North End

North End by Geraldine Lay. First edition, first impression. Large format hardback in new condition. No markings, this is a new book. Signed by Geraldine Lay. Please see pictures. PayPal accepted, any questions please get in touch.

About North End

Faithful to her precise, detailed method and ever attentive to the potential for surprise and chance in any setting, Géraldine Lay mentally apprehends her territories before photographing them. She senses the light and atmosphere, immersing herself in a setting rather than reconnoitring, an approach that brings intimacy to the heart of anonymity. Some critics have rightly highlighted the cinematographic dimension of the artist’s work but such an interpretation overlooks the essentially photographic nature of her pursuit and, in each of her ‘photograms’, her exacting work reminds us how photography was invented before cinema and had a special ability to capture and hold the delicately ephemeral. In doing so, she creates a new aesthetic unique to the photographic craft, an aesthetic that imbues all of her work.

As we traverse suburban streets and squares, lives are captured in the mystery of their daily existence. As the Irish writer, Robert McLiam Wilson writes, ‘People walk and wait. They talk, drink coffee. They cross streets. They work. They move about. Citizens busy with citizen things. Like all citizens everywhere, they are multiple, varied, various. Men, women, children. They are also British. Incredibly British. They couldn’t come from anywhere else.’ In an age of exponential standardized universality, Géraldine Lay’s photography reaffirms both the permanence of unusual individualities and the resistance of collective identities.

Related Links

More books by Geraldine Lay here.

More books by Actes Sud here.