Gift cards availableOpen: Twenty One Photographs
Ready for despatch within 7 days of order
£125.00
One of 65 signed & numbered copies of Brian Griffin’s extremely rare classic photobook ‘Open’, which features in Martin Parr and Gerry Badger’s The Photobook: A History
Order value under £100: £4.50 per order (however many titles)Order value over £100: Free shipping
Europe: £9 per item (Europe as defined by https://www.royalmail.com/europe)Other territories: £17 per item (Some heavy items are charged extra for overseas orders. If this applies, it will be noted on the title's webpage)
We are very excited to announce the discovery of a small number of copies of Brian Griffin’s extremely rare classic photobook ‘Open’, which features in Martin Parr and Gerry Badger’s The Photobook: A History, vol. I.
Published in 1988 in an edition of only 350 copies, Brian found himself too occupied with other projects to be able to focus on selling all the print run and put the balance into temporary store. Over twenty years later he rediscovered them!
As Parr and Badger note, “Griffin came to prominence in the late 1970s and early 1980s, the generation of Chris Killip, Graham Smith, and John Davies amongst others. However, he positioned himself at a remove from the prevailing social documentary ideology of British photography at that time.
In the early 1970s he was ‘discovered’ by Roland Schenk, art editor of the magazine, Management Today, and began a highly successful career taking corporate portraits… Yet his style was always slightly subversive, its surreal qualities gently ‘biting the hand that fed him’….”
Quirky portraits, enigmatic still lifes and landscapes in a similar vein, all appear in Open, which was self-published along with a number of other photobooks by Griffin under the imprint Black Pudding. These were projects of self-expression as well as being ‘calling cards’.
“Open was made after the death of his father and of his close friend, the graphic designer Barney Bubbles. It serves as a memorial. You have to open the book to get to heaven, but opening it – cutting the tape and folded pages – destroys it. The book is a metaphor for life, the further we get into it, the more knowledge we gain, but the closer we are to the final end and its closure. Like all Griffin’s books, it has higher production values than the usual self-published photobooks of the period and is presented like a Japanese book, where packaging is everything. Such a concept also has a special commercial advantage, because serious book collectors are honour-bound to buy two copies – one to open and read, the other to remain closed and inviolate.”
(The Photobook: A History, vol. I: Phaidon Press, 2004)
This limited edition is being repackaged for this release and whilst the book itself is the original 1988 edition the packaging differs.
Collector's Edition with print also available
| Author / Photographer | Brian Griffin |
|---|---|
| Stock & Delivery Status | Ready for despatch within 7 days of order |
| Signed Copy | No |
| Binding | Hardcover |
| Publisher | Dewi Lewis |
| Binding Additional | Quarter bound hardback, bound in a yellow cloth with plain boards and with a protective card box |