Stephen Gill: Coming Up For Air

Dubbed by Martin Parr the new “whiz kid of British documentary,” Stephen Gill (born 1971) records the immediacies of city sights with airy specificity and lightness of touch. Gill’s latest volume, Coming Up for Air, collects work made in Japan in 2008 and 2009. Unlike previous volumes such as Hackney Flowers, these images minimize local information in favor of achieving what Gill calls “a kind of fictional aquatic world…. muffled chaos seen through squinted eyes.” Consisting of 100 colour photographs that linger and pivot upon the lightest of effects, this superb work of bookmaking comes with a handpainted acetate dustjacket and is certain to prove both a classic photobook and a collectible.