Hackney Kisses
Stephen Gill
Archive of Modern Conflict
English
Texts by Timothy Prus and Stephen Gill
Hardcover
First Edition
96 pages
240 x 285 mm
2014
ISBN 9780957049079
“Stephen Gill has worked for many years exploring the culture and environment of Hackney in East London. Some time ago he discovered the work of a lost photographer who had begun to interpret the photo of a kiss in a special and personal way. Kissing can be quite like the reverie in a beautiful forest; it can also be end-of-pier theatre. Our Master of the Hackney Kisses knows how these traits combine. His sensibility transcends the profession of wedding photographer – in each kiss, you see the future; the past recedes. Reenactment is a pleasure.”
– Timothy Prus
(Source: https://archiveofmodernconflict.com/hackney-kisses/)
About the Editor
Gill’s passion for photography was sparked by his father’s quiet influence and fuelled by an early fascination with insects, birdlife, and the tiny pond creatures he’d gather to examine under a microscope. Music, too, has long been a steady companion. Together, these early obsessions nurtured a sense of wonder, and image-making became not only a way of exploring such curiosities but a means of responding to his surroundings and to the subjects that intrigue or move him. Over time, it has become an essential form of articulation and expression.
As the years have passed, Gill’s relationship with photography has continued to evolve. While he values photography’s strengths, he remains increasingly aware of its limits, how straight descriptive photographs are often unable to convey more elusive emotions, feelings, or ideas that lie beyond the glass wall of clarity, projection, and control. He works outside those limits, developing a quiet trust in chance and what can be withheld. In reducing information, he often finds that something vital — a presence, a spirit — can remain, allowing the subject to breathe without interference.
Gill continues to explore the idea that even the most abstract or ambiguous images can carry a truth, sometimes more illuminating than a clear visual description, however factual it may appear. In a time when images flood every corner of life and certainty feels harder to hold, he chooses to relinquish much of the authorship and control, seeking instead to honour his subjects by handing much of the authorship back to them. He is often drawn to finding ways to collaborate with his subjects or to assist them to fully speak for themselves, without the images being suffocated by the medium or the maker.
https://www.stephengill.co.uk/
(Source: https://www.stephengill.co.uk/about/)
About the Publisher
The Archive of Modern Conflict is an organisation dedicated to the collection and preservation of vernacular photographs, objects, artefacts, curiosities, and ephemera. Founded in 1991, the archive began as a collection of photographs relating to war and conflict but has since expanded its remit to become the vast and thematically diverse repository it is today. They have produced and published over thirty books, often collaborating with photographers and artists such as Stephen Gill, Cristina de Middel, Thomas Mailaender, Adam Broomberg and Oliver Chanarin, and Don McCullin.
archiveofmodernconflict.com
(Source: https://archiveofmodernconflict.com/about-us/)
