Daniel Blaukfus

Since the mid-1990s, the Northern Irish photographer Hannah Starkey has dedicated her work to women and the ways in which photography has shaped ideas about what it means to be female. Known for her cinematic mise-en-scenes, Starkey constructs portraits of women of different generations, often situated in everyday urban contexts. Proffering the view of the flâneuse – a female counterpoint to the artistic tradition of the male flâneur – Starkey’s images reveal moments of private reflection, alienation, or social interaction that might otherwise go unseen: a woman fleetingly fascinated by another woman’s reflection, or the attentive gaze of a mother carrying her child. 

Like modern-day genre paintings, Starkey’s images are driven by familiar narratives, but ones that play on the visual languages of diverse photographic genres – including diaristic, street, documentary, cinematic, fine art, and fashion – to subtly probe the ways that women are represented in popular culture. As Starkey has said, “I really think that visual culture is the last battleground for women’s equality and freedom”. From her early staged photographs made in Belfast to her recent documentation of the 2017 Women’s March in London, this catalogue raisonné charts two decades of Starkey’s influential image-making, and serves as a significant touchstone for discussions on the female gaze. The book includes a biographical essay by the curator and writer Charlotte Cotton and a candid conversation between the artist and the editor and writer Liz Jobey.

Hannah Starkey  . Photographs 1997–2017

184 pages

25.5 cm x 27.5 cm

Embossed linen bound hardback with tipped-in image on reverse

Publication date: November 2018

ISBN 978-1-912339-19-8

The Complete Papers is an extensive volume encompassing all of Thomas Demand’s work over the past 28 years, together with the primary texts written about his practice. The book includes previously unseen early works from 1990, together with reference reproductions on every one of his pieces. A newly commissioned interview with Russell Ferguson, new texts by Jeff Wall and Alexander Kluge, contributions by Parveen Adams, Francesco Bonami, Teju Cole, Beatriz Colomina, Jeffrey Eugenides, Julia Franck, Hal Foster, Rachel Kushner, Ben Lerner, Jacques Rancière, Gary Shteyngart, Neville Wakefield, to name a few, is concluded by a complete exhibition listing and bibliography.

This hardback volume, housed in a printed and embossed slipcase, which also includes a Demand work printed on the interior lining, is the primary authority on the work of one of the most important artists of the 21st century. 

Thomas Demand . The Complete Papers

Printed hardcover with tipped-in embossed plate, three different paper stocks and twenty-five loose Japanese paper inserts,

all housed in an embossed 4-colour printed slipcase

Edited by Christy Lange

Design by Naomi Mizusaki

Second printing

560 pages

740 colour plates

24 cm x 29 cm

Publication date: April 2019

ISBN 978-1-910164-90-

Ouarzazate is a small city in the Moroccan desert famous for its movie studios and filming locations, an industry which began with David Lean and Lawrence of Arabia.

Invited by the American Friends of the Marrakech Museum for Photography and the Visual Arts to propose a project for his artist residency there, Ruwedel photographed the movie sets in 2014 and 2016.

Much of the filming activity in Ouarzazate has been for costume and Biblical epics. Cleopatra, The Garden of Eden, The Mummy, The Last Temptation of Christ; but also The Sheltering Sky and The Hills Have Eyes. Many of the sets appear to have been abandoned while others are constantly repurposed.

An Egyptian portal leads to a medieval village. An authentic Kasbah in ruins is actually a ruined replica of a “real” Kasbah elsewhere. Shepherds drive their flocks past “ancient” siege machines and Roman columns. “I was reminded of certain passages in Nathaniel West’s Day of the Locust.”

Far from the American deserts where he has produced much of his work of the past thirty years, in Morocco Ruwedel continues his long term interest in contemporary ruins and the histories of both landscape and landscape photography. The photographs are eerily reminiscent of 19th century European photography of ancient Egypt and the Middle East.

Mark Ruwedel  Ouarzazate

Limited edition 

Signed by the artist

136 pages

Publication date: October 2018

ISBN 978-1-912339-26-6

There are occasions when you have no time to “see” good images — you have to feel them. Once an image has been consciously “seen”, the brain has processed the elements that shape it and very often the image has already vanished; it’s too late. I’m talking about reportage and documentary photography, which is the kind of photography I practice.

We need to develop the automatisms or reflexes that may enable us to capture images on the fly, just as we are able to catch objects that slip through our fingers before they reach the ground. These reactions, that after an intense learning process we have transformed into automatisms, are also the reactions that lead us to lift our cameras up to take horizontal or vertical pictures without having had time to consciously decide which is the best option. Insofar as this process has to do with practicing automatisms and the emptying of intention, it is related to the Zen archer described by Henri Cartier-Bresson.

The exercises help us truly notice things and automate reactions. I began by taking the photographs for this essay as a conceptual exercise, to see what happened when I photographed ‘what was behind’, a variation on the kind of images in BANAL 2,  Hide-and-Seek. I soon realised, however, that the main advantage was that it helped me notice the parallaxes and vanishing points, in this case those of the structures of the gratings. The parallaxes and vanishing points determine the perspectives, and it is important to develop the instincts that enable us choose the ideal perspective for each situation. This is even more important when we are looking for images that are constructed in a non-conventional way, because it implies taking an additional step and taking it instinctively and automatically. As is often the case, even in formal exercises on pure images, literature paves its way and insists on taking centre stage. Despite the fact that this is an exercise and not a story, I’ve followed literary as well as purely formal criteria to page and title this essay.

Cristóbal Hara

which side are you on?/ The trivial essays 6

Cristóbal Hara

Design: Roberto Turégano and Cristóbal Hara

24×17 cm. 32 pages. Softcover.

ISBN: 978-84-09-04940-0

New Zealand’s Whanganui River is the lifeblood of the Māori. The tribes of Whanganui take their name, their spirit and their strength from this great river, which flows from the mountains of central North Island through to the Tasman Sea.

In Te Ahi Kā: The Fires of Occupation, photographer Martin Toft explores the deep physical and metaphysical relationships between the river and the Māori. In 1996 Toft spent six months in the middle and upper reaches of the Whanganui River in an area known as the King Country. Here he met Māori who were in the process of reversing the colonisation of their people and returning to their ancestral land, Mangapapapa which is on the steep banks of the river inside Whanganui National Park. At the end of his journey Toft was given the Māori name Pouma Pokai-Whenua.

Returning twenty years later to rekindle the spiritual kinship he had experienced, Toft began to work on this book. Its narrative is situated within the context of the current Whanganui River Deed of Settlement, Ruruku Whakatupua and the projects led by local Māori to settle historical grievances with the government dating back to the 1870s. At the heart of it is the Whanganui tribes’ claim to the river, which is seen by them as both as an ancestor and as a source of both material and spiritual sustenance.

Born in Denmark, Martin Toft is a photographer and educator who works on commissions and long-term independent and collaborative projects. He combines elements of documentary and fine art to explore social, anthropological and cultural themes, often immersing himself in communities for long periods of time. His work is underpinned by archival, historical and conceptual discourse and incorporates photography, video, sound and text. Te Ahi Kā – The Fires of Occupation is edited by Rafal Milach and designed by leading book designer Ania Nałęcka-Milach. The book was shortlisted for the prestigious Kassel Dummy Award 2018.

Published with financial support from Creative New Zealand, Lottery Environment and Heritage Fund and Te Mana o Te Awa grant administered by Ngā Tāngata Tiaki o Whanganui.

TE AHI KĀ: THE FIRES OF OCCUPATION

Martin Toft

Clothbound hardback

200 pages, 205 x 165mm 

89 colour / b&w photographs 

ISBN: 978-1-911306-38-2 (Green / female cover)

ISBN: 978-1-911306-39-9 (Orange / male cover)

A deep global investigation that tries to answer as difficult questions as: Do people who are condemned to death really deserve to die? or Does any government believe that it can determine whether a human being deserves to live or die?

Seabird is a book of moments observed by American photographer Bobby Doherty between 2014 and 2018. Doherty makes photographs that get to the point. At first glance, some of the photographs inSeabirdfeel gloriously oversimplified, objects and situations simmered down to their bare constituent elements; the clearest glass on the reddest tablecloth, the wettest dew on the softest leaf. Doherty is quick to embrace both the meaningful and meaningless of everyday life with equal measure: emotive, bucolic landscapes and portraits sit alongside city trash, animals, food and flowers. What comes out in the end feels like a photographic egalitarianism, where the tiny and the huge, the mundane and the sublime, shake hands across pages. Despite his acclaim as a still-life photographer, Doherty is keen to avoid categorisation or to overanalyse his images, placing himself in a lineage of those with a powerful urge to make photographs, consistently and extensively, without concern for cohesion or retrospection. Within this openness,Seabird becomes an identifiably human tapestry of images, suggesting the changing of moods, or the shifting of emotions. In the blink of an eye, the work jumps from Hallmark-greeting-card kitsch to wry juxtaposition, from the stereotypical to the absurd.

Seabird . Bobby Doherty

Published by Loose Joints, 224 pgs, 16 × 24 cm, hardcover, 2018, 978-1-912719-02-0

This new book from RRB Photobooks and the Martin Parr Foundation will mark the important contribution that Tony Ray-Jones (1941 – 1972) and his legacy, have made to British documentary photography.

The exhibition and book will focus on photographs taken between 1966 – 1969 as Ray-Jones, driven by curiosity, travelled across the country to document English social customs and what he saw as a disappearing way of life. This small but distinctive body of photographs was part of an evolutionary shift in British photography, placing artistic vision above commercial success. In this short period of time, Ray-Jones managed to establish an individual personal style. He constructed complex images against a uniquely English backdrop, where the spaces between the components of the image were as important as the main subject matter itself.

 ‘I have tried to show the sadness and humour in a gentle madness that prevails in people. The situations are sometimes ambiguous and unreal, and the juxtapositions of elements seemingly unrelated, and yet the people are real. This, I hope, helps to create a feeling of fantasy. Photography can be a mirror and reflect life as it is, but I also think that perhaps it is possible to walk, like Alice, through the looking glass, and find another kind of world with the camera.’

Ray-Jones’ skills were gleaned from a generation of street photographers he encountered whilst living in New York in the mid-1960s. These photographers included Garry Winogrand, Joel Meyerowitz and others associated with the circle of legendary Harpers Bazaar art director Alexey Brodovitch. Their pictures defined the era as they used the street as a framework. Ray-Jones applied this new way of seeing to his native England and photographed his observations as they had never been seen before.

In 2012, Martin Parr alongside curator Greg Hobson, revisited Ray-Jones' contact sheets from this period and found previously unseen images. These new discoveries will be exhibited and published alongside iconic early images, including vintage prints from the Martin Parr Foundation collection.

Tony Ray-Jones (1941 – 1971) was born in Wells, Somerset and studied graphic design at the London School of Printing. In 1960, aged just 19, Ray-Jones won a two-year scholarship to Yale in the Untied States. Following a chance meeting with Alexey Brodovitch, he attended his classes at the Design Laboratory in New York alongside fellow students including Robert Frank, Irving Penn and Garry Winogrand. He returned to England in 1966 and whilst supporting himself through photographic assignments, he travelled around the country in a VW camper van. His work was exhibited at the ICA, London in 1969 alongside that of Dorothy Bohm, Don McCullin and Enzo Ragazzini. In 1971 he returned to the United States to take up a teaching post at the San Francisco Art Institute and began planning future projects before being diagnosed with Leukemia in 1972. He returned to the UK for treatment and died aged just 31. The first monograph of his work, A Day Off (1974) was published posthumously and a retrospective of his work was held at the National Media Museum in 2004. In 2013, Media Space at the Science Museum, London displayed his work alongside that of Martin Parr in the touring exhibition Only in England.

Tony Ray-Jones

RRB Photobooks / Martin Parr Foundation
16th October 2019
Hardcover
Red Cloth
30 x 25 cm
128 pages
Essay by Liz Jobey
Introduction by Martin Parr

Czesław Siegieda, born the son of Polish immigrants to England in Leicestershire in 1954, showed an interest in photography from an early age. From his teens he photographed the Polish community he grew up in, moving through fêtes and funerals with an ease only available to an insider.

The images in the book, taken between 1974 and 1981, show the staunchly Catholic traditions and national customs so faithfully maintained by the community as they rebuilt their lives following the trauma suffered during and after the Second World War. Whilst many of Siegieda’s images display a sharp eye for the absurd and all are marked by a visible affection for his subjects, his photographs of his close family are notable for their intimacy. His mother Helena, though physically robust, looks careworn and vulnerable, clutching a bucket of vegetable peelings or a picture of the Virgin Mary like a life raft whilst her husband (Czesław’s stepfather) hovers in the background, as if ready to lend a hand if needed but not wishing to intrude.

For many years the archive remained private, initially out of respect for the sensitivities of his parents’ generation: nervous of their position as ‘guests’ in a foreign land, they were determined not to draw attention to themselves. This initial impulse of discretion soon gave way to the more prosaic demands of life and work. For decades the negatives sat unheeded in a drawer until, in 2018, two years after his mother’s death, Siegieda decided that it was time to bring them out into the world. The process of digitising the archive went hand in hand with the creation of a website and the release of images on social media, posting photographs on Instagram in the expectation that they might be of niche interest to a small number of followers. The response was as overwhelming as it was unexpected; the photographs attracted the attention of many notable photographers, including Martin Parr, who encouraged Siegieda to publicise the work more widely.

The book contains over 80 images from this archive, with an essay by author and historian Jane Rogoyska as well as a foreword by Martin Parr. The book is available in an edition of 600, including 30 copies with a signed and limited pigment print.
Special thanks to the Polish Cultural Institute in London for their support in producing this title.

Czesław Siegieda - Polska Britannica


November, 2019
RRB Photobooks / IC-Visual Lab
Binding Softover
Size 23.4 x 15.6 cm
Pages 148
Edition 800 copies

“The Mechanical Retina on My Fingertips” is how Suda named his Minox Camera that held him in thrall from 1991 to 1992. The Minox camera is popularly known as a spy camera - It fits in the pocket with a shutter release as light as the blink of an eye. The resulting images developed from 8x11mm negatives are grainy and have a flat perspective. Suda comments that “no other camera ever accompanied my activities so closely.”

In addition to the Minox works which Suda published in his exhibitions during the 90s - “Trance”, “Keelung”, “Family Diary”, “Naked City”, “1987 Taipei City View” and “Before Night Falls”, this book includes more than 400 works selected from over 600 unpublished images which had long been stored in “A Box of Lingering”, as Suda called it.

“The moment” has finally been released.

The Mechanical Retina on My Fingertips

Issei SUDA

Publisher: Zen Foto Gallery

Book Size183 × 128 × 20 mmPages438 pages, 430 imagesBindingSoftcoverPublication Date2018LanguageEnglish, Japanese, ChineseLimited Edition700

The very first photobook by legendary Japanese photographer Daido Moriyama, “Japan: A Photo Theater,” is finally available again in a renewed edition.

Originally published in 1968 – the year which also saw the launch of the influential Provoke magazine – the book already demonstrates Moriyama’s trademark visual style. On invitation of Japanese writer Shuji Terayama, Moriyama began photographing members of a traveling theater group, adding shots of dwarf show dancers, strip clubs, street performers, fetuses in formaldehyde containers and other motifs.

This 2018 release is the first to feature English translations of Shuji Terayama’s writings. The book, limited to an edition of 700, is numbered and signed by Daido Moriyama.

Japan, A Photo Theater（English Version）

Daido MORIYAMA

Publisher: MATCH and Company Co., Ltd., Getsuyosha

2018 reprint edition

Book Size 308 × 228 mm Pages 232 Binding Hardcover, slipcase Publication Date201 8LanguageEnglish, Japanese Limited Edition 700

30 years have passed since world’s worst nuclear accident happened at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant (ChNPP) in the former Soviet Union (currently, Ukraine). Photojournalist Kazuma Obara explored Ukraine from February 2015 to April 2016.

Project “30” aims to depict people in Ukraine who have a connection to the explosion; whose lives were altered by the sudden release of atomic energy and subsequent political strife. To depict this, Obara challenged traditional visual representation by creating 3 different types of object: two photobooks and a replica of newspaper. The photobook “Exposure” depicts the first 30 years of life of an invisible girl who suffers ongoing medical problems as a result of the disaster. The images were created by using old Ukrainian colour negative film which was found in the abandoned city of Pripyat. Another photobook, “Everlasting,” captured the commute of the ChNPP’s workers between their hometown and the plant as a metaphor for the cycle of repetition. Decontamination work has been handed down from generation to generation since the accident.

Given the difficulty of dealing with radioactive waste it seems as though this process could go on for ever. Supporting those two photobooks, Obara make the replica of an old newspaper which was found in Pripyat from the time helps to feel the passing of time.

Selfpublish, Edition 86, 2016(sold out)

Editorial RM, Edition 1900,2017/2018

//Awards, Nominations//

World Press Photo Award 2016, People, 1st Prize

Magnum Graduates Photography Award, Winner

WIRED Audi INNOVATION AWARD, Winner

Photo-eye Best photobooks 2017 selected by Todd Hido

Athens Photo Festival Portfolio Review2015, Winner

Hariban Award, Finalist

Magnum Lens Culture Award 2016, Finalist

What was once called fashion photography finds itself nowadays positioned along a much broader spectrum of intentions and visual cues. Photographers are borrowing from the aesthetics of fashion, moving away from creating glamorous ideals towards telling stories of social and political inclusivity, diversity, identity, everyday life and an ever changing panorama of lifestyles.

In this issue of Foam Magazine, we present the portfolios of 16 photographers, artists and collectives, each adopting distinct and empowering approaches to contemporary fashion photography. We’ve also had the chance to include a number of insightful and inspiring interviews with people from the fashion photography field. Alongside this, we feature a long form interview between curator Zoé Whitley and fashion designer Grace Wales Bonner, discussing fashion and identity. Furthermore, we are pleased to share an interview between Hans Ulrich Obrist, Artistic Director of the Serpentine Galleries, and Tyler Mitchell. They covered optimism, utopias, and how photography can be a way of achieving the impossible. Running throughout are interventions by invited fashion magazines sharing their editorial visions.

Foam Magazine #53: Adorned, The Fashionable Issue

EAN 8710966455234-00053

ISSN 1570-4874

288 pages

Printed on selected specialised paper 

300x230x23 mm

1118 g

Provoke was first published in November 1968 as a dojin-shi, or self-published magazine. It was originally conceived by art critic Koji Taki (1928-2011) and photographer Takuma Nakahira (1938-2015), with poet Takahiko Okada (1939-1997) and photographer Yutaka Takanashi as dojin members. The subtitle for the magazine was “Provocative Materials for Thought”, and each issue was composed of photographs, essays and poems. After releasing the second and third issue with Daido Moriyama as a subsequent member, the group broke up with their last publication First, Abandon the World of Pseudo-Certainty - an overview edition of the three issues. Provoke’s grainy, blurry, and out-of-focus photographs were initially ridiculed as are-bure-boke and stirred a great deal of controversy, yet it had created a strong impact inside and outside of the photography world during that time. However, today, Provoke has become an extremely rare book and very few people have seen the original.

Published as part of The Japanese Box: Facsimile Reprint of Six Rare Photographic Publications of the Provoke Era*, Provoke's facsimile reprint has its photographic images cropped approximately 3 mm from the edges for bookbinding purposes. The reprint also does not include texts by Takahiko Okada due to copyright reasons. Provoke Complete Reprint by NITESHA maintains the original size of the images and includes all original texts, along with the ones by Takahiko Okada. In addition, the volumes will be accompanied by complete English and Chinese translations of the original Japanese texts as a booklet.

PROVOKE Complete Reprint of 3 Volumes

Photograhs by Koji Taki, Takuma Nakahira, Yutaka Takanashi, Takahiko Okada, Daido Moriyama

Text in Japanese with English and Chinese translations printed separately to accompany the volumes as a supplement

Nitesha, 2018

First edition

3 softcovers in slipcase