CAMPANY, David. Rich and Strange. (London): Chopped Liver Press, (2012) - EDITION OF 100

CAMPANY, David.
Rich and Strange.
(London): Chopped Liver Press, (2012).

8vo (212 × 153 mm), pp.[52]. 21 black-and-white photographs, silver gelatin photograph of original tipped in. White front and black rear endpapers. Violet stamped cloth-covered boards. Signed and numbered by Campany in black ink to title-page. Fine. 

First edition, one of 100 copies.  In this artists’ book, David Campany reframes 21 different detail views from a single found photograph which was taken of the actors and crew on the set of Alfred Hitchcock’s 1931 film Rich and Strange.

‘As the image world becomes electronic, paper photographs from the past drift about in search of new homes. Earlier this year I chanced upon a press photograph in a flea market. It was taken in 1931 on the outdoor set of a film shoot. The director was Alfred Hitchcock. The film was Rich and Strange. I turned the photograph into a book of the same name. Hitchcock was the master of suspense but photographs suspend in a very different way. The show but they don’t tell. They describe but they don’t explain. They are factual enigmas. Zooming in, the book picks out the seemingly endless details: African shacks, rickshaws, lily white movie stars from Europe, a nervous producer, a cameraman, scattered props. All in a field in Elstree, North London.