After a positive response from Jeff Ladd on 5B4 and having been selected as one of Markus Schaden’s top ten photography books of 2009, it seems that Sébastien Girard’s Nothing But Home has begun to receive the attention it deserves. Self-published in an edition of 500 copies (with a special edition of 100) and beautifully printed in Girard’s hometown of Toulouse, France, the book itself takes on the personal charm of the photographs within.

It opens to a quote from French poet Francis Ponge: “The simplest way is to take up everything again from the beginning, lie down on the grass, and start over, as if one knew nothing.” Nothing But Home reads the title page. The photographs that follow explore the renovation of Girard’s own home, his first home, with an intensity that immediately draws us closer.

spread from Nothing But Home, 2009
© Sébastien Girard

spread from Nothing But Home, 2009
© Sébastien Girard

spread from Nothing But Home, 2009
© Sébastien Girard

spread from Nothing But Home, 2009
© Sébastien Girard

Photographs of stained ceilings, dirty surfaces, broken light bulbs, peeling paint, slabs of wood, sawdust, wet concrete, old books, dark holes and the occasional presence of protruding nature at first seem revolting in the cruel light of the camera’s flash. The images are claustrophobic, chaotic and clinical, yet they maintain an attention to details and imperfections that eventually shows them as laborious, loving – the way in which the act of repair is.

spread from Nothing But Home, 2009
© Sébastien Girard

There is a photograph from the beginning of this tome, which hovered in the back of my mind as I turned the rest of the pages of the book. It is a photograph of another photograph that rests quietly on the wall above a rusty stove. Within the white border of the image is a scene that is in direct contrast to its surroundings, describing what appears to be a clean, warm study with leather-bound books, cigars and a bottle of liquor in the foreground and a burning fireplace in the distance. The reality of Girard’s photographs quickly reveal what lies beneath this brief encounter with fantasy: the bare bones of a home.

Girard described his book to me as a metaphor for beginnings and for creation. And when asked what ‘home’ means, he responded simply, “The place where I start all of my journeys.”

As the first in a series of books that he plans to publish throughout 2010, I can only wonder where Sébastien Girard will take us next.

–

Originally published in Photo-eye Magazine, March 12, 2010.
Nothing But Home can be purchased here.

I’m very happy to announce that Lay Flat 02: Meta is now available!

Lay Flat 02: Meta
104 pages, perfect bound
7.75 x 10 in. / 19.7 x 25.4 cm.
Edition of 2,000
$30 + S&H

Edited by Shane Lavalette and Guest Editor Michael Bühler-Rose, Lay Flat 02: Meta brings together the works of contemporary photographers whose images are conceptually engaged with the history, process and conventions of the medium itself. Photographs by Claudia Angelmaier, Semâ Bekirovic, Charles Benton, Walead Beshty, Lucas Blalock, Talia Chetrit, Anne Collier, Natalie Czech, Jessica Eaton, Roe Ethridge, Sam Falls, Stephen Gill, Daniel Gordon, David Haxton, Matt Keegan, Elad Lassry, Katja Mater, Laurel Nakadate, Lisa Oppenheim, Torbjørn Rødland, Noel Rodo-Vankeulen, Joachim Schmid, Penelope Umbrico, Useful Photography, Charlie White, Ann Woo and Mark Wyse are accompanied by the textual contributions of Adam Bell (Co-editor, The Education of a Photographer), Lesley A. Martin (Publisher/Editor, Aperture Foundation), Alex Klein (Editor, Words Without Pictures), artists Noel Rodo-Vankeulen and Arthur Ou, as well as an interview with James Welling by Lyle Rexer (Author, The Edge of Vision: The Rise of Abstraction in Photography).

A few sample spreads:

Order online at www.layflat.org.

I’ve always enjoyed Jocelyn Lee’s very tender collection of Portraits.

Chad Muthard’s recently updated website includes an intriguing body of work called No Mistake. Also check out his new three-part artist book titled Any Fool Can Take A Picture With A Camera Like That.

Mark your calendars:

Livia Corona
Monday, March 1st at 2pm
Kennedy Building, Room 406
MassArt

Aziz + Cucher
Thursday, March 11th at 12:30pm
Viz/Crit Room (B311)
SMFA

Julie Blackmon
Thursday, March 11th at 7pm
B.U. Photonics Building, Room 206
8 St. Mary’s Street (B.U. Central T Stop)
Hosted by the PRC

Emmet Gowin
“A Talk in Honor of Harry and Eleanor Callahan”
Wednesday, March 24th at 7pm
Remis Auditorium
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

Penelope Umbrico (Lay Flat 02: Meta contributor!)
Monday, March 29th at 2pm
Kennedy Building, Room 406
MassArt

Deborah Willis
Thursday, April 1st at 12:30pm
Viz/Crit Room (B311)
SMFA

Lizi Brown, Michael Bühler-Rose and Wendy Jean Hyde
“SMFA Traveling Scholars” Gallery Talk
Wednesday, April 21 at 6pm
Sharf Visitor Center
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

Katy Grannan
Monday, April 12th at 2pm
Tower Auditorium
MassArt

Kenro Izu
Thursday, April 15th at 7pm
B.U. Sargent College, AUD-101
635 Commonwealth Ave. (B.U. East T Stop)
Hosted by the PRC

Walead Beshty (Lay Flat 02: Meta contributor!)
Monday, April 26th at 2pm
Tower Auditorium
MassArt

Abelardo Morell
Monday, May 10th at 6pm
Tower Auditorium
MassArt

HERE, a large-scale (22.5 x 12.5 in.) newsprint “book” that accompanies John Gossage’s exhibition “Here… Half Blind,” on view through April 11th, 2010 at the Rochester Art Center.
Edition of 500, available for $50.

The Great Unreal by Taiyo Onorato and Nico Krebs.
First edition, available for $76.

From Adam Murray and Robert Parkinson, a Preston is My Paris zine with a 4×6 color photograph on the cover (Edition of 150), Adam’s book Your Negatives (Edition of 30), and a nice letter written on a typewriter.
Your Negatives is available for £4 ($6) here.

From Medium Rare, Cally Robertson’s zine If You Can Keep.
Edition of 60, available for $6.

From Seth Fluker, his self-published book Before Things Change.
Edition of 500, available for $17.50.

Two from Raymond Taudin Chabot: Cast (Part 2) and Cast (Part 4), made in collaboration with editor/designer Roger Willems.
Edition of 600 each, available for €5 ($7) and €15 ($20) respectively.

A signed, first edition copy of Alec Soth’s Sleeping by the Mississippi. I had a second printing of it, but thanks to a trade I acquired the original… long overdue.
Available for a pretty penny.

Daniel Shea just updated his website with a new body of work titled Plume, a follow-up to his Removing Mountains series. The project of course calls to mind Mitch Epstein’s American Power, but takes a more specific approach.

Pete Halupka has some new photographs on his new website.

Ryan McGinley’s NYTimes Magazine photographs of the 2010 Winter Olympics can now be viewed on his website.

Untitled, 2010 [from "Any Color You Like"]
© Matthew Gamber

Untitled, 2010 [from "Any Color You Like"]
© Matthew Gamber

Untitled, 2010 [from "Any Color You Like"]
© Matthew Gamber

See more on Matt’s website.