Books

Description

Stephen Gill’s book Coexistence came about as a commission to photograph a pond by an abandoned blast furnace in the town of Dudelange, Luxembourg.

Drawing on a childhood interest in pond life, which would now be thriving after the furnace had cooled and thinking about microscopic worlds within worlds and the parallels with human societies he determined to bring these two worlds together despite the vast difference in scale.

He shot the miniscule pond life through a microscope and the residents of Dudelange with an underwater camera dipped in a bucket of water from the pond. Using the practices of immersion and re-shooting from his Hackney Flowers and Outside In projects combined with the style of his aquatic themed Coming up for Air Coexistence is hallucinatory and strangely beautiful body of work that at times looks more like painting than photography.

Books are central to Stephen’s practice and Coexistence is his most lavish yet. Beautifully designed by his long term collaborator Melanie Meus, it resembles a nineteenth century natural history book and is published in hardback with a leather bound spine with a double gatefold inside.

With his usual attention to detail Stephen spent four days learning how to make marbled paper for the cover. There are six different marbled paper covers of the standard edition and each Special Edition has a cover made of a unique marbled paper hand made by Stephen. The standard edition is out of print.

Coexistence was exhibited at Centre National de L’Audiovisuel Luxembourg 29 September 2012-10 February 2013.