BROOMBERG, Adam and Oliver Chanarin. Fig. (Brighton / Göttingen): Photoworks / Steidl, (2007).

BROOMBERG, Adam and Oliver Chanarin.
Fig.
(Brighton / Göttingen): Photoworks / Steidl, (2007).

8vo (210 × 164 mm), pp.[176]. 95 colour photographs. Essay by Julian Stallabrass, Editor’s note by David Chandler. Design by Victoria Forrest an Allon Kaye at Smith; pulling a little at head, a few light marks to edges. Plain endpapers. Red cloth-covered boards, spine and front lettered in black, colour photographic reproduction to debossed panel on rear. Signed in black ink on first page. Near-fine.

First edition, signed copy, one of around 100 copies in the publisher’s variant red binding, regular copies were bound in white cloth. Fig. consists of a series of still life, portrait, and landscape photographs, which trace links and associations between photography, imperialism, and the colonial impulse to acquire, map, and collect. Julian Stallabrass describes this work as being about ‘objectification, description, representation and classification carried to the ultimate point of the power over life itself.’