British documentary photographer and artist Stephen Gill (born 1971) presents a collection of found photographs from postwar Hackney, a borough in East London, in the 1950s. Photographer unknown, these high-quality, medium-format images all depict couples kissing on their wedding days, surrounded by overexposed wedding cakes, guests and decadent flower arrangements.
Dubbed by Martin Parr the new "whiz kid of British documentary," Stephen Gill (born 1971) records the immediacies of city sights with airy specificity and lightness of touch. Gill's latest volume, Coming Up for Air, collects work made in Japan in 2008 and 2009. Unlike previous volumes such as Hackney Flowers, these images minimize local information in favor of achieving what Gill calls "a kind of fictional aquatic world.... muffled chaos seen through squinted eyes." Consisting of 100 color photographs that linger and pivot upon the lightest of effects, this superb work of bookmaking comes with a handpainted acetate dustjacket and is certain to prove both a classic photobook and a collectible.
PUBLISHER Nobody
BOOK FORMAT Clth, 10 x 13 in. / 106 pgs / 97 color.
PUBLISHING STATUS Pub Date 10/31/2010 Out of stock indefinitely
DISTRIBUTION D.A.P. Exclusive Catalog: FALL 2010 p. 73
PRODUCT DETAILS ISBN 9780955657726TRADE List Price: $65.00 CDN $87.00
Just as a collection of a musician's B-side cuts and outtakes, or the scenes that didn't quite make it into a movie, speak volumes about the project as a whole, and offer their own kind of magic by their very excision, so too does B Sides, the companion volume to British photographer Stephen Gill's latest book of photos Coming Up for Air, likewise illuminate the fringes of his latest project. In B Sides, Gill records minute effects of texture and trace. Please note that only a limited number of copies are available.
PUBLISHER Nobody
BOOK FORMAT Clth, 10 x 13 in. / 72 pgs / 34 color.
PUBLISHING STATUS Pub Date 10/31/2010 Out of stock indefinitely
DISTRIBUTION D.A.P. Exclusive Catalog: FALL 2010 p. 73
PRODUCT DETAILS ISBN 9780955657740TRADE List Price: $65.00 CDN $87.00
Published by Chris Boot. Introduction by Jon Ronson.
This is UK photographer Stephen Gill's guide to his own particular world of objects, scenes and the things we do--so familiar and obvious that they fall below the usual threshold of the average personís attention. An original first book featuring eight series of photographs made in South East England--from lost people and the backs of advertising billboards to people gazing vacantly out the window of the London-to-Southend train--Gill's visual scrutiny of the everyday combines humor, formal rigor and empathy towards his human subjects. Text by Stephen Gill and introduction by humorist and television director, Jon Ronson.
PUBLISHER
BOOK FORMAT Hardcover, 7 x 8.75 in. / 240 pgs / 142 color.
PUBLISHING STATUS Pub Date 5/31/2009 Out of print
DISTRIBUTION D.A.P. Exclusive Catalog: FALL 2009 p. 155
PRODUCT DETAILS ISBN 9780954281366TRADE List Price: $39.95 CDN $50.00
Stephen Gill has learnt this: to haunt the places that haunt him. His photo-accumulations demonstrate a tender vision factored out of experience; alert, watchful, not overeager, wary of that mendacious conceit, "closure." There is always flow, momentum, the sense of a man passing through a place that delights him. A sense of stepping down, immediate engagement, politic exchange. Then he remounts the bicycle and away. Loving retrievals, like a letter to a friend, never possession… What I like about Stephen Gill is that he has learnt to give us only as much as we need, the bones of the bones of the bones... --Iain Sinclair Continuing to photograph where his award-winning book Hackney Wick left off, Stephen Gill also made Archaeology in Reverse in this personally cherished area of East London. Still making pictures with the camera he bought at Hackney Wick market for 50 pence, for this volume Gill focuses on things that do not yet exist. This magnificently produced book features traces and clues of things to come in a poetic, sometimes eerie and quiet photographic study of a place in a state of limbo prior to the rapid transformation that the area faces during the build-up to the Olympics in 2012.
PUBLISHER Nobody
BOOK FORMAT Hardback, 8.5 x 8.5 in. / 104 pgs / 104 color.
PUBLISHING STATUS Pub Date 12/15/2007 Out of print
DISTRIBUTION D.A.P. Exclusive Catalog: SPRING 2008 p. 98
PRODUCT DETAILS ISBN 9780954940553TRADE List Price: $70.00 CDN $85.00
UK photographer Stephen Gill has again used his surroundings as the inspiration for this beautiful and evocative series. Hackney Flowers evolved from Gill's longstanding interest in Hackney, East London. For this volume, Gill collected flowers, seeds, berries and objects from Hackney, then pressed them in his studio and rephotographed them alongside his own photographs and other found ephemera, thus building up multi-layered images built from the area. Some of the base photographs were also buried in Hackney Wick, allowing the subsequent decay to imprint upon the images, stressing this collaboration with place. A parallel series also runs within this finely produced book, showing members of the Hackney public with floral details on their persons. This is a warm, poetic and visually exciting book containing images that leave an overwhelming sense of color, emotion and rhythm extracted from a single borough of London.
PUBLISHER Nobody
BOOK FORMAT Hardback, 8.75 x 11.5 in. / 114 pgs / 59 color.
PUBLISHING STATUS Pub Date 12/15/2007 Out of print
DISTRIBUTION D.A.P. Exclusive Catalog: SPRING 2008 p. 98
PRODUCT DETAILS ISBN 9780954940539TRADE List Price: $85.00 CDN $100.00
Stephen Gill: Coming up for Air
Stephen Gill: B Sides
Stephen Gill: Field Studies
Stephen Gill: Archaeology in Reverse
Stephen Gill: Hackney Flowers