CAIRNS, Antony - LDN2

Background information

"This is a second, updated and completely reformatted edition of the (originally handmade) 2010 photo volume 'LDN' by Antony CAIRNS. In this new edition the large 25 x 34 cm pages and fine 170 gsm Claro paper draw the viewer into a late-night expedition across a mysterious city of tilted landscapes that flicker past like reflections in the windows of a moving train or car.

Content

The black-and-white images in the photographic volume 'LDN2' by Anthony CAIRNS shows a London whose inhabitants are only hinted at, a London of glaring subterranean lights and inhospitable buildings of indecipherable purpose. The pictures form an architectural frieze that is tantalisingly familiar yet hard to pinpoint for those who know the city, with an edge that will be recognised by anyone who has experienced the latent tension that permeates the streets in the hours before dawn.

Book review

“There is a lot more to these pictures than a novel reading of [London's] streets. The pictures originate as 35mm transparencies, part-developed and then solarised before being re-developed for another five minutes or so. From inter-negatives contact prints are made onto pre-coated aluminium sheets... What emerges isn’t a perfectly realized image but one that is marked by the demands of the process, by fingerprints, droplets and blisters. The picture itself, that is to say, carries as one of its aspects evidence of its making, the accidents and incidents involved in bringing the image to the light of day... The pictures also have to be ‘made out’, fathomed or figured. Stains and blurs ask to be identified or separated one from the other; and due to the unfamiliar tonal range of the images items such as bolt-heads and lights have to be discerned. There are pieces of texts, as well, which can almost be read, and they cause hesitation and strain... Thus the city with its frameworks and modules provides a setting and a foil for the kind of almost imperceptible moments in which we usually have our being." (© Ian Jeffries)

Additional information

A selection of sixty metal prints from the 'LDN'-series was exhibited at Les Rencontres D’Arles 2013, and will be on show in the Atelier de Chaudronnerie, Parc des Ateliers, Arles in 2013." (© AMC, 2013)
The photographic volume 'LDN2' by Anthony CAIRNS was nominated as Best Photobook 2013 at the 6th International Fotobook Festival, Kassel as well as the series was nominated for the Deutsche Börse Photography Prize 2014.

About British photographer, Anthony CAIRNS

Photo books by Anthony CAIRNS