Stephen Gill (photographer)

Stephen Gill, 2014

Stephen Gill (born in Bristol, 1971) is a British experimental, conceptual and documentary photographer, and artist. He is known for his photographs of East London; his publication of his own books; and his attention to detail of his books as art objects in themselves. He works where he lives and includes this place in his books in novel ways other than just the photographic depiction. His 2005 book Hackney Wick received acclaim.

Life and work

Gill's father, a keen photographer, taught him to develop and print his own pictures in the darkroom in their attic. In 1985, while still at school, he went to work for a local, Bristol-based photography company, copying and restoring old photographs and helping to take family portraits. In 1992 he enrolled in the photography foundation course at Filton College in Bristol. Two years later, he began working full-time in a one-hour photography lab. He then went to work at the Magnum Photos agency in London, first as an intern and then full-time. In 1997 he left Magnum to become a freelance photographer, working on commissions to shoot portraits for newspaper supplements, and editorial, whilst continuing to make a variety of personal photographic series. He lived and worked in Hackney, East London, until 2014.

In January 2003 Gill bought a basic 1960s box camera made by Coronet for 50 pence at Hackney Wick market, near where he lived. The camera had a plastic lens, and it lacked focus or exposure controls. The market was a large ad-hoc car boot sale on the site of the old Hackney Wick Stadium, a decommissioned dog racing track near Hackney Marshes. He used the camera to photograph people and the environment at the market over the next two years. As well as what, and how, Gill photographed, the pictures are also distinguished by the unpredictable and poorly rendered images from the camera. "In the late ’90s and early 2000s the idea of quality and technique became so important… and conversations around photography were often very much about dpi and megapixels. Part of me was letting go and rebelling against this stage that photography had reached" he has said. These photographs provided the material for his book Hackney Wick. The area was redeveloped for the 2012 Summer Olympics and 2012 Summer Paralympics.

Most of Gill's books until 2014 were shot and created in Hackney. His earliest work was in a straight documentary style. He has gone on to create documentary style photographs in which he alters the image in a variety of ways. Coming Up for Air, Coexistence and Best Before End share a theme of immersion in liquid. Outside In and Talking to Ants use what he terms "in-camera photograms", his attempts to "evoke the spirit of a place"; items from the environment in which he is photographing are inserted into the camera itself and included in images in unpredictable ways.

Books are central to Gill's practice with all of his projects conceived of as books. He founded his own publishing imprint, Nobody Books, in 2005, "to exercise maximum control over the publication process of his books" and "to make the book the finished expression of the photographs, rather than just a shell to house them in". He experiments with materials, and has a hands-on, tactile approach to maquette making. This tactile approach includes materials and techniques such as lino cut printing, letter press printing, mono prints, spray paint, and rubber stamps; and on occasion entire books are manufactured and assembled in his studio. by himself and his assistant Richard, who also distribute the books. All the books are designed by Melanie Mues, and are often clothbound hardbacks with bold, graphic covers. Critic Sean O'Hagan, writing in The Guardian in 2010, said "In Britain, Stephen Gill is perhaps the best-known contemporary self-published photographer".

His portrait, editorial and self originated projects have appeared in The Guardian Weekend, Le Monde 2, Granta, The New York Times Magazine, Tank, The Telegraph Magazine, I-D magazine, The Observer, Blind Spot and Colors.

Reviews of his work

Iain Sinclair:

Stephen Gill has learnt this: to haunt the places that haunt him. His photo-accumulations demonstrate a tender vision factored out of experience; alert, watchful, not overeager, wary of that mendacious conceit, ‘closure’. There is always flow, momentum, the sense of a man passing through a place that delights him. A sense of stepping down, immediate engagement, politic exchange. Then he remounts the bicycle and away. Loving retrievals, like a letter to a friend, never possession… What I like about Stephen Gill is that he has learnt to give us only as much as we need, the bones of the bones of the bones…

According to Martin Parr (writing in 2004):

Stephen Gill is emerging as a major force in British photography. His best work is a hybrid between documentary and conceptual work and for this international it is the repeated exploration of one idea, executed with the precision that makes these series so fascinating and illuminating. Gill brings a very British, understated irony into portrait and landscape photography.

Jon Ronson, writing in 2004 about Field Studies, was reminded of the Observer's Books:

Stephen's photos have all the naive gusto of the Observer series of old [. . .] Mercifully lacking in malevolence, they are also wise and modern and beautifully laden with tiny, understated details about the way we live today. [. . .] When you look at a Martin Parr photograph, everything about it says, instantly, Martin Parr. Stephen's photographs, however, are so subtle, so seemingly un-authored, it's only when you stare at them en masse and one after the other, you realise that they can only have been taken by Stephen Gill. There is a tremendous, quiet, respectful, cumulative power to his work.

Books

• A Book of Field Studies. London: Chris Boot, 2004. ISBN 978-0954281366. Introduction by Jon Ronson. Subjects divided into separate series 'Day Return', 'Trolleys Portraits', 'Lost', and 'Trolleys Portraits'.
• Invisible. 2005. ISBN 0-9549405-0-4.
• Hackney Wick. London: Nobody in association with Archive of Modern Conflict, 2005. ISBN 0-9549405-1-2.
• Buried. 2006. ISBN 0-9549405-4-7.
• Archaeology in Reverse.
  • London: Nobody in association with Archive of Modern Conflict, 2007. ISBN 0-9549405-5-5. Afterword by Iain Sinclair. Edition of 3000 copies.
  • London: Nobody in association with Archive of Modern Conflict, 2007. Special edition in salamader case and including print. Edition of 100 copies.
• Hackney Flowers.
  • London: Nobody, 2007. ISBN 0-9549405-3-9. Edition of 3500 copies.
  • London: Nobody, 2007. Special edition made from waste paper sheets and including a print. Edition of 100 copies.
• Anonymous Origami. London: Nobody in association with Archive of Modern Conflict, 2007. ISBN 978-0-9549405-8-4.
• A Series of Disappointments.
  • London: Nobody in association with Archive of Modern Conflict, 2008. ISBN 0-9556577-0-9. Edition of 3000 copies available in three different covers.
  • London: Nobody in association with Archive of Modern Conflict, 2008. Special edition, in a box with a print and stencil. Edition of 100 copies, mixed covers.
• Warming Down. London: Nobody, 2008. Photographs taken in Hackney Wick. 15 C-Type prints and one lino print housed in an ex Hackney Library music score book. Edition of 130 copies.
• The Hackney Rag. London: Nobody; Tokyo: Artbeat, 2009. Newspaper format. Text by Shigeo Goto. Published on the occasion of Gill's first solo exhibition in Japan. Selections from his Hackney series Hackney Wick, Buried, Hackney Flowers, Hackney Flower portraits, Archaeology in Reverse and Warming Down as well as new images. Includes a print. Edition of 1000 copies.
• Trinidad 44 photographs. London: Nobody, 2009. 44 loose C-Type prints and a dry point etching, housed within the shell of a scooped out 1964 publication. Edition of 115 copies.
• Coming up for Air. London: Nobody in association with Archive of Modern Conflict, 2010. ISBN 978-0-9556577-2-6.
• Outside In. Brighton, England: Photoworks; London: Archive of Modern Conflict, 2010. ISBN 978-1-903796-40-5. Produced as part of Gill's commission to make a series of photographs for the 2010 Brighton Photo Biennial.
• B Sides. Companion book to Coming up for Air.
  • London: Nobody, 2010. ISBN 978-0-9556577-4-0.
  • London: Nobody, 2010. Special edition in a box with a print. Edition of 100 copies and 5 artist's proofs.
• Off Ground. Text by Iain Sinclair. Photographs of bricks and rocks picked up in the aftermath of the Hackney riots.
  • London: Nobody in association with Archive of Modern Conflict, 2011. Newspaper format. Edition of 2000 copies.
  • London: Nobody in association with Archive of Modern Conflict, 2011. Newspaper format. Includes print. Edition of 100 copies.
• Coexistence. 2012. ISBN 978-2-919873-10-4. Edition of 1500 copies, 250 copies of each cover.
• Not In Service. London: Nobody, 2012. Newspaper format. Published on the occasion of Stephen Gill Best Before End retrospective exhibition at Foam Fotografiemuseum Amsterdam, 16 May – 15 July 2012. Includes image extracts from series Talking to Ants, Off Ground, Hackney Wick, Best Before End, Hammer and Blackberry, Hackney Flowers, A Series of Disappointments, Trolley Portraits and Billboards. Text by Iain Sinclair.
• Best Before End. Text by Will Self. Photographs made in East London, colour negative films part processed and soaked in energy drink.
  • London: Nobody, 2014.
  • London: Nobody, 2014. Special edition, in a clamshell box with a print. Edition of 100 copies and 5 artist's proofs.
• Talking to Ants. Photographs made in East London between 2009 and 2013.
  • London: Nobody, 2014. ISBN 978-0-9575369-1-3.
  • London: Nobody, 2014. ISBN 978-0-9575369-2-0. Special edition, in a clamshell box with a print. Edition of 100 copies and 5 artist's proofs.
• Pigeons. London: Nobody in association with Archive of Modern Conflict, 2014. Words by Will Self.
• Hackney Kisses. London: Nobody in association with Archive of Modern Conflict, 2014. ISBN 978-0-9570490-7-9. Photographer unknown, edited and produced by Stephen Gill, words by Timothy Prus.

Books edited by Gill

• Unseen UK: a book of photographs by the people at Royal Mail. London: Royal Mail, 2006. ISBN 0-946165-53-X.
• Bright, Bright Day by Andrei Tarkovsky. London: White Space Gallery, 2008. ISBN 0-9557394-1-1. Polaroid photographs by Tarkovsky, edited by Gill. Edition of 3000 copies.
• Let's Sit Down Before we go by Bertien van Manen. London: Mack, 2011. ISBN 978-1-907946-12-7.

Selected solo exhibitions

2

Awards

• 1986: Kodak Pet Portrait Award.
• 2004: Winner, John Kobal Book Award for A book of Field Studies, from John Kobal Foundation in association with The Royal Photographic Society Awards.
• 2006: Vic Odden Award, Royal Photographic Society.
• 2011: Outstanding Publishing House of the Year Award to Nobody Books, PHotoEspaña Photography Book Award 2011.

External links

• Official website
• Nobody Books
• Review of Archaeology in Reverse at The Guardian
• Review of Hackney Wick at The Guardian
• About Invisible at The Guardian