Workbooks would recommend that for Shafran (non-commercial) work and life are intermingled. That’s to not say that he’s performing as a recorder or documentarian, however that in seeing his footage we’re seeing the world by means of his eyes. As he notes, “Every part that goes in you, both consciously or unconsciously, possibly has some impact.”
The press launch places ahead that Shafran retains his pocket book diaries, partially, as preparatory research for future work. Co-edited with Linda van Deursen, Workbooks presents a collection of pages from these diaries. Shafran factors out they’re 4 instances faraway from actuality, being printouts of images pasted in a e-book that he photographed (the pages should not scanned) after which printed.
Save for a blurb on the duvet flap, Workbooks is textless, however solely within the sense that there aren’t any interpretive or explanatory essays or statements. Shafran’s notes, which fluctuate from quotes to grocery lists to budgets, are current all through and grow to be a part of the general analog collage aesthetic.
The Nineteen Eighties pages are notably transferring; there may be an urgency on this part, and an undomesticated day-to-dayness that speaks of the liberty of youth. “I feel the early work is far more energetic, naive, inconsiderate,” Shafran concedes, however he’s no Benjamin Button. Certainly as his present work for Vogue demonstrates, he retains a way of playfulness. Workbooks confirms that the photographer nonetheless finds surprise in all kinds of sudden locations.
Workbooks by Nigel Shafran is printed by Unfastened Joints.
