Redheaded Peckerwood by Christian Patterson

One of the most notable photobooks of 2011, currently available in the second edition, Redheaded Peckerwood was nominated for a variety of prizes and was awarded the prestigious Recontres d'Arles Author Book Award.

The publisher's blurb nicely describes the project and the way it integrated diverse elements into an integrated whole.

Redheaded Peckerwood is a work with a tragic underlying narrative – the story of 19 year old Charles Starkweather and 14 year old Caril Ann Fugate who murdered ten people, including Fugate’s family, during a three day killing spree across Nebraska to the point of their capture in Douglas, Wyoming. The images record places and things central to the story, depict ideas inspired by it, and capture other moments and discoveries along the way.

From a technical perspective, the photographs incorporate and reference the techniques of photojournalism, forensic photography, image appropriation, reenactment and documentary landscape photography. On a conceptual level, they deal with a charged landscape and play with a photographic representation and truth as the work deconstructs a pre-existing narrative.

Redheaded Peckerwood also utilizes and plays with a pre-existing archive of material, deliberately mixing fact and fiction, past and present, myth and reality as it presents, expands and re-presents the various facts and theories surrounding this story.

While photographs are the heart of this work, they are the complemented and informed by documents and objects that belonged to the killers and their victims – including a map, poem, confession letter, stuffed animal, hood ornament and various other items, in several cases, these materials are discoveries first made by the artists and presented here for the first time.

In book form, the work is presented as a sort of visual crime dossier, including pieces of paper which are inserted into the book. The many individual pieces included serve as cues and clues within the visual puzzle. In this way, there are connections that are left to the viewer to be made and mysteries that are left to be solved.

 Joel Colberg's video review of Redheaded Peckerwood by Christian Patterson (available here):

Sebastien Girard's Trilogy

French photographer Sebastien Girard has produced a trilogy of attractive self-published works. They are unified not only by a distinct photographic style, but also by the similarity of the size and bindings. The first, Nothing But Home, involves photos from around Girard's house and was published in 2009.

The second, Desperate Cars, followed in 2010.

Sébastien Girard // Desperate Cars from haveanicebook on Vimeo.

Finally, in 2011, he released his take on the plant kingdom, Under House Arrest. A video of the book is available here.

The Afronauts by Cristina de Middel

The best photobook I've seen this year. In this beautiful self-published (and unfortunately already out of print) book Cristina de Middel brings together the visual flair of Viviane Sassen and the conceptual power of Joan Fontcuberta in order to recreate the optimistic 1960's vision of a small African nation sending its citizens into space.

This video uses de Middel's photos to describe the historical events.

 
The Afronauts by Cristina De Middel from DEVELOP Tube on Vimeo.


The book itself has a less romanticized feel than you get from looking at the selected images used in the video above. As shown in the video below, the book intersperses de Middel's images with a variety of documentary materials that, in a manner reminiscent of Fontcuberta's Fauna, provide additional conceptual heft to the experience.

 
the afronauts by Cristina de middel from Bottling Fruit on Vimeo.

PIG 05049 by Christien Meindertsma

Christien Meindertsma's book PIG 05049 provides a fascinating look at the efficiencies of capitalist economies through its classification of wide variety of products derived from a single pig. Meindertsma describes the project for TedX:

 
TEDxAmsterdam: Christien Meindertsma from TEDxAmsterdam on Vimeo.


 And here is a look at the book itself:

 
PIG 05049 from Christien Meindertsma on Vimeo.

See You Soon by Maxwell Anderson

We met during late spring.
She was sitting alone, smoking a cigarette and gazing at the sky.

I was immediately compelled to photograph her.

We had a few chance meetings.
She enjoyed wandering by the Thames at night.
I started to join her.

She came to live with me in my small flat in Peckham.
We didn't go out much, sometimes we would just read together.

At the end of summer she had to leave London when her visa expired.
After I watched her walk through the departures gate at Heathrow, I drove home.

The sky was beautiful.

I imagined what a beautiful last view she would have of England.
I realised how much I would miss her.

I haven't seen her since.

Currently out of print.

Maxwell Anderson - See You Soon from Lorenzo Ricciarelli on Vimeo.