photobookjousting

Hollywood “The Krazy Edition” by Bumdog Torres /  by Kyun Ngui

This is not a review. I am not qualified to speak about homelessness and homeless people, which is the main subject matter of this book. Bumdog Torres (the author) is, however, because he speaks as one of them.

Bumdog Torres is “a career homeless bum who sells photo prints, DVDs, Photobooks, T-shirts”, according to his Instagram profile, which is a somewhat modest description given his photobooks have been reviewed by Robin Titchener and he counts the great and the good (photobgraphers and photobook enthusiasts) among his followers.

This book is nearly an inch thick (about 2.5cm). It has photos and text in roughly equal measure. At times, the whole page is text. It is part story-telling and part diary/journal and 100% gripping (to me anyway. I pretty much read through it in one sitting).

Jim Goldberg’s Raised By Wolves is an early inspiration.

In a similar vein to Jim Goldberg’s “Raised by Wolves”, to whom the book is jointly dedicated, this is a raw, unflinching, at times tender and compassionate, glimpse into the homeless community in Hollywood (his family, as Torres calls them) with a special focus on one character called Krazy, a teenage homeless girl, which takes up about a third of the book. Though not explicit after the first few pages where he talks about himself, Torres’s presence and his relationships with the people he photographs comes through.

Of his photography, Torres writes “ If met someone who I thought could genuine comprehend what I was saying, Id tell them the real deeper truth. "I do this to keep from going crazy. When youre out here on the streets and if you dont have a project to keep your mind busy you'll go insane." To that they would say "I hear you. That's the truth. Yeah you can take my picture bro."“

“Im taking photos of my family. My photo books aren’t Books of Photography, they’re my family albums, for my family to be remembered.”

Of his photogrpahing the homeless people, he says “... he was taking photos of his subject. Im taking photos of my family. My photo books aren't Books of Photography, they're my family albums, for my family to be remembered.”

Of Krazy, “Despite how innocent and sweet she was there was a dark doom around her aura. you could feel it”. The story of Krazy would get darker and darker as it unfolded. This is real life but it would not be amiss as a movie plot. Torres posted a 60-part series on his Instagram account and it is worth a read.

*Typos in the quotations are as per the book.

Mike Brodie of A Period of Juvenile Prosperity (APOJP) fame, makes an appearance. Torres talks about his encounter with Brodie and demystifies the man, the myth and the legend. Warts and all.

Self-published. 1st Draft of 50 copies.

Ray's A Laugh by Richard Billingham MACK, 2024. /  by Kyun Ngui

Ray’s A Laugh by Richard Billingham, MACK, 2024.

“First published in 1996 to enormous acclaim, Richard Billingham’s Ray’s a Laugh is one of the most significant photobooks of the turn of the twentieth century, as well as a cornerstone work of the Young British Artists generation. Formed of starkly intimate images of Billingham’s often chaotic parental home under the heavy effects of alcoholism and poverty, the book was produced in the 1990s with editors Michael Collins and Julian Germain. This new edition restores Billingham’s original vision for his deeply personal work for the first time. Including numerous unseen images and a distinct approach to sequencing inflected by Billingham’s training as a painter: it constitutes a ‘director’s cut’ and reintroduces a vital and consistently challenging work for a new era.”

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Venice by Giacomo Brunelli (June 2022) /  by Kyun Ngui

Giacomo Brunelli's latest offering sees him turning his eye and camera to Venice. He says that "Venice is a project I decided to start in response to the fragility of the city after the exceptional November 2019 'Acqua Alta' …" It is his first self-published book and in his unique style, Giacomo gives us an expressionistic and atmospheric interpretation of Venice.

For those not familiar with Giacomo’s work, it can be loosely summed up as film noir street photography. However, he has published books on subjects as diverse as animals (The Animals, his first book) and Self Portraits (published 2017). He has also published New York, Eternal London, and Hamburg.

I first came across Giacomo's work through his book Eternal London (2016), which followed an exhibition at The Photographers' Gallery in 2014. I remember being struck by his style and it left a strong impression on me.

I made a modest contribution to Venice: I was fortunate to work with Giacomo in the very early stages of Venice, mocking up ideas for the cover, and then helping with the digital book layout.

The first 250 copies of Venice are numbered and signed. There are also two limited special editions of with prints (these are not in the book). Venice and other books are available from his website here . Venice is also available at The Photographers' Gallery bookshop here.

I have also made a photobook flip-through of Venice. You can view it on YouTube here.

The Troubles by Chris Steele-Perkins /  by Kyun Ngui

This work is made up of images from when Chris Steele-Perkins first went to Belfast in 1978 as part of a project looking at inner city poverty in the UK. He stayed at a Catholic West Belfast housing development and covered that community, and also made more familiar images of the Troubles.

In 2008, 10 years after the Good Friday Agreement, he went back to Northern Ireland on assignment for The Times, tracked down people he had met 30 years ago, and photographed and interviewed them.

This is what makes the book very interesting for me: the passage of time, what has happened to the people since then and what they thought looking back over 30 years. The interviews were quite eye-opening: many just wanted peace and to get on with their lives. One of the interviewees said "We were always taught by my mother that it was someone else's son - not to hate, and not to judge." It wasn’t a sentiment I had expected.

Northern Ireland had always been like a 1000-piece jigsaw puzzle for me, of which I had only 30 mostly unconnected pieces. Pieces that had pushed themselves onto my consciousness as news headlines of yet another violent action. This book didn’t give me the connecting pieces but it led me to read more about Northern Ireland and now I am at least more familiar with its history.

Since 2008, Brexit happened and has caused a rise in tension over, among other things, the sea border. I would not have known this had it not been for the Instagram account of @andrewj.98 , who provides an on the ground and current view of these tensions.

This book does not give you the big picture of Northern Ireland, and it does not claim to: it is a personal view and experience of Belfast during and after the Troubles. As Steele-Perkins himself writes in the Introduction, he was "not there to illustrate a thesis, but to enter into the unknown, interacting and responding, and attempting to remain honest."

Look at it as one or two more pieces of the jigsaw.

PS:

After I posted this to my Instagram account, Chris Steele-Perkins made a comment to the post, reproduced below verbatim.

“Thanks Kyun for your thoughts. It is worth mentioning that I commissioned a text for the book about growing up in West (republican) more or less, Belfast, by Paul McCorry, a friend of mine. The text is atmospheric and anecdotal, rather than Analytical. Also, I was not in Derry at the time of Bloody Sunday, but by a strange coincidence I was witness to the Milltown Cemetery Attack.”

Book details

Titel: The Troubles
Photographer: Chris Steele-Perkins
Publisher: Bluecoat Press
ISBN 9781908457653
Hardback
B/W and colour 270 x 290mm landscape + 144pp

You can purchase the book at Bluecoat Press.

Non-fiction Novel on Northern Ireland

If you are interested in reading more about Northern Ireland, I can recommend this non-fiction novel by Ian Cobain called Anatomy Of A Killing. It is the story of the killing of an off duty policeman by the IRA but it also weaves in the key events of Northern Ireland and the Troubles around that story.

You can find the book on Amazon here. Or at any of your favourite bookstores.