The Last Survivor is the First Suspect
The Last Survivor is the First Suspect
The Last Survivor is the First Suspect
The Last Survivor is the First Suspect
The Last Survivor is the First Suspect
The Last Survivor is the First Suspect
The Last Survivor is the First Suspect
The Last Survivor is the First Suspect
The Last Survivor is the First Suspect
The Last Survivor is the First Suspect
The Last Survivor is the First Suspect
The Last Survivor is the First Suspect
The Last Survivor is the First Suspect
The Last Survivor is the First Suspect
The Last Survivor is the First Suspect
The Last Survivor is the First Suspect
The Last Survivor is the First Suspect
The Last Survivor is the First Suspect
The Last Survivor is the First Suspect
The Last Survivor is the First Suspect
The Last Survivor is the First Suspect
The Last Survivor is the First Suspect
The Last Survivor is the First Suspect
The Last Survivor is the First Suspect

The Last Survivor is the First Suspect

Regular price £45.00 Sale price £35.00 Save 22%
/
Shipping calculated at checkout.

Only 1 items in stock!
  • Kodoji Press 2021
  • Softcover, 1st edition, 480p
  • New

The Last Survivor is the First Suspect is at once a celebration and a requiem. The project, captured between 2005 and 2009 by photographer Nick Haymes, is a record of a drifting community of young friends based mainly between two distinct geographic points: Southern California and Tulsa, Oklahoma. The book's narrative merges a sense of joy in documenting burgeoning friendships and bonds, and a looming sense of dread that would ultimately culminate in a series of tragedies.

Weaving throughout Haymes intimate photographs are a series of digital screenshots which Haymes has identified as key to this moment in time, which offer the viewer a secondary narrative of engagement. Social media was still relatively young and Haymes became acutely aware of a new nodal sense of communication between these distinct groups of friends. Platforms such as MySpace, YouTube and online message boards engendered a sense of community by enabling connection, while also setting new and impossible standards and expectations. Diligently collected, these various forms of communication between the characters frame a foreboding.

In Haymes’ own introduction to the book he accounts how his camera allowed him to compensate for a sense of crippling shyness developed during his teenage years. ’I picked up a camera and hid, discovering I could once again be near people, intimate with them, without having to engage,’ he writes. To create this exhibition and publication, the artist has returned to a body of pictures, piecing together what happened to these people for himself. Here, Haymes invites us to form a contemporary engagement with this specific historic moment, where things are both different and the same in equal measure. L.P. Hartley famously opened his coming of age opus The Go-Between ’The past is a foreign country; they do things differently there.’ The Last Survivor is the First Suspect shows this sentiment with remarkable clarity.

Edition of 700 copies.