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The third straight year of drought is striking California communities hard, particularly those in the state’s agricultural Central Valley, where entrenched poverty, agricultural pollution, and aging infrastructure are leaving some communities without adequate water, or in some cases, any water at all.

Water Crisis in California's Central...

About to embark on the Circuit with Bruce Gilden and the Black bikers? “Let’s Go!”, as Bruce often says. It’s his way to stir the energy around and kick up his confidence when needed. The word ‘Go’ fits him well, he’s constantly on the move. Bruce wants to photograph all the time. In fact, as soon as he’s back home, he starts thinking about where to go next! When Bruce packs up cameras and flashes, slips into the working multi-pockets vest and checks if he’s got the right hat, you know he’s on a mission to catch some ‘good’ Gilden pictures. “My standards are high,” he says “I work hard.” So hard that when he declares “I’m a little tired”, the younger ones who must follow him are exhausted! To make a long, fifty year story short, Bruce has never taken a break from his photography... Except once, in that miserable spring of 2020 when the first Covid attack took us prisoners. Stuck upstate New York with no assistant, and left with his Leica, his wife and a car, ‘lockdowned’ Bruce was going nuts. Late May, after the death of George Floyd, History came to the rescue with the massive protests springing out all over New York City. Gilden “hates politics” but at least the angry crowd offered some room to try. “You always have to try, right?” So, almost every day, Bruce would drive back and forth to war zone Brooklyn and walk miles and miles on the street in pursuit of the rallies. Until one special day in early June at Barclays Center when the story of Bruce and the Bikers took off. And you can trust them both, “it’s real out there!”...

According to Bruce’s long-time experience, “the street is unpredictable”, and sure enough, on a fluke, we suddenly found ourselves caught right in the middle of a loud and spectacular crowd of bikers, predominantly Black. We had just landed in a ride-out prayer for George Floyd called by the mysterious ‘Circuit’, as the Black MC community in New York nickname their huge network and its numerous social affairs. The Bikers are about to kneel and raise their right fist to the sky. Of course, Bruce says “Let’s Go!” and two seconds later, he is quietly talking to a big tough-looking guy from Queens, “I was born in Brooklyn,” he says to the biker, “but I grew up in Queens.” Making small talk with total strangers before getting to work is one of Bruce Gilden’s natural talents, so he didn’t think too much of the outcome. It turned out that on that day Bruce was a ‘prospect’ taking the first of his many – and still ongoing – rides in the Circuit! After Barclays Center, Bruce had only one idea in mind: “Find the Bikers...” Easier said than done. Where to start? You can’t tag the names of the two women with their “Loyalty. Respect.” leather ‘cuts’ (vests), or put the word ‘Circuit’ into a Google search. Nobody knows anything. How could we even think that several hundreds of Black biker groups would be officially registered in New York state? With all their combined chapters and social clubs, there is a huge community of people out there, living their ‘Bikelife’ in parallel to us, completely unknown to all of us. For members only. “Where are the Bikers?” insists Bruce.

Just one week later we pick up their trail at another ride-out for George Floyd in East Orange, New Jersey. It’s a big day for Bruce on the ‘Set’, as the Bikers call the Circuit out of state. Of course, the GPS has to locate the meeting place first – ‘somewhere’ in the middle of nowhere as always. Then Bruce jumps into the mix of a few local social club sisters and a sparse row of lone young riders, male and female, sitting on their sport bikes as the music blasts. Everyone is polite and seems unphased by our apparition. Let’s call it a first round of observation on both sides. Bruce is rehearsing his modus operandi, as he will do until he becomes a regular ‘hang out’ in the Circuit. The riders quietly watch this funny white guy chatting with everybody and flitting around them with his camera. In return the photographer takes their picture whenever they ask – the Bikers love snaps of their smiling groups, and are taking their own non-stop cell phone videos and, of course, selfies. Yet, as Bruce notes, “It’s quite surprising, sometimes they’re not even interested in seeing the photos I took of them.” But when they are, we are more than slightly confused trying to match the photos to the groups, and the telephone numbers. At the prayer site, the YamaSuzuHonda ‘babies’ become outnumbered by a bunch of serious tough guys already off their Harleys, ‘Road Gliders’ and other Victory bikes. “Curb your enthusiasm, Bruce!” he thinks in his head, “No faux pas, Bruce!” And then he steps up the gear, quickly sliding into full Gilden mode: here he is alone, right in front and within an inch of a few ‘Lifers’ standing next to some local ‘One percenters’ with stone-faces and crossed arms! Right behind the white guy, the rest of the group of outcasts form a compact shield, just in case...

One “very good” picture later, at the end of this memorable Saturday, we meet our first biker friend and get invitations to upcoming events. In other words, Bruce has been granted his first laisser passer into the real Circuit heart. Now we know where to find the Bikers! “Save the date!” announce the social club sisters ‘hosting’ the venues in an all year round calendar of celebrative runs and joyous gatherings, always accompanied by good music and a ‘henny’ or three. No time wasted, the next day we are travelling to our first ‘Sunday Sip and Smoke’. The only trouble is locating the place and then, surprise, surprise, who greets us at the door with a big hug? The same tough-looking biker that Bruce had been talking to at Barclays Center! How could he forget this funny white guy with his camera. This weekend event is true to its name. Party time! The Bikers do sip and smoke – and dance and laugh – enjoying a pure Jamaican vibe and the loudest playlist of the hottest DJ in his category – the good DJs are booked every weekend almost all year round. Not to mention the burning hot hookahs and free food “until it lasts”. Another nice surprise: the delicious Rasta Pasta has been prepared by the beautiful sister from Barclays Center, the same rider that we had been trying so hard to identify before she became another dear friend. Everybody is cool and having a great time. Not once in the Circuit did we feel any bad energy. The Bikers always make sure they keep their beef and drama out of their clubhouses and between themselves. As they say, when there’s a problem, “We don’t call 911”. “Just like me”, notes Bruce. He perfects his routine, going from one group to another – the Bikers always stay together with their group at each event – chatting and talking with presidents, vice-presidents, road captains and ‘sergeants at arms’, his favorites. Bruce photographs a lot. “That’s what I do when I’m on a new project,” he explains, “and then I become more selective.”

It’s just the beginning, but we’re starting to get an idea of what makes the ‘Circuit’ so special. Ask around for a definition and the first word that comes up is ‘Family’. It’s all written there before our eyes on some of the bikers’ chests. Often their ‘cuts’ serve as a billboard of their personal twists. It goes from “I’m nuts for big butts!” to serious reminders such as “We are not friends, we’re family!” The word is a double entendre: Each group of bikers in the Circuit is a family, and “loyalty makes you family”. “Love. Loyalty. Respect.”

As soon as the weather gets nice, the Bikers’ rallying cry is a loud “We’re outside!!!”. And so are we, all summer and late into the fall of 2020, trying to catch up with them. Bruce is in a frenzy of ‘Cookouts’ and BBQs, very hot ‘Bikini bike washes’ in the open, tons of birthday parties and extravagant social club ceremonies where the ‘Sistazz’ get ‘vested’ and everybody wasted. It’s fun but Bruce is more inspired by funerals where a great number of riders come out to say goodbye to one of their own. “I wonder if there will be as many people at my own funeral,” marvels Bruce. ‘Family first’! The Brothers make a dignified entrance (and exit) in their impeccable pecking order and they give each other big leather hugs instead of the ritual fingers snap. “Never fly higher than your angel can fly!” Year after year, they keep their ‘Fallen Riders’ in their hearts, adding their names on their patches, and organizing memorial rides with ‘KSUs’ (Kickstand Up) and the release of balloons. And the riders ride in and ride out, showing “love and support” to each other’s groups and, as the ‘2 Wheels’ admit, also “riding as much as we party”. Often there are three or four events on the same day and late night, and they ‘make rounds’ from one to the next, “from 10PM...Until...” as the invitations say.

We drive in – Bruce is always early and the Bikers always late – and we drive out, exhausted and far into the night, from ‘somewhere’ in Queens, Brooklyn or the Bronx. Why so often Bruce? Answer: “That’s how you get good pictures”. By the end of summer, the Bikers have a nickname for Bruce. They call him “Everywhere”.

Then comes 2021. “We’re here!” post the Bikers on their social media. And Bruce is still “here”. “We had a few photographers taking pictures of us but we never saw them again,” says a biker friend. You said Covid? Bruce puts on some masks, and then we spend the most un-pandemic year of the Pandemic with the Family, doing the merry toy runs and the very pink ‘Save the Boobies’ cancer ride, the ‘Bike Nights’ and the ‘Hennythons’ where the Bikers are having the most fun getting what they call a little ‘drunkish’. Social distancing you said? When Bruce is on song, nothing can stop him. Especially since the super cramped clubhouses in the hood, where we spend evenings packed like sardines, fit his working style the best. His favorite spot for “good angles” is behind the bar but he is in the way, and the barmaid chases him out nicely. They’re having a game: He sneaks back regularly, and she chases him out again and again!

In between, Bruce dances around the dancers with his camera and a big smile on his face, excited to have just met “a really nice 350-pound guy”! When we leave our biker friends tell us to “keep safe” and “text when you’re home”.
The year 2022 starts, and now Bruce has done almost three full rounds in the Circuit. The social club ‘Divas’ continue to ‘show love’ in their coordinated uniforms, and the Bikers continue to ride. “If you can’t ride, stay home!” as they say. And they ride, as often and as far as possible. Riding is the Bikers’ raison d’être, just like photography is for Bruce. They can never have enough. Lately he has expanded his own photographic rides to Black Bike Week in Myrtle Beach and elsewhere out of state, eager to miss as little as possible of “all that Circuit shit”, as they say, where the hotel rooms “sleep 14”, and where it’s “jammed packed until 6am”. You can believe Bruce when he says “if you have never seen a Bikers’ ‘Pajama party’, you’ve seen nothing!”

When the Bikers get together, the rituals never change, but each event feels different. Call it the family effect: There are always the same people and some different ones that you’ve never seen before, or some that haven’t been around for a long time. Now the Bikers call Bruce ‘OG’ (Old Guard) or simply ‘Bro’. We know that if we miss ‘First or Third Friday’, there will always be a ‘Bike Blessing’ around the corner where we can show up. And I trust that if they don’t see Bruce first, they’ll likely ask “Where is your husband?”

Love. Loyalty. Respect.

(Sophie Gilden - September 2022)

Dewi Lewis Publishing, 2022

The Circuit

Christopher Anderson began photographing his family in a completely organic way. His images were simply the natural action of a partner trying to stop time, and not let one moment of his relationships slip by.

As a photographer, he had never thought of his personal photographs as ‘work’ until photographer Tim Hetherington saw a photograph Anderson had made of his wife Marion and said, “this is about the passing of time”. Anderson began to see his personal images in a new light, and over time, would come to feel that these photographs were, in fact, his life’s work. Anderson’s new book, Marion, marks the closing chapter of a trilogy of books that chronicles their lives, and loves in beautiful depth over the course of their partnership.

“It was never some sort of creative exercise. The photographs are expressions of love…a record of that expression. They are more than memories.” – Christopher Anderson

Publisher: Stanley/Barker
Publication Year: 2022
Format: Silk Screened Cloth Flexibound
Pages: 160
Size: 8.7 x 9.8 inches (220 x 250 mm)
ISBN : 978-1-913288-50-1

Marion

"In the early 1960s, Bruno Barbey, seeking to depict the Italians, photographs all strata of society in the street as well as in the interiors. The young photographer presented this collection of images to Robert Delpire, who immediately offered to publish them in the “Encyclopédie essentielle” series, a collection of books juxtaposing text and images, which already included Robert Frank’s Les Américains (1958) and René Burri’s Les Allemands (1962).
(...)
Circumstances at the time prevented the book from being produced, but the portfolio of Italian photographs convinced the members of the Magnum Photos agency of the potential of the young Barbey, who was quickly accepted into the cooperative. After decades of work and numerous volumes on other countries, Barbey finally published a first version of this work in 2002, with an introduction by Tahar Ben Jelloun, long since out of print. The present edition is a return to Robert Delpire’s original idea, in a reduced format coinciding with the edition of Les Américains and the new release Les Anglais, by Henri Cartier-Bresson and Martin Parr, as well as the forthcoming one of Les Allemands (2023)."
(extract of the publisher's introduction)

2022
21 x 18.5 cm
184 pages
Text Giosuè Calaciura
ISBN 9791095821526

Les Italiens

The war in Yemen has been raging on for almost 8 years between the Huthis, allied to the former president Ali Abdullah Saleh and the current president Abd Rabbu Mansour Hadi, backed by a Saudi-led international coalition. The conflict has resulted in a massive humanitarian crisis: food and energy shortages, with 22 million Yemenis relying on international aid for survival.
Frequent bombings have also destroyed archeological treasures such as religious temples and sanctuaries in a place known to be a cradle of dynasties. It was the site of the Queen of Sheba's kingdom, which is referenced in the Quran and Bible.

In 2021, Moises Saman documented the war's impact on Yemen's archaeological treasures.

Ancient Landmarks Under Threat...

Bruce Gilden

Pierre Soulages (1919 – 2022) was a French painter, engraver, and sculptor. Over the years, the “painter of black and light” established himself and was recognized as one of the major French contemporary figures. Pierre Soulages mastered abstraction through the use of reflections in the dark matter that he models on the surfaces of his canvases. He received numerous international art awards, including the "Rembrandt Award" in Germany in 1976 and the "Great National Award for Painting" in Paris in 1987. Known for his fondness for black, he was described as “the world’s greatest living artist” by François Hollande in 2014.

Pierre Soulages: 1919 – 2022

Since 2014, Alessandra Sanguinetti has been returning to the small town of Black River Falls in Wisconsin, creating the photographs that would come to form the stark and elliptical series Some Say Ice. The same town is the subject of Wisconsin Death Trip, a book of photographs taken by Charles Van Schaick in the late 1800s documenting the bleak hardships of the lives and deaths of its inhabitants. Sanguinetti first came across this book as a child, and the experience is engraved into her memory as her first reckoning with mortality. This encounter eventually led her to explore the strange relationship of photography and death, and ultimately to make her own visits to Black River Falls.

The austere, sculptural scenes and ambiguous, uneasy portraits that make up Some Say Ice depict a place almost outside of time. Presented unadorned by text or explication, the photographs are touched with the spirit of the gothic as well as the unmistakable tenderness familiar from Sanguinetti’s series The Adventures of Guille and Belinda. By bringing undercurrents of doubt and darkness to the surface of her images, Sanguinetti alludes to things absent or invisible, playing on atmospheres both real and imagined, as well as the ghostly possibility of undoing death through the act of photography. With its title inspired by Robert Frost’s famous poem equivocating on how best one’s inevitable death might be met, Some Say Ice is a humane look at the melancholic realities underpinning our lives, seen with glacial clarity by one of the world’s foremost photographers.

MACK, 2022
28.5 x 30.5 cm, 148 pages
ISBN 978-1-913620-71-4

Some Say Ice

"Tipping over into the image, dissolving the borders between exterior and interior spaces, closed world or on the contrary open on the elsewhere: Between Worlds offers a sensorial immersion. No matter the place (stores, train stations, cafés, subways, hotel rooms, shopping malls...), the country (Europe, Middle East, Asia, United States, Africa...), the time (from the 1970s to today), the photographer deploys here the very essence of his visual writing: a luminous alchemy in a suspended time. Where are we? It doesn't matter, only reigns the delight of getting lost. The book proposes a transversal vision of Harry Gruyaert's work, which borrows from both the world of cinema and painting. "A good photo is a photo that says a lot about the place and the time in which it was made, (...) I frame a certain number of elements that are fragments, transparencies that are superimposed like layers, and that make my photos, in fact, reflect both the spirit of the place and the space-time," says the photographer.
A text by David Campany examines the photographer's singular approach and positioning, which is "in the space of the threshold (where) we are in balance, neither inside nor outside, present but in neither place."
(Text by EXB publisher)

Edited by EXB
Published in 2022
144 pages / 75 photos
ISBN : 978-2-36511-335-9

Between Worlds

On September 16, 2022 Swiss tennis great Roger Federer announced that he will be retiring from ATP Tour and Grand Slam competition. The coming Laver Cup tournament will be the 20-time Grand Slam winner's last professional event.

Roger Federer

‘We Don’t Say Goodbye' is the result of 10-years of work by photographer Lorenzo Meloni in Iraq, Syria and Libya. The selection of images in the book were taken between 2013 and 2019 and depict the rise, reign, fall and immediate aftermath of the Islamic State as a territorial entity.

Gost, 2022.
280 x 210 mm
162 pages / 91 color images
Hardback
978-1-910401-44-6

We Don't Say Goodbye

August 2022 marks six months of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine on February 24, 2022. War tactics such as the use of cluster bombs has been banned by the Geneva convention, but have been common practice. Russia suspended weapons inspections under its START nuclear arms treaty with the United States. Russian forces advance to the outskirts of Bakhmut, gaining ground by use of shelling. The Ukrainian military has been able to take back more Russian-held territory, but civilians are still trapped in the middle of conflict. Many have left, those who refuse to flee are mainly senior citizens. Between February 24, 2022 and August 21, 2022, the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights recorded 13,477 civilian casualties in the country–5,587 killed and 7,890 injured.
Chien-Chi Chang, who has made multiple trips to Ukraine since the conflict began, returned in August to photograph the front lines in the Donbas.

Ukraine War: The Donbas Front

On September 8th at approximately 4:30PM local time, Queen Elizabeth II died at the age of 96. Two hours later, her passing was publicly announced and soon after, mourners began congregating outside Buckingham Palace.
Magnum photographers have been documenting public reaction during the days following the announcement.

Reaction to the Death of Elizabeth...

In April 2022, Lebanon’s Cabinet approved the demolition at the Port of Beirut, the site of the 2020 explosion. The explosion was one of the largest non nuclear explosions, with an independent report by Human Rights Watch finding multiple Lebanese authorities criminally negligent under Lebanese law over handling 2,750 tons of ammonium nitrate stored at the port since 2014.

Families of the victims of the explosion launched a campaign called Silent Witness, with the goal of preserving the silos located less than 300 feet from the core of the explosion and overcoming Lebanon’s “culture of impunity”–reflected in the government’s stalling of an investigation and willingness to demolish the silos.

Scars of the 2020 Beirut Explosion...

In a society with generalized attention deficit disorder, the way the news is presented to us had to mutate into digestible pills of information that are simplified and polarized in order to fit the headline or the hashtag. It is precisely now, when we are more complex, hybrid, interconnected as individuals than ever, that the language we rely on to stay updated has become the more limited and limiting. Nowadays, with an unmanageable amount of information available, and in the always difficult balance between quantity and quality, it seems like we chose the worst of both.
In the series "Fun Facts" I play with this manner of presenting information and combine it with photographic still-lives that take the viewer into deeper layers of the language where symbolism and visual association enter the construction game of the meaning. In an attempt to return its lost complexity and to challenge the audience for higher visual literacy, I propose a combination of text and image that leave the doors open for opinion, understanding and imagination, the pillars of learning together with raw information.

-Cristina de Middel, 2022

Fun Facts

This book is comprised of images from Martin Parr's time spent in Chew Stoke in 1992 and includes text from Robert Chesshyre, from a piece originally commissioned for the Telegraph Magazine. Through the book gain an insight into the delicate social structure of Chew Stoke and the individuals who make the village what it is.
A Year in the Life of Chew Stoke Village is the culmination of a yearlong project in which Martin Parr immersed himself in the goings-on of a rural Somerset village on the outskirts of Bristol. At a time when house prices had fallen sharply across the country and young people were struggling to afford to stay in the village, the influx of newcomers had brought slight tensions across the community. However, during the colourful summer fete’s, the nights spent drinking at the local pub, and the many celebrations in between, Parr was able to build connections with the villagers, gaining access to all the village events over the year and an understanding of the people that live there. Martin Parr is one of the leading documentary photographers of our time.

Often described as a ‘chronicler of life’, Parr is renowned for capturing his unique view of society in a way that enables us to view things that seemed familiar in a completely new way. His work in Chew Stoke is just that; at first glance it may seem to be just quintessential English village life, but Parr’s images bring a sense of ‘human-ness’ to those photographed that makes it easy to form an understanding and connection to the area and the community of Chew Stoke.

-RRB Photobooks, August 2022
-Hardcover, 104 pages
-250x270mm
-ISBN: 9781838268374

A Year in the Life of Chew Stoke...

"Prostitution has traditionally been explained by the media with photography focusing only in one half of the business. If aliens came to earth and tried to understand what prostitution is about they would believe it is a business based on naked women staying in dirty rooms.
With Gentleman´s club I tried to give visibility to that other 50%."
-Cristina de Middel

Gentleman's Club

Opened in 1887, the Jerissa iron mine once provided work for nearly 4000 people. During the early 20th century, it was known to contain rich and pure minerals, most notably hematite. Legend says the mine was the source of the iron used for constucting the Eiffel Tower and making rails of Paris' first subways. Today, however, due to a decline in production, only a few hundred people work at this gaping open-air mine, and the disused sheds and equipment are serve as tourist attractions. One by one the shops and bars of the city have closed. Faced with unemployment, young people continue to leave the area, often to find work in nearby cactus fields, which yield the only viable crop in this arid region.

Zied Ben Rhomdane traveled to Jerissa and documented its last inhabitants and the fading mine.

The Fading Mines of Jerissa

From May 4 to September 22, the Galleria d’Italia will be hosting the exhibition « Fragile Wonder. A journey in changing nature. » by Paolo Pellegrin, dedicated to climate issues. The photoreportage is the outcome of a commission by Intesa Sanpaolo and led Paolo to from Iceland to Namibia, from Greenland to Costa Rica. Featuring audios, videos and photos, the exhibition showcases Pellegrin's talent in showing the beauty and force of nature and its relationship to humankind.

The exhibition (May 27 - September 2, 2022) has been curated by Walter Guadagnini with the contribution of Mario Calabresi.

Edited by Walter Guadagnini.
Published in 2022
ISBN: 978-88-572-4831-8
160 pages

Fragile Wonder. A Journey in Changing...

Ukrainian President Vicktor Yanukovych’s cabinet abandoned an agreement on closer trade ties in the EU, favoring closer cooperation with Russia. What began as small protests escalated to the Revolution of Dignity, also known as the Maidan Revolution, a violent protest with at least 88 deaths. Following the Euromaidan protests and removal of Yanukovych, partnered with pro-Russia unrest in Ukraine, Russian annexed the Ukrainian territory of Crimea.

Demonstrations in the Donbas area of Ukraine escalated into a war between the Ukrainian Government and Russian-backed separatist forces. Russian military vehicles crossed the border in several locations of Donetsk Oblast, which is believed to be responsible for the defeat of Ukrainian forces in early September of 2014. In November, Ukrainian military reported intensive movement of Russian combat troops into separatist-controlled parts of eastern Ukraine.

In October 2021, Russia reignited concerns of a potential invasion after moving troops and military equipment to the shared border with Ukraine. The buildup continued until Russia launched a full-scale invasion in February, 2022.

Russo-Ukrainian Conflict

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