Book Club Live

Discover some of the brilliant books being launched at the Fair and where to find them during Photo London.

 

‘Bedfellow’ by Caroline Tompkins

PALM* STUDIOS, DISCOVERY, D11
BOOK SIGNING: Saturday 18 May 2024
4:00 pm – 5:00 pm

Bedfellow is about the intrinsic relationship between women, sex, and fear. Caroline Tompkins’ photographic series explores the primal vulnerability and power dynamics inherent in gender constructs.

While sex can be a positive, lifelong experience, women also bear the burden of violence, often perpetrated by men in the pursuit of power. The dichotomies between soft and hard, lust and violence, and heaven and hell are all recurring tropes throughout the series. The normalization of this violence in everyday life is exemplified by the expectation placed on women to take safety measures, such as carrying pepper spray, not consuming alcohol in excess, and informing friends of their whereabouts.

These expectations run parallel to the societal expectation of women to engage in lasting relationships with men and to bear children. Such contradictions lead to an intriguing question regarding the impact of fear on female desire. Tompkins’ personal experience as a woman who both desires and fears men informs her use of the heterosexual “female gaze” to subvert the objectification of women in Western art.

 

‘Fashion Faux Parr’ by Martin Parr

ROCKET, EAST WING, P10
BOOK SIGNING: Thursday 16 May 2024
3:00 pm – 4:00 pm

The first book dedicated to the fashion photography of renowned British photographer Martin Parr.

Fashion Faux Parr showcases Martin Parr’s collection of fashion photography for the first time in one book. More than 250 colour images, many previously unpublished, explore a wide variety of fashion work, from editorial collaborations with major magazines and houses, including Vogue, Balenciaga, and Gucci, to candid photographs from behind the scenes at major fashion events and portraits of industry icons.

 

 

‘The Rolling Stones: Rare and Unseen’ by Gered Mankowitz

ICONIC IMAGES GALLERY, EAST WING, W13

Delve into the unseen archive of iconic photographer Gered Mankowitz as he shares rare and newly discovered images of his time with the Rolling Stones, alongside his most iconic shots.

Just a teenager, Mankowitz took some of the best-loved photographs of the Stones in their frantic, formative years. Now for the first time he looks beyond those famous images – unearthing frames that have never been seen before, plus those rarely used.

Also featuring Gered’s first-hand stories and a host of expert writers on the band and their music – including The Times’ chief rock and pop critic Will Hodgkinson, Ben Sisario of the New York Times as well as academics, fashion writers and more – The Rolling Stones Rare and Unseen is a fresh look at the greatest story in rock ‘n’ roll.

 

 

‘Rotan Switch’ by Lisa McCord

KEHRER VERLAG, PUBLISHERS, P04
BOOK SIGNING: Friday 17 May 2024
3:00 pm – 4:00 pm

Rotan Switch is the first monograph by Lisa McCord, documenting life on her grandparents’ cotton farm in the Arkansas Delta community of Rotan. It takes its name from the community’s central landmark—the railroad switch where farmers loaded their cotton bales onto trains headed out of the Delta

Although it has not been used in years, it remains a potent symbol of the complex intersections of industry and agriculture, of racism and injustice. Collected over the last forty-four years, these images and stories are a reflection on the people and places that have taught McCord the meaning of the word home. Constructed from McCord’s analog photographs, family snapshots and ephemera, including monochrome photographs, colour polaroids, and recipes, this long-term project is also a self-exploration into her inherently complicated role in this community.

Kehrer Verlag is delighted to welcome the artist to a signing of their debut publication »Rotan Switch«.

 

‘The Burnthouse Lane’ by Michelle Sank

DEWI LEWIS PUBLISHING, PUBLISHERS, P03
BOOK SIGNING: Friday 17 May 2024
4:00 pm – 5:00 pm

The Burnthouse Lane estate was first dreamt up by Exeter Council in the idealistic 1920s to rehouse impoverished people from the West Quarter slum. Designed along Garden City lines and purposely self-contained it was a place for working-class families to live. In the 1980s, Margaret Thatcher’s Right to Buy scheme meant that some of the properties became privately owned, but Burnthouse Lane is still referred to as a council estate. The deprivation it was supposed to overcome has continued to haunt it, but the isolated nature of the estate and its intricate labyrinth of lanes, have also made for positives, such as a close-knit community and a sense of solidarity among the residents.

Born in South Africa, Michelle Sank settled in the UK in 1987. She grew up during Apartheid and is the daughter of Latvian immigrants. She cites this background as informing her interest in sub-cultures and the exploration of contemporary social issues and challenges.

 

‘Connoisseurs & Academies’ by Karen Knorr

KEHRER VERLAG, PUBLISHERS, P04
BOOK SIGNING: Friday 17 May 2024
4:00 pm – 5:00 pm

Karen Knorr’s photographic series Connoisseurs & Academies induce a kaleidoscope of memories. Photographed between 1986 and 2005 with an analogue camera, her images let us venture into the intricate world of the history of museums and stately homes, of objects, paintings, connoisseurship, and the structures of academies. The use of animals as an allegorical motif is today embedded in Knorr’s practice, but they first appear in Connoisseurs, where a chimpanzee becomes the Genius of the Place.

Karen Knorr’s (b. 1954) works are in the collections of the Tate and Victoria & Albert Museum, London, Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris and Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris, SFMOMA, San Francisco, National Museum of Modern Art, Kyoto, and Museum of Art and Photography (MAP) in Bangalore, among others.

Kehrer Verlag is delighted to welcome the artist to a signing of her new publication Connoisseurs & Academies. Karen Knorr’s work will be on display at Sundaram Tagore Gallery during Photo London.

 

‘Fugue’ by Lydia Goldblatt

GOST, PUBLISHERS, P02
BOOK SIGNING: Saturday 18 May 2024
1:00 pm – 2:00 pm

Fugue by Lydia Goldblatt is a body of work about love and grief, mothering and losing a mother, intimacy and distance, told through photographs and writing. Centring on the domestic space and made over the course of four years, it tells a story that is neither apologetic nor idealised. When Goldblatt became a mother she found herself unable to make pictures. However, after her own mother died, she began to photograph again, both at home and in the city around her.

‘I wanted to be honest about what I was struggling with, abo

ut the feelings of claustrophobia and rage, as much as intimacy and love. These are feelings so often hidden by mothers, so often silenced as unacceptable.’ – Lydia Goldblatt

 

‘Anton’s hand is made of guilt. No muscle of bone. He has a Gung-ho Finger and a Grief-stricken Thumb’ by Edgar Martins

PURDY HICKS, PAVILION, G17
BOOK SIGNING: Saturday 18 May 2024
1:00 pm – 2:00 pm

This multifaceted publication includes original photographs, archival photography and images researched from private Islamist, Libyan and dark web forums. Developed in north Africa from 2019-2023, this part-documentary, part-speculative project is based on a poignant and very personal story and experience: the death and disappearance of Edgar Martins’ close friend, photojournalist Anton Hammerl, during the 2011 Libyan war. The book responds to Anton Hammerl’s disappearance/death through an examination of the geography, players and circumstances surrounding his demise as well as a reflection on the decisive but paradoxical role that photography has played in conflict zones.

Anton’s hand is made of guilt. No muscle of bone. He has a Gung-ho Finger and a Grief-stricken Thumb. was awarded the main prize at the SONY World Photography Awards 2023.

 

‘A Leap of Faith’ by Rodney Smith

STALEY-WISE GALLERY, WEST WING, W15
BOOK SIGNING: Saturday 18 May 2024
4:00 pm – 5:00 pm

 

Rodney Smith: A Leap of Faith is the first retrospective book on the photographer and weaves together an introduction by Graydon Carter, a critical essay by Getty Museum curator Paul Martineau, and an assessment of Smith’s technique by the Center for Creative Photography’s chief curator, Rebecca A. Senf. The book maps Smith’s creative trajectory—including his introduction to photography, early personal projects, teaching, commissioned pieces, and career in fashion—and provides insight into his personal life and character.

Contributor Leslie Smolan (Rodney Smith’s wife, creative partner and the executor of his Estate) will be on hand to sign books and speak to visitors about Smith’s legacy.

Staley-Wise Gallery’s Photo London presentation in 2024 is the first exhibition of Smith’s work in the UK, following his first New York exhibition at the gallery in 2023.

 

‘The London Youth Portraits’ by Derek Ridgers

ACC ART BOOKS, FIRST FLOOR, F05
BOOK SIGNING: Saturday 18 May 2024
5:00 pm – 6:00 pm

Between 1978 and 1987, renowned British photographer Derek Ridgers captured London youth culture in all its glory. With skinheads, punks and new romantics, in clubs and on the street, his images have come to define a seminal decade of British subculture.

Each picture is a tribute to the trials and triumphs of youth, and a precious document of style and culture in 1980s England, from the height of punk to the birth of acid house. Several have been exhibited internationally in cities as far-ranging as Moscow, Adelaide and Beverly Hills, in the National Portrait Gallery, Tate Britain and Somerset House. Ridgers has also collaborated with a number of major fashion houses, including Saint Laurent and Gucci, and his images continue to inspire photographers, artists and fashion designers around the world.