being alone
Dean Sameshima
Published by Soft Opening, London, 2024, 88 pp. (colour & b/w ill.), 30 × 21.6 cm, English
Price: €35

Published on the occasion of Dean Sameshima’s recent solo exhibition at Soft Opening, being alone is edited by Antonia Marsh, designed by Robert Milne, and features a newly commissioned essay from American writer, critic and poet Bruce Hainley.

In each of the twenty-five black and white photographs that comprise Dean Sameshima’s recent series being alone, the outline of a solitary viewer sits bathed in light emitting from the glowing screen of a Berlin porn theatre. These cinemas offer the kind of encounter that has been described as an “anonymous being-together”, a space wherein an individual can project not only his own desire and sexual fantasy onto the screen but disidentify with the confining projections of the external world.

Designed to protect its occupants from judgement and persecution, the artist enshrines these private rooms, continuing his documentation of the architecture and physical characteristics of queer spaces. While Sameshima atypically retains the presence of bodies in these images, with no identifying features revealed, his focus locates more deliberately on the anonymity of these individuals alongside the emptiness that surrounds them.

#2024 #brucehainley #deansameshima #photography #robertmilne #softopening
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.

#2022 #luigighirri #mackbooks #photography
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.

#2012 #luigighirri #mackbooks #photography
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.

#2015 #luigighirri #mackbooks #photography
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.

#2016 #luigighirri #mackbooks #photography
Grey But Not Grey
Algirdas Šeškus
Published by Kaunas Photography Gallery, Kaunas, 2013, 128 pp. (b/w ill.), 25 × 25 cm, Lithuanian, English, French
Price: €30 (Temporarily out of stock)

Algirdas Šeškus found photography in 1975 when he learned that he would need to bring ten photographs to a job interview for the position of cameraman at the only television channel in Soviet Lithuania. Nobody looked at the pictures, but the camera he bought for the purpose showed him the world anew, and he continued photographing for the next decade.

#2013 #algirdasseskus #photography