Evidence
Regular price £45.00 Save Liquid error (snippets/product-template line 124): Computation results in '-Infinity'%In 1977, American photographers Larry Sultan (1946–2009) and Mike Mandel (born 1950) published a book of photographs titled Evidence. The book was the culmination of a two-year search through the archives of 77 government agencies, educational institutions and corporations, including General Atomic Company, Jet Propulsion Laboratories, the San Jose Police Department and the United States Department of the Interior. The original pictures were made as objective records of activities unfamiliar to the lay public: the scenes of crimes, aeronautical engineering tests, industrial experiments and other subjects. Sifting through some two million images, Mandel and Sultan assembled a careful sequence of 59 pictures. The book was thoughtfully designed to depict the photographs in terms of their “documentary” origins, unaccompanied by identifying captions. Faced with a world of mysterious events and unfathomable activities, the reader is confronted with only the sequential narrative imagery of the book and thus must actively participate in creating its meaning.
Following a revised edition of the book in 2003 and a 2017 reprint—both of which sold out quickly and have become highly collectible—Evidence is back in print nearly 50 years after its initial publication. This new, definitive edition features revelatory new scans—many made from the original negatives—which greatly enhance the eerie objectivity conveyed by the book’s title. In many cases, the original negatives revealed that crops had been made to the image by the agencies; the complete images are restored here. The jacketless, library-style binding of the original 1977 edition is also restored, further underscoring its impersonal documentlike character and its canonical status.
Fashion (signed)
Regular price £90.00 Save Liquid error (snippets/product-template line 124): Computation results in '-Infinity'%The photographs in FASHION were made by Mark Power over a period of 27 years and across 23 countries. They were taken at construction sites, factories, quarries, shipyards, foundries, recycling facilities, theatres and other locations where things are being made, or fashioned.
The majority of the images were made while on commission. Some are of recognisable architectural landmarks while others are more obscure. Some focus on tiny, often overlooked details while others demonstrate Power’s skill at capturing the monumental. Collectively they reveal an ongoing practice where every photograph is meticulously composed and considered. Importantly, the images in the book are devoid of captions, descriptions or dates. As a result they are sequenced neither by location nor chronologically but solely by use of visual links of colour, form and light. A gentle humour is often revealed in the details—a hole in a shoe, rows of white gloves hung out to dry or a painstakingly arranged cupboard of brooms and brushes. Removed from their original commercial or industrial context they become elusive and poetic.
Power began looking at his archive of construction pictures in this way during a Magnum Photos Live Lab at The House of Beautiful Business in Lisbon in 2018, when he worked collaboratively to attempt to sequence around 200 photographs. Influenced then and now by Mike Mandel and Larry Sultan’s landmark bookEvidence (1977), Power’s project has grown and evolved over the following seven years to this published form.
The earliest photographs in the book were made during the construction of the Millennium Dome (1997-2000), documented by Power in over one hundred site visits. This work returned to the 19th century tradition of a singular photographer documenting the construction of great public building from start to finish. However, before he took a single picture he carefully negotiated the freedom to make his own work on the site, rather than be told what to photograph, or how. Ever since, his work has followed this same formula. Fashion is, in part, a celebration of what is possible within the commercial world if there is trust on both sides and the photographer is given artistic licence and liberty.