Photobookstore

• Prestel 2024
• Hardback, 1st edition. 160p
  
• Imperfect - see below 

Published as a collection for the first time, these arresting and poetic and images of Northern Ireland reveal a rarely examined facet of the oeuvre of a celebrated twentieth century war photographer.

Akihiko Okamura became a renowned war photographer during the first years of the Vietnam war and later, as he documented wars in Biafra and the Middle East. In 1969, he moved from Southeast Asia to Dublin. From there, Okamura traveled frequently to Derry and other parts of Northern Ireland to document the country’s “Troubles.”

This beautifully produced book brings together for the first time Okamura’s Irish work, which was almost entirely unpublished before now. Presented in full page plates without text, Okamura’s images are imbued with soft, muted colors that contrast with the violence of the situation in which they were conceived. Brimming with feelings of fear, dread, anticipation, and resignation, these images reveal Okamura’s humanity and curiosity, his concern with day-to-day existence, and the absurdities, incongruities, and disruptions of life during wartime: women preparing afternoon tea outside bombed rowhouses; girls dressed in their Sunday best leaving flowers at a roadside shrine; a collection of empty milk bottles destined to become incendiary devices.

Illuminating essays by renowned photographic historians and experts place this astounding collection in context with Okamura’s larger body of work and situate these images within the history of both the medium and the country.

English edition.   

Imperfect copy with bumped end of spine - see photo.  Otherwise new and sealed.

• Sturm & Drang 2024
  
• Hardback, 1st edition, 168p
  
• Imperfect: see below

The Invisible Yoke, Volume IV: We, the Free, is the final volume in photographer Matt Eich's four-part series of monographs with publisher Sturm & Drang that began in 2016 with the critically acclaimed Carry Me Ohio. It was followed by Sin & Salvation in Baptist Town (2018) and The Seven Cities (2020). The photographic series considers the weight of collective memory in the shaping of American identity.

Departing from the formula of depicting a regional microcosm, the final photobook We, the Free features images from the United States as a whole. Spanning nearly 15 years, the images were made as the artist came of age while the American superpower began to decline, and facing a time of increasing national tensions. This significant body of work is Eich's chronicle of contemporary American society entering a point of no return. 

Imperfect copy with small bump to spine end / one corner.  Otherwise new/sealed.

• Skeleton Key Press 2024
• Hardback, 1st edition. 152p
• Near fine see below

Kjetil Karlsen’s debut monograph, Watching the Silence, invites readers to venture into northern Norway’s isolated and remote landscapes, seen through the author’s singular lens. Here, Karlsen’s life experiences are distilled into a world that is familiar yet, intriguingly, otherworldly. The book showcases nearly 90 black and white plates, divided into six chapters, and printed in dark, rich, and cold tones that capture the beauty and extremes of the distinct elements of the far north.

Karlsen’s photographs serve as gateways to mythological and psychological themes, unveiling the profound connection between the body, soul, and nature. As Arno Rafael Minkkinen, the renowned photographer whose expansive foreword opens the book, eloquently describes, Watching the Silence is “a kind of unguided tour by ghosts, one-legged wanderers, and soulless strangers performing their gravity-defying stunts, tender couplings, and displaying their psychic energies in an enigmatically desolate yet hardly unwelcoming landscape.” 

“When I create, I am entirely dependent on light. However, I aim to express universal emotions stemming from the deep silence within us, far down on the grayscale. We all carry this darkness, but most try to avoid it at all costs. I love the light and the joy, but the light would not be as valuable without the melancholy of darkness. It’s like the euphoria of a new summer after a long, dark, and cold winter here in the north.” — Kjetil Karlsen

Limited edition of 500 copies.

Sealed copy but with very faint bump to one corner.  See example photo.

• Hatje Cantz 2022
• Hardback, 1st edition
• New

The city Fred Herzog documented over more than half a century has vanished―an early kind of urban flaneur, Herzog wandered the streets of Vancouver, creating an archive that encapsulates the essence of a bygone era. Considered today as one of the most important street photographers of the 20th century, he changed the international conversation about early color photography. However, it was only in the late 1950s that he decided to primarily shoot with Kodachrome color slides. Fred Herzog: Black and White is the first acknowledgement of a lesser-known facet of the photographers’ work. Complementing the seminal Modern Color, it encompasses almost graphical urban scenes of shadow and light, alongside travel photographs and depictions of rural life. Evoking notions of melancholy, this book reveals that Herzog’s appeal lies in his ability to seize a condensation of a psychological state.

• Steidl 2018
• Hardback, reprinted edition, 128p
  
• as new

One day in the early 1970s, Robert Adams and his wife saw from their home a column of smoke rise above the Rocky Flats Nuclear Weapons Plant, near Denver, Colorado. For an hour they watched the plume grow, tried without success to learn whether the fire involved the radioactive and extremely toxic plutonium, and experienced a sense of helplessness before what appeared to be a nuclear accident in progress. Ultimately it was announced that the fire was burning safely outside the plant, but as a result of their hour of uncertainty Adams decided to try to picture what of worth ― absolute worth ― stood to be lost in a nuclear catastrophe. Adams photographed Our Lives and Our Children in Denver and its suburbs; the individuals shown were within hazardous proximity of the Rocky Flats Plant. Their peril is representative, however, of a wider threat to all of us from nuclear weapons, one that continues in different forms to this day.

The new Steidl edition of Our Lives and Our Children presents an expanded sequence of pictures that retains the potent compactness of the sought-after first edition (out of print for nearly three decades), while faithfully expressing the full-bodied tonalities of Adams’s original prints

• Stanley Barker 2024
• Hardback, 1st edition
• New 

In the fall of 1977, Jack Lueders-Booth began teaching photography to the inmates of MCI Framingham, a women’s prison. 

During his decade at the facility, he would make a series of Polaroid images produced collaboratively with the women who lived in the prison. 32 of these images are presented in this new book alongside oral histories taken at the time by Booth. 

Founded in 1878, MCI Framingham was opened to house incarcerated women for the crime of giving birth out of wedlock i.e., begetting, (Hester Prynne’s crime in Nathaniel Hawthorne’s 1850 novel, The Scarlet Letter). Some few years later MCI Framingham began incarcerating women for shoplifting, organised prostitution, using and trafficking drugs, armed robbery, child abuse, and murder. Many women at Framingham were convicted for helping their husbands or boyfriends commit crimes. By the Mid-70s, the correctional facility was part of an ongoing normalisation experiment that sought to mitigate the psychological consequences of incarceration. In Booth’s images, neither inmates nor guards are uniformed, cells are made to look like dormitory rooms, and inmates can furnish and decorate them within the constraints of guidelines. Male inmates were introduced, constituting 20% of the communal population. Many of the inmates in Lueders-Booth’s images had dependent children who were placed in the care of relatives or court-appointed foster parents, they were allowed to visit with an adult.

“My time there was scheduled to end in 1979, but by then I had begun photographing these women, and what began at their request grew to occupy me personally, and fully. I wished to continue and did, remaining at MCI Framingham for another 7 years, photographing, while also tutoring inmates who had a continuing interest in photography.' Jack Luders-Booth 

Included alongside Luders-Booth's images, are a series of anonymized verbal accounts, and poems taken from female prisoners at MCI Framingham Prison

For all of my sisters who have felt the weight of
life’s cruelties as the knife of life’s coldness
pierced their hearts,
And all traces of warmth were drained away.
they vaguely remember something called love,
a distorted version of pimp,
as coat hangers, baseball bats, anything in
reach came at them through the air
And afterwards their pimp says, “It’s because
I love you baby.

-Tina Williams, 1980

Cover colour and image varies - assigned at random.

• Kult Books 2024
• Hardback, 1st edition. 176p
• New 

In 1961, in the small Spanish village of San Sebastian de Garabandal, four young girls had an apparition of the Virgin Mary. They entered a state of ecstasy in which they became completely unaware of their surroundings and sensory perceptions. Reportedly, witnesses would pinch the girls, pierce their skin with needles, lift them up and drop them onto rough rocks, and yet they remained entranced. The light and presence of the Virgin is all they claim to have experienced. Twenty years later, in the town of Medjugorje, in Bosnia & Herzegovina, six children also had simultaneous visions of the Virgin, with similar ecstatic qualities.

In his debut book Noema, Michael Swann investigates the aura of place and religious experience by searching for signs of the Virgin Mary’s presence in these two locations. Alongside original photographs made at both sites, Noema also includes images that have been appropriated from video footage of the visionaries taken during their apparitions. These emphasise the impenetrability of the individual religious and phenomenological experience, and speaks to the separation between what is apparently being seen and what is photographable.

“Until the age of eleven I was a Catholic. Although I lost my faith, I felt no sense of loss. Many years later I was told a story of a friend, who heard the voice of God speak to her while she was alone in her bedroom. To move from belief to non-belief felt simple, but to pass in the other direction seemed to require a substantial spiritual encounter. Perhaps I could believe once more, if I were to receive a messenger from God.”

• Steidl 2010
• Hardback, 1st edition, 228p
• New

John Gossage, the renowned American photographer and photography book-maker, presents two companion volumes and his first ever books in color. Engaged in a dance, neither book comes first, there is no hierarchy or sequence to the pair of volumes. Gossage is one of the most literary of photographic book authors and in The Thirty-Two Inch Ruler, the narrative, whilst not autobiographical, is about a neighborhood in which he lives; one that is singular in the United States. At the same time provincial and international, it is a neighborhood populated by ambassadorial residences, embassies, and the lavish private homes of those who are in positions of power and influence in Washington. A project he began with the arrival of a new neighbor, the Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and made over a full year’s cycle of seasons, these are images from the drift of privilege. The streets, cars, homes and yards of this neighborhood are photographed on perfect spring or autumn days, with sparklingly clear blue skies, and flowers or foliage accenting the order. These are photographs about how one might wish the world to be, how beauty might be seen as desire. In the same year Gossage made the Map of Babylon, photographing digitally from Washington, to Germany, to China and places in-between. This look away, to places beyond the immediate and local, is a classic exploration of particulars of the outside world.

Sealed.

• Editorial RM 2016
• Hardback, 1st edition, 164p
• Imperfect - see below 

Lobismuller tells the story of Manuel Blanco Romasanta, Spain’s bloodiest and most enigmatic serial killer, from a female perspective. Manuel was born Manuela and originally believed to be a woman: according to modern forensic theories, he (or she) may have lived with a rare syndrome of intersexuality.

Blanco Romasanta was dubbed the “Soapmaker,” owing to his habit of using the fat of victims to produce high-quality soap. Although confessing to nine of the seventeen murders now attributed to him, Blanco Romasanta pleaded not guilty, declaring himself the victim of a curse that had transformed him into a wolf…

Out of print.

Imperfect copy with faint bump to one corner - see photo example.  Otherwise as new/sealed.

• Bluecoat Press 2024
• Hardback, 1st edition.
• New 

Originally shown at The Photographers’ Gallery in 1979, the exhibition garnered critical acclaim, solidifying the work as one of the most important of its generation.

Janine Wiedel is an internationally important documentary photographer whose work spans over five decades. Tutored by Ansel Adams and Nancy and Beaumont Newhall, she photographed the Black Power movement in the late 1960s and Berkeley People’s Park protest and riots of 1969. Arriving in England in 1970, she embarked on a continuous series of long-term projects including five years documenting Irish travellers. Her later work includes the Greenham Common Women’s Camp, the multicultural community squat in St Agnes Place, London, and the BAME and Rastafarian communities in Brixton. Her latest work includes six months photographing in the Calais ‘Jungle’ and Grande-Synthe refugee camp in Dunkirk. Always politically committed, Janine’s outstanding work is in the best traditions of humanist photography.

In 1977, Janine Wiedel set out in her VW campervan to photograph industry in England’s West Midlands – once the heart of the Industrial Revolution. A region that was home to thousands of businesses – from potteries and jewellers to coal mines, steel and iron works – was in steep decline; underinvestment over many decades in both premises and machinery had created a depressing situation where once world-leading businesses were no longer competitive internationally and facing a grim future.

Janine realised that this was a critical turning point in Britain’s industrial history and she set out to document the workers within their working environment. She was given remarkable access by the factories and was welcomed by the workforce, who greatly appreciated her interest in recording not just their daily work routines but also the bonding and social interaction that was so important in often grim factory environments.

Vulcan’s Forge finally honours the original exhibition at The Photographers’ Gallery in over 250+ pages of beautifully duo-tone printed photographs. The book isdivided into sections on each industry with extended captions and background information into each place.

Signed copy.

• Editorial RM 2024
• Boxed set of hardback/softcover, 1st edition
• New

Graciela Iturbide, the Hasselblad Award-winning Mexican photographer, is renowned for her exceptional career in documentary and artistic photography. With a poetic and profound approach, she skilfully captures the essence of Mexico’s life and culture.

Through Alfonso Morales’ compelling narrative, we delve into Graciela Iturbide’s fascination with capturing the lives of the Latino street gang “White Fence” in Los Angeles’ Eastside. It explores the complexities of this community, offering a powerful reflection on identity and migration.  White Fence offers an unparalleled visual journey through Graciela Iturbide’s travels, showcasing unseen images carefully recovered from her archive, accompanied by iconography and documents that will help to better understand its history and broaden our knowledge.

On May 2, 1986, images were captured that gave rise to the book A Day in the Life of America. Graciela Iturbide formed part of the team of photographers who, over the course of twenty-four hours, registered everyday life in different locations across the United States. Her contribution to the time capsule was a portrait taken in an apartment in the Boyle Heights neighborhood of East Los Angeles, California. There, she was welcomed by a group of Mexican Americans who were mostly deaf women with ties to the White Fence gang.

That initial encounter set the stage for a long-standing friendship as well as the composition of a photographic tale that could very well be described as the intermittent chronicle of a day prolonged for thirty-three years, from 1986 to 2019.

The present edition, comprised of two volumes, offers a selection of the portraits Iturbide took of her Angelino hosts as well as their surroundings, movements, and connections. It features an essay by Alfonso Morales Carrillo describing both the development of this photographic series and the historic background it ultimately conveys: the formation and persistence of communities of Mexican descent north of the Rio Grande.

Boxset with 2 volumes in a hardcover slipcase.

• Stanley Barker 2014
• Softcover, 1st edition
• NEW

At the age of 33, one of Australia’s foremost artists, Bill Henson, produced some of the most evocative portraits and powerful dreamscapes of his career. 

Shot at dawn or dusk, in the suburbs of Melbourne, Australia, and in the deserts of Egypt, 1985 with its glimpses of faces, figures and places marks the moment when Bill Henson’s long-held desire to find a form for ‘the dream of suburbia’ was realised. Describing this process, Henson says, “I began to realise that these places could be understood as a dreamscape because they affect us so powerfully and with such immediacy as a memento mori. The light, smell, even temperature, as well as the look of these places, animates our memory and gently sharpens our sense of the passage to time.”

Combining photographs of ancient Egypt, with Suburban Melbourne, Henson creates an imaginary world, that shows “the suburban landscape as an interior world that each of us carries around inside us, like childhood, for the rest of our lives.” The photographs in this series are imbued with a sense of unreality. As night falls and we begin to rely upon the heightening sensitivity of our other senses, and as we navigate the darkness, through touch, smell, temperature and sound, and the projections of our imagination into this ambiguous space in which we find ourselves. Just occasionally, this might reintroduce us to the deep mystery of the world.

Sealed.

• Mack 2021
• Hardback, 1st edition
• Imperfect - see below

Winner of the 2021 MACK First Book Award

“At first the focus of my project was my gender transition, but along the way I found out that it’s about an ongoing search for myself: being a human with feelings, who is continuously developing.” — Marvel Harris
 
MARVEL describes the journey of Marvel Harris’ personal battles with mental illness, self-love, acceptance, and gender identity, all told through a searing collection of self-portraits spanning the course of five years. These photographs present a new-found visual language; a tool with which Marvel was able to express those emotions that, on account of his autism, he previously struggled to make sense of. The process of making these portraits allowed him to connect to the world around him at the time he needed it most.
 
Winner of the MACK First Book Award 2021, MARVEL is an important new voice which contributes to an increased awareness of the issues surrounding gender identity and mental health. In doing so, this deeply personal book demands a more tolerant attitude from society towards transgender people and those who don’t identify as entirely male or female.

The signed edition includes a slip signed by the artist and bound into the inside back cover. 

Imperfect copy with a bumped corner - see photo example

 

• Van Zoetendaal 2023
• Hardback, 1st edition, 112p
• Near fine - see below

At his workspace in the centre of Amsterdam, when the afternoon sun is just right, Thomas Manneke captures still lifes and portraits of his daughter, Laurie, using an 8×10 inch plate camera. Most photographs in this book were made in collaboration with his daughter. The objects in the book are made especially to photograph them. Sometimes they are inspired by found objects, like a small grey stone with whimsical white lines or by a web created by caterpillars. Some objects were inspired by artworks from the past like the drawings on glass were by Josef Albers and the folded sculptures of thick paper, or dynamic cut-outs of cardboard were inspired by photographs of Francis Bruguiere. The book shows the fun of creating things together while getting inspired by the world around us.

Signed copy.

Light rubbing to the white dustjacket.

• Mack Books 2024
• Softcover, 1st edition, 160p
• New

Between the late 1970s and mid-1980s, Luigi Ghirri made a series of photographs meditating on the landscape of his native Italy, all within the grounds of a single theme park in Rimini, Emilia-Romagna. The popular tourist destination Italia in Miniatura presents scale models of Italy’s major natural and architectural landmarks, brought together in surreal proximity. Ghirri photographed this fabricated world with a characteristic sensitivity for visual coincidence and irony, illusion and reality, ambiguity and artifice. Reflecting on photography’s own processes of shrinking and representing, these images are among Ghirri’s most distinctive, playful, and conceptually compelling.

This new book presents the entirety of Ghirri’s In Scala series, expanded with numerous previously unseen images, and places them in conversation with work by the park’s founder and designer, Ivo Rambaldi. Rambaldi’s maps, sketches, collages, and reference images, made on exhaustive research trips across Italy, offer an analogous exploration of the possibilities and paradoxes of miniaturisation. Their frank functionality resonates with Ghirri’s embrace of the perspective and tools of the ama-teur. From the dialogue between these meticulous works of representation and fabrication we discover the possibility that, in Ghirri’s words, ‘Perhaps it’s in this very space, one of total fiction, that truth is concealed’.

This publication is brought together by curators Ilaria Campioli, Joan Fontcuberta, and Matteo Guidi, and includes new essays by the curators and by author Simon Garfield. It is completed by a series of images by photographer and theorist Joan Fontcuberta in response to Ghirri’s and Rambaldi’s encounters with the park.