Photobookstore

• Thames & Hudson 2013
• Hardback, reprinted edition
• Fine

"The Suffering of Light" is the first comprehensive monograph charting the career of acclaimed American photographer Alex Webb. Gathering some of his most iconic images, many of which were taken in the far corners of the earth, this exquisite book brings a fresh perspective to his extensive catalog. Recognized as a pioneer of American color photography since the 1970s, Webb has consistently created photographs characterized by intense color and light. His work, with its richly layered and complex composition, touches on multiple genres, including street photography, photojournalism, and fine art, but as Webb claims, "to me it all is photography. You have to go out and explore the world with a camera." Webb's ability to distill gesture, color and contrasting cultural tensions into single, beguiling frames results in evocative images that convey a sense of enigma, irony and humor. Featuring key works alongside previously unpublished photographs, "The Suffering of Light" provides the most thorough examination to date of this modern master's prolific, 30-year career.

2013 UK edition in fine condition.  

• Mack 2022
• Hardback, 1st edition
• New

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

Due in stock early February 2022, reserve your signed edition now.

• Here Press 2021
• Set of softcovers, 1st edition
• New

‘Firstly, I try to stress the importance of home and the family: I feel they are terribly important.
And secondly, I try to stress the fact that the theory of gravity is a lot of nonsense.’
– Ivor Cutler, 1959

Guy Bolongaro (born Crewe, 1978) studied sociology before moving to London to become a social worker. Around 2014, burnt out by work and frustrated by his attempts at making documentary films in his spare time, he began taking photographs as a form of ‘daily art therapy,’ making images on his lunch breaks and walks home from work. A few years after the birth of his first child he shifted focus from the public sphere to the family cosmos, turning attention from his walking routes to his domestic routines.

Capturing the strange and vibrant moments within the daily maelstrom of childcare and child’s play, and in documenting the cyclical patterns of family life, Bolongaro began a process of working through his feelings of ambivalence about how we live within the idealised ‘family unit’, attempting to persuade himself that family – or at any rate, his own – can work.

In the song from which ‘Gravity Begins At Home’ takes its title, the Scottish musician Ivor Cutler assures us that the theory of gravity is ‘a lot of nonsense’, and Bolongaro’s photographs appear to support this notion – that when it comes to family, everything is up in the air: here objects (eggs, daffodils, lit candles) levitate, and children fly as though possessed. Here too are celestial bodies, mirrorings and doublings, games of scale, and collage-like overlappings and abuttings, alongside quieter, homespun scenes of domestic life (hair is brushed, telly watched, laundry folded).

Cutler suggests that the family is something ‘terribly important’. Even if we accept this, then the importance of family is surely far from uncomplicated. So, while there are moments when the way we live together seems to defy the rules of gravity, we should continue to question the confines and strictures of the nuclear family model.

Composed of four expandable books held within a slipcase (finished with stickers applied by Bolongaro and his children) ‘Gravity Begins At Home’ gives us a dynamic, unsentimental view of family life: ambiguous, chaotic, unsettling and joyous in equal measure.

Signed copy.

• Here Press 2021
• Hardback, 2nd edition
• New
  

‘Before Carnival, you never sleep, always dreaming of bringing pleasure, innovation and creation.’
– Fanel Saint-Helere & Frantz Denoujou (Flanbo Mardi Gras troupe)

Leagues away from the sequinned, sanitised, corporate-sponsored carnivals found elsewhere in the Americas, the Madigra troupes of the Haitian port town of Jacmel enact and subvert myth, legends and the nation’s own histories, their improvisational costumes and surreal narratives a Vodou-charged blend of folk memory, political satire and personal revelation.

Here the Zèl Maturin, satin-clad devils in papier-mâché masks, hinged wooden wings clapping on their backs, do battle against Sen Michèl Arkanj and his army of pastors; further on the Chaloska in their cows’-tooth-adorned masks transform the feared early twentieth-century police chief Charles Oscar Étienne into a metaphor for the corrupting nature of absolute power.

At the crossroads the horned Lanse Kòd, their skin shining blacker than black with a mixture of cane syrup and charcoal, perform press-ups before running amok through the crowds. Meanwhile a trouser-clad donkey, led by the leaf-skirted Atibruno troupe, speaks into a mobile phone and eats fried plantain, to show the world that the peasants are as good as anyone, that all donkeys are important.

Here too are lone, idiosyncratic characters: Geralda, the single mother of a starving child, the mermaid-in-disguise Madanm Lasirèn, and Bounda pa Bounda, who plays out a Vodou vision revealed by a treetop-dwelling spirit.

Leah Gordon has been photographing Jacmel Carnival and recording oral histories with its participants since 1995. Her photographs in ‘Kanaval’ are stripped of kinesis and exuberance. She uses a sixty-year-old Rolleicord medium-format twin-lens-reflex camera, and shoots onto black and white negative film. The camera is mechanical, and once the film is loaded the shutter has to be physically cocked and the exposure set manually. She always asks permission and pays the participants for the chance to photograph them. A consensual reciprocity between the photographer and the sitter arises which leaves behind the commotion of the street and enters the more tranquil territory of a portrait studio. The time and space created allows for some of the historical narratives of the Madigra to seep through.

Revised and expanded second edition which includes many new photographs and oral histories, eleven years after its first publication.

• Tall Poppy Press 2021
• Softcover, 1st edition, 92p
• New
  

Sitting between the desire to leave and a love for those who’ve stayed, Before this comes to pass centers on the feeling of not quite wanting to be here but not really wanting to say goodbye. Rochelle Marie Adam’s debut monograph is imbued with love and care, attention directed to what makes each person and place worth loving, but also worth leaving. Like a buoyancy one gains only from cutting ties, the cities and suburbs shown are both comfortable but also empty: profoundly solitary and overwhelmingly lived in. Adam’s photos trace feelings of joy amidst an undercurrent of dread. As old friends become old friends, house mates because house bound and the suburbs now feel not just dull but desolate, Adam’s work shows the subtle details that point to closeness, the worlds we build for ourselves through the things we own and the visibility of our relationships

Yet far from hard or critical, those shown are always viewed as connected, loved and noticed: even as domestic life itself may feel worrisome, those who live it are always photographed tenderly and kindly, with conviction and respect. Adams’ work asks: what is the space between restless and settling down? What is the feeling between appreciation and worry? What do we make for ourselves when given the chance?

Swiss-bound edition of 150 copies.  Signed copy.

• Aperture 2021
• Hardback, 1st edition
• New
  

“Montgomery’s photographs capture the reality of Americans in crisis, in all our flawed, tragic, ridiculous glory.” —Patrick Radden Keefe, author of Empire of Pain: The Secret History of the Sackler Dynasty

American Mirror is award-winning photographer Philip Montgomery’s dramatic chronicle of the United States at a time of profound change. Through his intimate and powerful reporting and a signature black-and-white style, Montgomery reveals the fault lines in American society, from police violence and the opioid addiction crisis to the COVID-19 pandemic and the demonstrations in support of Black lives. Yet in his unflinching images, we also see moments of grace and sacrifice, glimmers of solidarity and tireless advocates for democracy. Like Dorothea Lange and Walker Evans before him, Montgomery has made an unforgettable testament of a nation at a crossroads.

Photographs by Philip Montgomery. Text by Patrick Radden Keefe and Jelani Cobb.

• T&M 2021
• Hardback, 1st edition
• New
  

Yamamoto is known for her portraits of young woman framed in subdued settings pierced by natural sunlight. With these photos, her interest lies in the universally human figure as organ/vessel concealed beneath the mask each individual subject dons from day to day. Since her work in Estonia in 2009, Yamamoto’s practice has incorporated the unconventional process of visiting countries where verbal communication is a struggle for her, choosing subjects, clothing and locations on arrival and conducting her work by body language, without speaking. This act of photography, a multilayered blending difficult to imagine from the fixed tone of Yamamoto’s works, bears fruit via its accumulated performing, as a collection of fragments unconsciously displayed by the girls.

The title “We are made of Grass, Soil, Trees, and Flowers” adds the word “flowers” to the title of Yamamoto’s 2018 book, indicating the artist’s desire to retain the concept employed in her prior work. For this book, Yamamoto leaves her previous main shooting location of Eastern Europe to present photos taken on a visit to Malawi in Africa, and Hokkaido and Okinawa in Japan. The places she visits and the cumulative sense of belonging in the innate culture, customs, and beliefs of the people who live there, are comprehensively taken on board and applied to her practice. As an extension of Yamamoto’s previous work, these photographs pointing to a new expansion into more intimate viewpoints skillfully convey the photographer’s quiet thrill at witnessing the moment when the gentle, generous light of nature intersects with the unselfconscious figures of the subjects who present themselves.

I have long explored what it is that narrowly persists in the body even after a person is stripped of all their affiliations; what it is that makes that person, that person. While accepting the preciousness of the characteristics and individuality we each possess, I wonder if perhaps upon diving beneath the ground on which we stand, we might find a network of connected roots that transcends all boundaries, as if to trace the very origins of human memory.

–− Ayaka Yamamoto, 2021

• T&M 2021
• Softcover, 1st edition
• New
  

The Internet has become a part of our daily lives, we live with all kinds of "images" through many types of  mediums. Therefore, it may be obvious that the "photograph" of a few decades ago is completely different from the "photograph" of today. Yoshida explores the possibilities of photography in the present in a variety of ways.

In this series, "Survey: Mountains," Yoshida approaches the subject of mountains.
She explored (surveyed) mountains through a complex combination of photographic processes, such as searching for images on the Internet, researching in a virtual space on Google Maps, and actually visiting the site to take photographs. Even the same mountain can be seen and perceived differently depending on the angle and method of approach. Also, the aspect of the mountain that Yoshida presented in her exhibition changed each time. Through the accumulation of many attempts, Yoshida formed the "mountain".

In this book, Yoshida has compiled not only photographs that she collected or actually took, but also photographs of the exhibition installation view. Cultural researcher Hiroki Yamamoto has also contributed to the book. This is a book that questions the way we look at the world today and the way images should be.

ーーー

I look for somewhere I want to go, by searching for information and images, maps and aerial photographs on the internet, then photograph on-screen the images that come up, and armed with these, make my way to the actual location.

Sometimes that place is smaller than I imagined from the information gleaned earlier. Or perhaps the topography has changed. If occasionally I feel let down in this way, on other occasions I stumble upon scenes more stunning than anything I envisaged. And sometimes I gain nothing at all from the journey.

Just as lava accumulates to make a huge mountain, mountains photographed in various places accumulate on my little hard disk, forming an imaginary mountain.

In a space overflowing with mountain images and information, I felt the weight of an actual mountain, a mountain that surely ought not to be there. The task of giving shape to non-existent ground to define the contours of a mountain, is exactly like surveying.

− Shiho Yoshida

• T&M 2021
• Softcover, 1st edition
• New

• Another Place Press 2021
• Softcover, 1st edition with print
• New

“Know ye, that on the right hand of the Indies there is an island called California very close to a side of the Earthly Paradise”

The Adventures of Esplandián, Garci Rodríguez de Montalbo (Seville, 1510)

Photographed in the city of Oakland, California, Last Best Hope is a visual essay that reflects on hope as a fundamental driving force of the human condition.

The images of Last Best Hope take reality as a starting point to create a fragmented narrative that is torn between idealism and delusion, between the search for a better life and the decay of a paradise that has long ceased to be one.

Special Edition, limited to 30 copies - each with an A4 limited edition inkjet print signed and numbered by Juan (see image)

• Journal 2021
• Hardback, 1st edition
• New

The photo album that my mother put together stands on the shelf, portraying the family, relatives, holidays and everyday occurrences from my childhood. Over the years, the story of my family has become my own memories. What sort of photo album would I get if I supplement the photos with my feelings relating to events that are not included in the album? Is it possible to recreate memories from that time?

/ Peter Wendel

Text in Swedish and English

• Journal 2021
• Softcover, 1st edition
• New

From July 1944 to April 1945, Lisa Garnier’s grandmother, Gisèle Chartraire was deported to the German concentration camp Ravensbrück. During the imprisonment she made a small notebook for writing down recipes told by her fellow prisoners – recipes exchanged in the heart of hell where hunger rubbed shoulders with the absurd and arbitrary. 

What does the little notebook tell us about survival? Was it just about imaginary meals? 

Le Livre de recettes / The Recipe Book is an intimate story, in words and pictures, about visual senses, imprisoned women and Lisa Garnier’s need to track down her own family affiliation. An act of resistance to oblivion, an act of transmission since recipes are only worthwhile if they are shared. 

Lisa Garnier lives outside Paris and works on nature-human interactions as a writer, photographer and scientific specialist.

Text In French and English.

• Journal 2021
• Hardback, 1st edition
• New

Using Dante’s Inferno as a loose narrative set in the contemporary world, the book is as a personal journey expressed through images that reveal a sense of unreality – a kind of veiled dreamscape – but at the same time reminiscent of the underlying unease of living in a world unable to deal with major crises threatening a fragile human existence. As such, the book is also a personal response to the current covid pandemic. 

The word “interregnum” describes a period with lack of clear leadership in a country, organisation or social order. Failed states will often be in an interregnum. 

Ronny Rønning explores a visual language that can represent the anxieties of living in a world seemingly out of control. The images has a reference to reality, but also contains something more ambivalent – an empty, dark, and foreboding landscape, as after the catastrophe, with only remnants of human life. 

As part of finding a visual language for the book, Ronny Rønning has experimented with the photo medium. He has used an analogue camera, black & white film and flash. During development the film has been exposed to light in an attempt to find a visual expression appropriate for the book’s topic. 

Text in English.

• Journal 2021
• Hardback, 1st edition
• New

Some time ago, I came across a book entitled The Seasons, written in the 18th century by James Thomson. I have created the texts in this book by translating, deleting, adding, combining words and writing new ones, inspired by the poems I found. 

I started taking photographs inspired by these texts and looked for connections between the words and the things I saw in my time, in my life. I cruised between the fall of kings and gods, roaring floods, a beauty that may be stupid in the heart, drowning people, an I, a we, a conversation with a you, the memory of a first derailment, the small life going on, and the big one, the apocalypse, a rattling gaze that holds what you look at in the threads, a howling child, and a song. 

 - Helga Härenstam

Text in Swedish and English.

• RRB 2021
• Hardback, 1st edition
• New

I photograph dying buildings and Quarry Hill was terminal by the time I got to it. Times change and I know there was no point in keeping Quarry Hill Flats. But what it stood for might have been worth keeping” - Peter Mitchell

RRB Photobooks are pleased to announce the forthcoming publication Epilogue -The Demise of the Quarry Hill Flats by Peter Mitchell. The book acts as a sequel to his 1990 publication Memento Mori, which documented the dramatic impact of the Quarry Hill redevelopment project in Leeds. 

The book contains over 40 new images, documenting the abandonment and subsequent demolition of the site, adding a poignant final chapter to the 1990 publication and its later facsimile edition. Largely eschewing the archive material seen in Memento Mori, Epilogue takes a more narrative approach to telling this final part of the story. Mitchell is again the lone wanderer in an increasingly unpopulated and other-wordly landscape.

Quarry Hill was a large housing estate in Leeds built in the 1930's as part of a ‘great social experiment’ to accommodate an entire community of 3000 people. By the 1970's both the vision and the flats were crumbling and the decision was made to demolish.

Though the notion of Utopia underpins the narrative of Quarry Hill, from its passionately visionary beginnings to its step-by-step decline and final end, there are no real morals or easy conclusions to be drawn.  As Bernard Crick wrote, it was “small things, not any inherent fault in the grand design, which destroyed Quarry Hill.”  It was more about timings than anything else - a sad ending. Peter Mitchell’s chronicles and photographs simply show what happens to utopias when they implode.

For a limited period all copies will also ship with a  5x5" signed c-print (horse image)

Shipping begins Friday 14th January.

• RRB 2021
• Hardback, 1st edition
• New

I photograph dying buildings and Quarry Hill was terminal by the time I got to it. Times change and I know there was no point in keeping Quarry Hill Flats. But what it stood for might have been worth keeping” - Peter Mitchell

RRB Photobooks are pleased to announce the forthcoming publication Epilogue -The Demise of the Quarry Hill Flats by Peter Mitchell. The book acts as a sequel to his 1990 publication Memento Mori, which documented the dramatic impact of the Quarry Hill redevelopment project in Leeds. 

The book contains over 40 new images, documenting the abandonment and subsequent demolition of the site, adding a poignant final chapter to the 1990 publication and its later facsimile edition. Largely eschewing the archive material seen in Memento Mori, Epilogue takes a more narrative approach to telling this final part of the story. Mitchell is again the lone wanderer in an increasingly unpopulated and other-wordly landscape.

Quarry Hill was a large housing estate in Leeds built in the 1930's as part of a ‘great social experiment’ to accommodate an entire community of 3000 people. By the 1970's both the vision and the flats were crumbling and the decision was made to demolish.

Though the notion of Utopia underpins the narrative of Quarry Hill, from its passionately visionary beginnings to its step-by-step decline and final end, there are no real morals or easy conclusions to be drawn.  As Bernard Crick wrote, it was “small things, not any inherent fault in the grand design, which destroyed Quarry Hill.”  It was more about timings than anything else - a sad ending. Peter Mitchell’s chronicles and photographs simply show what happens to utopias when they implode.

Special Edition of 100 copies, Inclusive of a signed & limited print of 'Abandoned Car' see first image after cover.  

For a limited period this will also ship with an additional 5"x5" signed c-print (horse image)

Shipping begins Friday 14th January.