Approximate Joy (1st printing)
Regular price £450.00 Sale price £250.00 Save 44%Christopher Anderson’s photographs of the citizens of of Shenzhen, China, describe a megacity that didn’t exist thirty years ago, but today has some twenty million inhabitants. Working almost invisibly and bringing the viewer in close, into tightly cropped images that exclude all context except the ghostly light that illuminates the faces of his subjects. Anderson’s etherial portraits ask “Who are these individual people? What do they dream about?”
“I have seen the future and it is now and it is China. There is no need for the past. It can be erased. A new happiness is being constructed, an approximation of joy, better than the real thing.” - Christopher Anderson
Christopher Anderson first gained recognition in 1999 when his poignant images of the rescue of Haitian refugees taken onboard a sinking wooden boat named the “Believe in God” won him the Robert Capa Gold Medal. In 2005 he joined the renowned photo agency, Magnum. In addition to regular personal and editorial assignments Anderson is currently the first ever “Photographer in Residence” at New York Magazine.
Sealed 1st printing.
Polska Britannica (special edition)
Regular price £150.00 Save Liquid error (snippets/product-template line 124): Computation results in '-Infinity'%Czesław Siegieda, born the son of Polish immigrants to England in Leicestershire in 1954, showed an interest in photography from an early age. From his teens he photographed the Polish community he grew up in, moving through fêtes and funerals with an ease only available to an insider.
The images in the book, taken between 1974 and 1981, show the staunchly Catholic traditions and national customs so faithfully maintained by the community as they rebuilt their lives following the trauma suffered during and after the Second World War. Whilst many of Siegieda’s images display a sharp eye for the absurd and all are marked by a visible affection for his subjects, his photographs of his close family are notable for their intimacy. His mother Helena, though physically robust, looks careworn and vulnerable, clutching a bucket of vegetable peelings or a picture of the Virgin Mary like a life raft whilst her husband (Czesław’s stepfather) hovers in the background, as if ready to lend a hand if needed but not wishing to intrude.
For many years the archive remained private, initially out of respect for the sensitivities of his parents’ generation: nervous of their position as ‘guests’ in a foreign land, they were determined not to draw attention to themselves. This initial impulse of discretion soon gave way to the more prosaic demands of life and work. For decades the negatives sat unheeded in a drawer until, in 2018, two years after his mother’s death, Siegieda decided that it was time to bring them out into the world. The process of digitising the archive went hand in hand with the creation of a website and the release of images on social media, posting photographs on Instagram in the expectation that they might be of niche interest to a small number of followers. The response was as overwhelming as it was unexpected; the photographs attracted the attention of many notable photographers, including Martin Parr, who encouraged Siegieda to publicise the work more widely.
The book contains over 80 images from this archive, with an essay by author and historian Jane Rogoyska as well as a foreword by Martin Parr.
Special edition 30 copies with signed and limited silver gelatin 10"x8" print of 'Pitsford Hall, Northamptonshire, England | 1978' (Violin players image)
The End of Industry (special edition)
Regular price £395.00 Sale price £295.00 Save 25%John Myers’ The End of Industry is the third and final volume of Myers’ work to be published by RRB Photobooks, forming a Catalogue Raisonne of his entire photographic output.
These photographs were taken between 1981 and 1988 in ‘The Black Country’ a part of England that was famous for making things from metal.
Changes occurred in the early 1980s that hit metal manufacturing particularly hard. A record number of bankruptcies resulted in high levels of unemployment. Factories either closed completely or realigned their business model to warehousing and retailing components that had been manufactured overseas. Foundries, forges and steelworks - not easily transformed into industrial units or office space - quickly morphed into housing estates, enterprise zones or retail parks.
The change was rapid and irreversible. A landscape that had been formed by the Industrial Revolution disappeared.
The End of Industry is available in a signed and numbered edition of 450 copies. Each book is accompanied by a 5x4” signed and dated silver-gelatin print of ‘Bricks Drying, William Mobberly Brickworks, Kingswinford, 1983’.
Special edition of 50 copies, which also includes a 10x8” signed, dated and limited silver-gelatin print of ‘Cupolas, Crqadley Casting, Cradley Heath, 1983’.
Family (special edition)
Regular price £400.00 Sale price £250.00 Save 38%My entire family, whose image I see inverted in the frosted glass, will die one day. This camera, which reflects and freezes their images, is actually a device for archiving death’. – Masahisa Fukase
For three generations the Fukase family ran a photography studio in Bifuka, a small provincial town in the northern Japanese province of Hokkaido. In August 1971, at the age of 35, Masahisa Fukase returned home from Tokyo, where he had moved in the 1950s. He realised that the Fukase Photographic Studio, which his younger brother managed, combined with the growing family members, constituted the perfect subject for a series of portraits. Between 1971 and 1989, he returned regularly and used the family studio, the large-format Anthony view camera and the changing family line-up as the basis for the series. True to his style, Fukase often introduced third-party models and humorous elements to juxtapose the ineluctable reality of time passing and the dwindling family group. He continued the series through his father’s death in 1987, up until the closure of the Fukase studio due to bankruptcy in 1989, and the consequential dispersion of the family.
Family (Kazoku) was released in 1991, and was Fukase’s last book. It begins with a photograph of the family studio and the following 31 images are family portraits made in the studio in chronological order. The book includes an extensive text written by Fukase himself and a modern essay by Tomo Kosuga.
Embossed hardback bound in red buckram, housed in a silkscreened sleeve. Collotype print produced by Japanese atelier Benrido. Print size: 26 x 17 cm
Limited edition of 150 copies, each comprising of a first MACK edition book and print [both numbered and stamped by the Masahisa Fukase Archives].
A Star in the Sea (signed)
Regular price £95.00 Sale price £45.00 Save 53%'A Star in the Sea is an overture for embracing the unexpected. The photographs, text & title pertain to three independent, personal life events: A love story; my first & only trip to my place of birth in the UK & a vision on a beach in Italy. It is inspired by a desire to redefine my relationship with the ideals of success & happiness. In this context, A Star in the Sea is an opportunity to celebrate imperfection — an artistic gesture to have faith in the Universe.'
- Laura El-Tantawy
The book is conceived as an artistic object demanding intimacy — something you want to protect & treat with care. Each book comes in a custom handmade Batik pouch made by the artist in collaboration with her mother.
Signed & numbered edition of 150 copies.
Paloma Al Aire (first edition)
Regular price £160.00 Save Liquid error (snippets/product-template line 124): Computation results in '-Infinity'%Ricardo Cases’ third photobook deals with an unusual subject: a unique form of pigeon racing practised in the Spanish regions of Valencia and Murcia. Known as colombiculture, it is a sport with rules and referees. It 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 by aficionados of the sport 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. 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.
1st English Edition.
Near fine copy with faint wear to cover.