Photography Against the Grain:
Essays and Photo Works 1973–1983
Allan Sekula
Published by Mack Books, London, 2016, 250 pp. (colour & b/w ill.), 21.5 × 27.7 cm, English
Price: €35

Long out of print, this seminal collection of essays and photographs are by artist, theorist and filmmaker, Allan Sekula. Originally published by the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design in 1984, in these essays and images Sekula sought to portray the inextricable bond between labour and material culture, drawing deeply on Marxist theory to argue passionately for a collective model of progress.

Sekula taught at California Institute of Arts (CalArts) from 1985 until his death in 2013, and from that insider’s position he critiqued photography and the circumstances of its production and consumption, exposing what the medium failed to represent—women, labourers, minorities and the institutional structures that reinforce cultural biases.

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Gold Custody
Barbara Bloom, Ben Lerner
Published by Mack Books, London, 2021, 104 pp. (colour & b/w ill.), 10 × 25 cm, English
Price: €35

Barbara Bloom and Ben Lerner share a fascination with intricate dramas of framing and reframing: what happens to an image or a phrase when it is re-encountered, recontextualized, recombined — when a particular frame of reference is established or collapses? How is meaning accrued or eroded through repetition, across pages or generations? How are images or sentences enlisted in — or suddenly freed from — the construction of our personal and collective mythologies?

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Puglia. Tra albe e tramonti
Luigi Ghirri
Published by Mack Books, London, 2022, 288 pp. (colour & b/w ill.), 22.5 × 25.5 cm, English/Italian
Price: €65

Puglia. Tra albe e tramonti offers an account of Luigi Ghirri’s relationship with Puglia — a distinctive region, which was pivotal in establishing Ghirri’s career and continued to inspire him throughout it. A first visit in 1982 introduced Ghirri to Puglia’s whitewashed streets, luminescent nights, doorways and arches, potted cacti, funfairs, and beaches, as well as a group of artists, critics, and curators who would become his close friends and collaborators. Over the following decade, Ghirri returned to the area almost every year, photographing, exhibiting, and deepening his understanding of its subtle terrain.

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Kodachrome
Luigi Ghirri
Published by Mack Books, London, 2012, 88 pp. (colour & b/w ill.), 21 × 27 cm, English
Price: €45

In 1978 Luigi Ghirri self-published his first book, an avant-garde manifesto for the medium of photography and a landmark in his own remarkable oeuvre. Part amateur photo-album, Ghirri presents his surroundings in tightly cropped images, making photographs of photographs and recording the Italian landscape through it’s adverts, postcards, potted plants, walls, windows, and people.

Long out of print and on the 20th anniversary of Ghirri’s death, MACK published the second edition. Now in its fifth reprint this volume is the first print of the second edition.

*Please note this publication is secondhand and has some traces of previous ownership.

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The Complete Essays
Luigi Ghirri
Published by Mack Books, London, 2015, 240 pp. (colour & b/w ill.), 22.6 × 26 cm, English
Price: €22

Luigi Ghirri (1943–1992) started writing about photography from the moment he became a photographer: for his own publications, for Italian magazines and newspapers, as well as private reflections committed to paper, where his thoughts would settle and then often depart in new directions. Born in Scandiano in 1943, Luigi Ghirri spent his working life in the Emilia Romagna region, where he produced one of the most open and layered bodies of work in the history of photography.

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Postcards
Luigi Ghirri
Published by Mack Books, London, 2016, 18 postcards housed in a printed sleeve (colour & b/w ill.), 14.8 × 10.5 cm, English
Price: €12

A collection of 18 postcards of images from the remarkable oeuvre of the enigmatic Italian photographer Luigi Ghirri. Spanning 1970 to 1992, this curated selection includes many of his classic photographs, as well as lesser-known images.

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