Photobookstore

• Prestel 2024
• Hardback, 1st edition. 160p
  
• New 

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This beautifully produced book brings together for the first time Okamura’s Irish work, which was almost entirely unpublished before now.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.

• Nazraeli Press 2024
• Hardback, 1st edition 136p
• New

Published to coincide with a major 2024 traveling exhibition in Tokyo, Los Angeles and London, this gorgeous new monograph presents 100 of Michael Kenna’s most iconic photographs of the Japanese landscape, many published here for the first time. A perfect pairing of artist and subject, these photographs of Japan comprise perhaps Kenna’s best known body of work and have been the subject of countless exhibitions throughout the world. Michael Kenna first visited Japan in 1987 on the event of his inaugural exhibition there, and he has returned dozens of times and made thousands of photographs throughout the country’s vast and incredibly varied landscape. Our earlier monographs Japan and Hokkaido have been out of print for many years, so we are thrilled to announce this important new publication that includes work spanning Kenna’s decades-long love affair with the country. Japan / A Love Story is beautifully printed in duotone on natural coated art paper and quarter bound in linen and silk. It opens with an essay in Japanese and English by the renowned critic and historian Kohtaro Iizawa. 

“Japan has a long and rich tradition of reciprocal gift giving. I have been the grateful recipient of so much over so many years in Japan, and I know that I will never be able to give back in equal measure. I hope this work can be seen as a small token of my desire to do so. I also hope this work can be viewed as a homage to Japan and that it will serve to symbolize my immense ongoing appreciation and deep gratitude for this beautiful and mysterious country.” — From the Afterword by Michael Kenna

"He has been reflective when others have been militant, romantic when others have been skeptical. Such isolation can starve all but the most independent of talents, but for these it can provide a sanctuary where visions can develop undisturbed. Kenna is one of these.” — Joanna Pitman, The Times

Due in stock early May, available for pre-order now.

• Sturm & Drang 2024
• Softcover, 1st edition
  
• New 

Karlheinz Weinberger saw something in the teenagers and rockers that was hidden from everyone else at the time and he wanted to capture it. Society, which only saw the juvenile delinquentswith long hair and bad tattoos, not the actual person, who mainly tried to reproduce the poses of the role models from the early biker films.

 Weinberger always treated them correctly, former members of the Lone Stars, the "gang of thugs" from which the Hells Angels later emerged, told me. He was always there with his camera, on the sidelines and yet right in the middle of things. He was particularly appreciated because he generously distributed the prints of his pictures. Weinberger's photographs therefore appear again and again in the photo albums of his protagonists. Those albums were to them what the Instagram feed is to today's teenagers. Nothing was as important as the picture. The image of themselves as a “wild" gang member.

Karlheinz Weinberger's photographs stand out when you leaf through these albums. No matter how often and how enthusiastically the youngsters photographed themselves, the picture they took of themselves was blurred and lacking in contours. Only the outsider Weinberger succeeded in showing that they were more than "rebels without a cause". He had them pose for his camera and at the same time exaggerated the pose with photographic means. He saw the beauty behind the martial appearance. The pride and vulnerability that the early rockers tried to hide behind their patched-together uniforms and huge belt buckles. And of course the eroticism that reverberates like an electric current through all his work.

By the end of the sixties, when the “Halbstarke” (see KHW Vol. 1) turned into the first biker gangs, Weinberger had long since turned into the "court photographer" of the scene. He was there when the Lone Stars turned into the Hells Angels. He took photos at the first big rocker gatherings, which still had the charm of the legendary Whitsun gatherings of the bikers on St. Peter's Island in Lake Biel. He was asked to attend weddings and funerals, and was invited to club openings and trips. And Weinberger took photographs: as always on the sidelines and yet as an important part of this "movement", which over time moved further and further away from its anarchic beginnings.

From a vast amount of negatives and slides, selected in the archive of the Karlheinz Weinberger Foundation in Zürich, Sturm & Drang is proud to present Rocker, Volume 4 in the ongoing series of treasures from the KHW archive. 

• Chose Commune 2024
• Hardback, 1st edition 92p
• New

Rione Sanità (Naples), Santa Lucia (Cosenza), Torre del Greco. There are places in Southern Italy that carry scars of incurable wounds on the walls and on the flesh of its inhabitants. In those wounds lay the historical memory and the real face of people. Their names are Alfonso, Elena, Marco, Stefania, to name a few. Some are from the same districts and know each other, others don’t. But they have one thing in common: they’ve all met Ciro Battiloro, who has followed them into the intimacy of their home, with his camera and with his heart. He portrayed their everyday life by taking part in it. Never an intruder, Ciro Battiloro is a friend, a brother, and a confident. He doesn’t focus so much on the marginality, but rather on the extraordinary vitality. He has seen new lives being born, children becoming teenagers, and then parents in their turn. He also had to say goodbye. Silence is a Gift is about love and loneliness, life and death, pain and joy — but most importantly, about intimacy and resistance.

Text in French / English / Italian

• Void 2024
• Softcover, 1st edition, 168p
  
• New

In ‘I’ll Be Late’ Yoshi Kametani ponders the existential anxieties of life and death, as well as time and its relation to entropy. The book is filled with scenes of familiar domestic moments, people we assume to be friends are mixed in with images of dirty dishes piled up high, pizza crust left in the box or cigarettes burning to ash. Throughout the work there is a constant yet subtle reminder that time is relentlessly passing, harmony turns into chaos, and entropy deteriorates everything in its path, turning it into something new within its natural cycle. 

Kametani deconstructs the images to their bare bones and constructs them back together with 4 layers in the time-consuming screen-printing process. Printing the photographs in this way offers an opportunity to live with the work and see it materialize, and perhaps most importantly to better understand what the images mean to the author himself.

“The time I spent on creating the work also informed my thoughts on the subject. All of the images are shot indoors of intimate moments which would not have been possible without the passage of time. Our friendship and trust was built within it.”

“The images are of a diaristic nature, they depict my friends, the places I would be in, and the moments that crossed my path taken from my everyday life while living in Brixton London. To me, the autobiographical aspect of the work is not the focal point, but rather a means to an end, a tool for exploration of time.”

- Yoshi Kametani

• Libraryman 2024
• Softcover, 1st edition 128p
• New

The Long Shadow: Unwrapped ~ Marion Post Wolcott’s Labor and Love reveals the unpublished life and images of the American photographer Marion Post Wolcott¹ (b. 1910, d. 1990). Wolcott was the first woman hired as a full-time photographer for the Farm Security Administration in 1938 during America’s Great Depression. Three years later, having made more than 9,000 pictures, Wolcott received ultimatums from her husband, Lee Wolcott, and boss, Roy Stryker: choose love or photography. Wolcott quit her job and spent eleven years managing three dairy farms in rural Virginia. She became a farmer and a farmer’s wife. She raised four children, did housework, milked cows, learned to use machinery, and repaired farmhouses. One assumed that Wolcott gave up photographing. That assumption was wrong.

The Long Shadow is a homage-style reflection on a female icon of photography. Drawing from Wolcott’s archive of unseen intimate portraits and through conversations with her family, Anglo-Australian photographer Odette England (b. 1975) juxtaposes them with her photographs and prose rewritten from interviews and historical records. She responds to similarities between her and Wolcott’s ways of seeing. England’s daughter Hepburn (b. 2010) shares the story as a photographer and muse. This unique collaboration celebrates the unknown sides of a woman whose professional career ended in 1942 and who sought solace in making photographs in the shadows.

The book contains a preface and prose written by Odette England as well as 19 unpublished photographs by Marion Post Wolcott.

Edition of 700 copies.

¹ Marion Post Wolcott studied in New York and Vienna and was as a freelance photographer for Life, Fortune, and other magazines. Upon Paul Strand’s recommendation, who helped establish photography as an art form in the 20th century, Marion became the first female full-time photographer at the Farm Security Administration and only the second woman hired on the project after Dorothea Lange. From 1942 onwards, after her departure to focus on family and farming, Marion never photographed professionally again but did not stop taking pictures.

• National Portrait Gallery 2024
• Hardback, 1st edition, 224p
  
• New

Francesca Woodman and Julia Margaret Cameron: Portraits to Dream In draws parallels between two of the most significant practitioners in the history of photography, presenting fresh research, rare vintage prints, and previously unseen archival works.

'I feel that photographs can either document and record reality or they can offer images as an alternative to everyday life: places for the viewer to dream in.' – Francesca Woodman, 1980

Living and working over a century apart, Julia Margaret Cameron (1815–1879) and Francesca Woodman (1958–1981) experienced very different ways of making and understanding photographs. Francesca Woodman and Julia Margaret Cameron: Portraits to Dream In accompanies the exhibition of the same name opening at the National Portrait Gallery, London, in March 2024. Spanning the careers of both artists, the beautifully illustrated catalogue includes their best-known photographs as well as less familiar images. The exhibition works are arranged into eight thematic sections with feature essays, offering an accessible, engaging opportunity to consider both artists in a new light.

This publication presents the artists’ exploration of portraiture as a ‘dream space’. It makes new connections between their work, which pushed the boundaries of the photographic medium and experimented with ideas of beauty, symbolism, transformation and storytelling to produce some of art history’s most compelling and admired photographs.

• Blue Lotus Editions / Photo Editions 2024
• Hardback, 2nd edition, 100p
• New

Yasuhiro Ogawa’s new photobook Into the Silence captures the rugged yet timeless beauty of Japan’s northern region as he follows in the footsteps of the 17th Century poet Matsuo Bashō.

The story of Matsuo Bashō's journey through the northern provinces of Japan in the 17th century, is recounted in his travelogue "The Narrow Road to the Deep North,” ("Oku no Hosomichi”). In the summer of 1689, Bashō set out on his journey with his traveling companion Sora. They traveled on foot, carrying only minimal provisions and staying in humble lodgings along the way. Bashō was seeking inspiration for his poetry, and he found it in the natural beauty and cultural richness of the places he visited.

Like Bashō before him, Ogawa set out on a journey through the Tōhoku region, unlike Bashō, who traveled on foot with pen in hand, Ogawa preferred to move by train with camera in hand.  His photographs capture the rugged beauty of the landscape, from snow-covered mountains to misty forests and along deserted roads with glimpses of wild oceans, often shot through foggy windows on a train in motion. Through his lens, Ogawa reveals a world that is both remote and timeless, a world in stillness and motion.

Despite the passage of centuries, the challenges faced by Bashō on his journey are still evident in Ogawa’s photographs. The loneliness and isolation of the road are palpable in the shots of empty trains, lone tracks or roads and desolate hotel interiors. So are the physical challenges of traversing rough terrain and inclement weather documented in his muted photographs.  There is a marked contrast between the beauty and tranquility of the landscape and the harsh realities of life in this remote region. From plain coastal towns to empty streets, Ogawa’s images reveal the toll that economic decline and depopulation have taken on the area. Yet there remains a sense of hope and resilience.

Hardback 2nd edition (1st was softcover)

Signed copy. 

Copies of Into The Silence, with a signed print are available here.

• Blue Lotus Editions / Photo Editions 2024
• Hardback, 2nd edition, 100p
• New

Yasuhiro Ogawa’s new photobook Into the Silence captures the rugged yet timeless beauty of Japan’s northern region as he follows in the footsteps of the 17th Century poet Matsuo Bashō.

The story of Matsuo Bashō's journey through the northern provinces of Japan in the 17th century, is recounted in his travelogue "The Narrow Road to the Deep North,” ("Oku no Hosomichi”). In the summer of 1689, Bashō set out on his journey with his traveling companion Sora. They traveled on foot, carrying only minimal provisions and staying in humble lodgings along the way. Bashō was seeking inspiration for his poetry, and he found it in the natural beauty and cultural richness of the places he visited.

Like Bashō before him, Ogawa set out on a journey through the Tōhoku region, unlike Bashō, who traveled on foot with pen in hand, Ogawa preferred to move by train with camera in hand.  His photographs capture the rugged beauty of the landscape, from snow-covered mountains to misty forests and along deserted roads with glimpses of wild oceans, often shot through foggy windows on a train in motion. Through his lens, Ogawa reveals a world that is both remote and timeless, a world in stillness and motion.

Despite the passage of centuries, the challenges faced by Bashō on his journey are still evident in Ogawa’s photographs. The loneliness and isolation of the road are palpable in the shots of empty trains, lone tracks or roads and desolate hotel interiors. So are the physical challenges of traversing rough terrain and inclement weather documented in his muted photographs.  There is a marked contrast between the beauty and tranquility of the landscape and the harsh realities of life in this remote region. From plain coastal towns to empty streets, Ogawa’s images reveal the toll that economic decline and depopulation have taken on the area. Yet there remains a sense of hope and resilience.

Hardback 2nd edition (1st edition was softcover)

Signed copy.

Supplied with a  7”x 5” signed and stamped archival pigment print (snow image) as shown.  Exclusive to Photobookstore.

• Blue Lotus Editions / Photo Editions 2024
• Hardback, 2nd edition, 100p
• New

Yasuhiro Ogawa’s new photobook Into the Silence captures the rugged yet timeless beauty of Japan’s northern region as he follows in the footsteps of the 17th Century poet Matsuo Bashō.

The story of Matsuo Bashō's journey through the northern provinces of Japan in the 17th century, is recounted in his travelogue "The Narrow Road to the Deep North,” ("Oku no Hosomichi”). In the summer of 1689, Bashō set out on his journey with his traveling companion Sora. They traveled on foot, carrying only minimal provisions and staying in humble lodgings along the way. Bashō was seeking inspiration for his poetry, and he found it in the natural beauty and cultural richness of the places he visited.

Like Bashō before him, Ogawa set out on a journey through the Tōhoku region, unlike Bashō, who traveled on foot with pen in hand, Ogawa preferred to move by train with camera in hand.  His photographs capture the rugged beauty of the landscape, from snow-covered mountains to misty forests and along deserted roads with glimpses of wild oceans, often shot through foggy windows on a train in motion. Through his lens, Ogawa reveals a world that is both remote and timeless, a world in stillness and motion.

Despite the passage of centuries, the challenges faced by Bashō on his journey are still evident in Ogawa’s photographs. The loneliness and isolation of the road are palpable in the shots of empty trains, lone tracks or roads and desolate hotel interiors. So are the physical challenges of traversing rough terrain and inclement weather documented in his muted photographs.  There is a marked contrast between the beauty and tranquility of the landscape and the harsh realities of life in this remote region. From plain coastal towns to empty streets, Ogawa’s images reveal the toll that economic decline and depopulation have taken on the area. Yet there remains a sense of hope and resilience.

Hardback 2nd edition (1st edition was softcover)

Signed copy.

Supplied with a  7”x 5” signed and stamped archival pigment print (birds image) as shown.  Exclusive to Photobookstore.

• Blue Lotus Editions / Photo Editions 2024
• Hardback, 2nd edition, 100p
• New

Yasuhiro Ogawa’s new photobook Into the Silence captures the rugged yet timeless beauty of Japan’s northern region as he follows in the footsteps of the 17th Century poet Matsuo Bashō.

The story of Matsuo Bashō's journey through the northern provinces of Japan in the 17th century, is recounted in his travelogue "The Narrow Road to the Deep North,” ("Oku no Hosomichi”). In the summer of 1689, Bashō set out on his journey with his traveling companion Sora. They traveled on foot, carrying only minimal provisions and staying in humble lodgings along the way. Bashō was seeking inspiration for his poetry, and he found it in the natural beauty and cultural richness of the places he visited.

Like Bashō before him, Ogawa set out on a journey through the Tōhoku region, unlike Bashō, who traveled on foot with pen in hand, Ogawa preferred to move by train with camera in hand.  His photographs capture the rugged beauty of the landscape, from snow-covered mountains to misty forests and along deserted roads with glimpses of wild oceans, often shot through foggy windows on a train in motion. Through his lens, Ogawa reveals a world that is both remote and timeless, a world in stillness and motion.

Despite the passage of centuries, the challenges faced by Bashō on his journey are still evident in Ogawa’s photographs. The loneliness and isolation of the road are palpable in the shots of empty trains, lone tracks or roads and desolate hotel interiors. So are the physical challenges of traversing rough terrain and inclement weather documented in his muted photographs.  There is a marked contrast between the beauty and tranquility of the landscape and the harsh realities of life in this remote region. From plain coastal towns to empty streets, Ogawa’s images reveal the toll that economic decline and depopulation have taken on the area. Yet there remains a sense of hope and resilience.

Hardback 2nd edition (1st edition was softcover)

Signed copy.

Supplied with a  7”x 5” signed and stamped archival pigment print (cat image) as shown.  Exclusive to Photobookstore.

• Blue Lotus Editions / Photo Editions 2024
• Hardback, 2nd edition, 100p
• New

Yasuhiro Ogawa’s new photobook Into the Silence captures the rugged yet timeless beauty of Japan’s northern region as he follows in the footsteps of the 17th Century poet Matsuo Bashō.

The story of Matsuo Bashō's journey through the northern provinces of Japan in the 17th century, is recounted in his travelogue "The Narrow Road to the Deep North,” ("Oku no Hosomichi”). In the summer of 1689, Bashō set out on his journey with his traveling companion Sora. They traveled on foot, carrying only minimal provisions and staying in humble lodgings along the way. Bashō was seeking inspiration for his poetry, and he found it in the natural beauty and cultural richness of the places he visited.

Like Bashō before him, Ogawa set out on a journey through the Tōhoku region, unlike Bashō, who traveled on foot with pen in hand, Ogawa preferred to move by train with camera in hand.  His photographs capture the rugged beauty of the landscape, from snow-covered mountains to misty forests and along deserted roads with glimpses of wild oceans, often shot through foggy windows on a train in motion. Through his lens, Ogawa reveals a world that is both remote and timeless, a world in stillness and motion.

Despite the passage of centuries, the challenges faced by Bashō on his journey are still evident in Ogawa’s photographs. The loneliness and isolation of the road are palpable in the shots of empty trains, lone tracks or roads and desolate hotel interiors. So are the physical challenges of traversing rough terrain and inclement weather documented in his muted photographs.  There is a marked contrast between the beauty and tranquility of the landscape and the harsh realities of life in this remote region. From plain coastal towns to empty streets, Ogawa’s images reveal the toll that economic decline and depopulation have taken on the area. Yet there remains a sense of hope and resilience.

Hardback 2nd edition (1st edition was softcover)

Signed copy.

Supplied with a  7”x 5” signed and stamped archival pigment print (rain image) as shown.  Exclusive to Photobookstore.

• Self 2023
• Hardback, 1st edition
  
• New

In a world of ‘alternative facts’ & ‘cognitive dissonance’ Turner’s photographs play with the idea of information voids & misunderstandings, inviting us to explore the shadows and obfuscations of a familiar, yet not quite recognisable world. Embedded within each photograph is a deep sense of ambiguity which gently challenges the viewer to reassess their own interpretation & calls into question the imposition of our own personal subjectivity on the world around us.

“There are those who would have us believe that the scariest of monsters dwell in the shadows & that we must be on permanent guard. I prefer to think that, while always striving to increase our understanding of the world, we can acknowledge and accept the things we do not know and bathe in the soothing powers of the shade.”

Turner’s work has a tactile, almost ethereal quality, which stems from his fastidious and experimental approach to the process of image making. These are images that are deeply ponderous in nature & often require repeated viewings which reveal the subtle details that unlock the work.

Signed copy.

• Imagebeeld 2024
• Hardback, 1st edition, 104p
• New

The pond at Upton Pyne formed at the site of an eighteenth-century manganese mine.

Located on land owned by a local family who were involved in the mining venture, the first excavations began in March 1788. It was originally an open-cast mine employing just a few men who worked with ladders, picks, shovels, horses and carts. The quality of the ore in the load was rich, and once refined it was shipped from Exeter Quay to London and Bristol, where it was used predominantly in the production of glass. After a bright start the output of the mine steadily diminished and by 1823 it had ceased production, leaving a large pit, shallow on the east side near the road and becoming deeper towards the west, where it is overhung by a cliff.

Known locally as ‘The Black Pit’, it gradually filled with water to form a pond. Within living memory the land around the pond had been used to keep the village pigs and to grow vegetables. However, over the years, as so many relics of the Industrial Revolution, it became increasingly derelict, full of discarded household goods, a car, farm and garden waste and fallen trees.

This is a story in three parts. The first two are built around the three-year cycles of the two projects to improve the pond. The third is a short epilogue that places the site in a wider geographic perspective.

The pictures present a collection of histories. Within the broad sweep of time they encompass a thousand years of a large estate on the borders of a city that has since Roman times been a regional capital; the comings and goings of the Industrial Revolution; the decline of agricultural life with the advent of modern farming; and the urbanisation of village life.

Within the span of the six years the pond had risen and fallen, trees had collapsed while others grew, herons and a kingfisher had returned, the roof of the shed adjacent to the pond had fallen in, the collection of farm machinery had grown, and the number of ducks living in and around the pond had significantly increased.

Running as threads through the work are the myths that pervade our imaginations and motivate so many of our actions; and the wonder at what we too might leave behind.

Edition of 500 copies.

Signed copy.

• Kominek 2024
• Hardback, 1st edition, 160p
• New

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

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.

• GOST 2024
• Hardback, 1st edition, 304p
• New

‘…what does it mean to live in a land where the people responsible for protecting its citizens can so often be involved in their deaths?’

In the US, approximately 1000 people continue to die each year in encounters with police.  More than any other industrialised nation. My America is an archive of and memorial to victims of these encounters. The photographs, taken at locations where citizens were shot or tasered by law enforcement officers, create a quiet but chilling critique of the contemporary United States. The scale of the book­­­­­­­­­­ attests to the scale of the problem yet Matar asks us to remember these are individuals.

'Of the over 300 sites I visited only seven had any type of memorial. Something about these lives not being recognised, even on the land itself, upset me most. As a nation, we weren't taking stock. We rarely, if ever, marked the ground.'

The black and white photographs in My America are of city parks, shopping malls, parking lots,  mobile homes, empty fields, and roadside highways. By photographing these banal landscapes Matar declares that what happened at the locations matters and questions the link between landscape and memory.

'Can a photograph tell us anything about what has happened before the photographer arrives… even if not, I believe there is value in documenting the ground where violence has taken place... Perhaps a photograph can offer ways to remember acts of injustice that have been forgotten or never made transparent.' 

Previously, Matar, an American living in London, spent years documenting sites of state sponsored violence in North Africa, Eastern and Southern Europe. In 2015 she turned her lens on her own country and began researching who, how, and where citizens were dying in police encounters in the US. She created detailed maps in her studio and compiled information about each victim who died in 2015 and 2016.

‘I wanted to address the issue of police violence in a way that wasn’t just polemic.' 

A small grant from the Ford Foundation enabled her to make six road trips over the next four years. She photographed in states with the highest numbers and/or highest rates per capita of lethal encounters—Texas, California, Oklahoma, and New Mexico—travelling alone on highways, back roads, and city streets to reveal something beyond statistics. After Matar finished photographing, she spent two additional years researching the legal outcome of each case. The result is a book designed with respect to the victims but also rich with information about the structural reasons why these events continue to occur at such a high rate.

'In a world where millions of pictures are taken each day, I still believe photographs can contain meaning; they can become evidence of things not seen or heard... if, as I believe, to photograph is a desire to know something deeply and beyond the surface, I must be quiet to see. And attending to something says I acknowledge it matters.'

Signed copy.

• GOST 2024
• Hardback, 1st edition, 182p
• New

’Nothing Personal’ shows the back office of war, which is the complete opposite of a battlefield: an oversized playground for adults with wine, finger foods and shiny weapons. Dead bodies here are mannequins or pixels on screens of a huge number of simulators. Bazookas and machine guns are plugged into flatscreens and war action is staged in an artificial environment in front of high-ranking guests, ministers, heads of states, generals and traders.’

Teryoshin deliberately obscures the faces of the business men and women present as it is not his intention to fix blame on individuals. Thea nonymised arms dealers can be seen as a metaphor for a business operating in the shadows and under the radar of the media. His photographs are playful and often focus on bold graphic angles and visual humour such as drinks put down alongside machine guns and geopolitics tote bags. The casual nature of his observations combined with the bright innocent colour palette which runs throughout the imagery is a sinister contrast to the goods on sale. Teryoshin’s use of flash helps him to highlight certain elements and is reminiscent crime scene photography.

Teryoshin first began photographing all types of fairs—agriculture, pets, funerals—because his photography school in Dortmund, Germany was next door to a giant expo hall. In 2016 he ended up at a hunting fair—Hunt and dog—and was surprised how guns, in this instance hunting rifles, attracted old and young visitors. After publishing his series Sons and guns, he became curious to find out what happens at professional arms fairs. He first gained media access to Eastern Europe’s biggest arms fair MSPO in Kielce, Poland in September 2016 due to his work for VICE Germany and the project began. Over a period of years he visited expositions in Poland, Belarus, South Korea, France, Germany, South Africa, China, UAE, Peru, Russia, Vietnam, USA and India.

‘Nowadays companies use slogans like, ‘70 years defending peace’ or, ‘Engineering a better tomorrow.’ It is hard to imagine, that some people in the weapons industry believe these things. Still there is a remarkable quote from the inventor of the machine gun Richard Gatling that says: ‘It occurred to me that if I could invent a machine – a gun – which could, by its rapidity of fire, enable one man to do as much battle duty as 100, that it would, to a large extent, supersede the necessity of large armies and consequently, exposure to battle and disease be greatly diminished.’ Ironically, rather than decreasing the number of soldiers on the battlefield, his invention led to unimaginably greater bloodshed.’

Signed copy.

• Skinnerboox 2024
• Softcover, 1st edition, 108p
• New

“In my recent work, 'I would like to tell you about this memory' there are underlying spiritual elements with an autobiographical background closed in images where everything is given as an essence, as a mental smell, as a symbol, as a projection of thought.

In the enclosure of language the subject takes on a new vitality, in new circumstances, which breaks the old patterns to evoke that music which is the desire to live again, a precious critical confession of mine of the adventure of life, a line of reflection linked to the signs born from the post-operative fog which then became strong and precise crystal, a flow of images between me and the world, mixed with my fragile breath which supported the body in that moment, folds of the soul invaded by light, to concoct a story also as a future intuition in the silent river of time."

(Mario Giacomelli, 2000)

Text in English and Italian.

• Dewi Lewis 2024
• Hardback, 1st edition, 296p
• New

Christer Strömholm is recognised as one of the major figures of 20th century European photography. Strömholm captured his surroundings in black-and-white images that display his integrity, understated humour and a highly personal aesthetic. With an unmistakable sensitivity to human suffering, based on his personal experience, he took photography in a new direction. Sean O'Hagan, writing in The Guardian, has described him "as the father of Swedish photography both for his abiding influence and for his role as a teacher." 

Born in Stockholm, Strömholm discovered photography via graphic art in the late 1940s. During the 1950s and 60s he lived much of the time in Paris, where he developed his particular style of street photography. It was here that he produced his most famous work, Les amies de Place Blanche, a tribute to a group of young transsexuals with whom he became friends and whose lives he shared over many months. They were very much outsiders, struggling to survive with their main source of income being from prostitution. In these legendary photographs, shot at night in available light, Strömholm merged street photography and portraiture, depicting them as the close friends they were, in intimate and honest portraits far from the spectacular or speculative.

Les amies de Place Blanche raises profound issues about sexuality and gender; and, in Strömholm’s own words, “it is about obtaining the freedom to choose one's own life and identity.”

Strömholm also went on numerous photographic expeditions to places around the globe in the early 1960s, including Spain, Japan, India and the USA. Early in his career, he began teaching in Stockholm, eventually setting up the legendary Fotoskolan, from which some 1,200 students graduated between 1962 and 1974.

Strömholm’s work has inspired many generations of photographers, though he did not become known to the broader public until 1986, with a major exhibition at Moderna Museet in Stockholm. Stömholm died in 2002.