Book Review: Dark Rooms by Nigel Shafran

British photographer Nigel Shafran is one of the photographers who worked with Jurgen Teller, Corinne Day, David Sims and others in the late 1980s for London magazines such as iD, THE FACE and Dazed & Confused. Today, he is better known as a photographer who exhibits in galleries and museums than as a fashion photographer. In 1995, he self-published the photobook "Ruthbook," which documented his life with his partner Ruth, and it was not only a turning point in his career, but also left his mark in the history of photobooks as a masterpiece that captured the relationship between photographer and subject.

In 2016, Shafran's eighth photobook, Dark Rooms, was published by MACK. Unlike Ruthbook and Ruth on the Phone, which are not a single series, Dark Rooms is comprised mainly of five unpublished series that Shafran had been working on since 2005.

"Supermarket checkouts" features products on the conveyor belt at supermarket checkouts, "Paddington escalators" features a sideways shot of people going down an escalator, "Mobility shops" is a series of nursing care stores with a somewhat sad feeling, "Mother's work" features artworks made by his mother at home, and "Packages" is a series of empty containers stacked in the kitchen. The book unfolds calmly as scenes from his home are inserted at key points in these seemingly unrelated series. Unlike his previous works, Shafran has used many photographs taken in extremely low light. While he was working on this book, Shafran lost both of his parents in quick succession, and he himself admits that this event casts a large shadow over "Dark Rooms." What is the relationship between this event and these five series?

This book could be considered a sequel to the monograph "Edited Photographs 1992-2004" published in 2004. "Edited Photographs 1992-2004" was compiled in response to his life with his partner and the birth of his son, while "Dark Rooms" was compiled in response to the loss of a family member. However, the differences between the two books, which appear similar at first glance, go beyond their contents.

"Sequence" is one of the words Shafran uses most frequently when talking about his own work. To effectively display photographs by extracting them from their original context and ordering them, and to do so in a book, is what he discovered in "Ruthbook." The book does not adopt an arrangement or straightforward structure that directly points out similarities, but rather keeps the sequence of each series almost intact so that each series can be appreciated as an independent piece. Here, the photographs and the series are sequenced simultaneously, maintaining their independence as a series while elevating them into a new work called "Dark Rooms," a unique and bold attempt.



The monograph-like structure of the book preserves the independence and superiority of each series while also elevating them into a new work by providing a different perspective. This nesting structure makes "Dark Rooms" somewhat difficult to talk about.

When describing what kind of book this is, as soon as you say "it's a collection of five unpublished series," you are trapped by the structure of a monograph, and once you are caught up in the word monograph, it becomes difficult to understand that this is a new work. This structure thoroughly and consistently excludes narrative or drama from this book. This rejection of drama is a natural consequence of the fact that Nigel Shafran is a photographer who captures from a personal perspective the extraordinary that lurks in the everyday, and the eeriness and awkwardness of the everyday scenes we enjoy, and that "everydayness" and a relaxed "casualness" are important elements in his work.

What emerges here is the image of a photographer who accepts loss as the fate of the world and as part of life, and then tries to move forward. Now, the five series that seem fragmented begin to show a connection. Being carried, the passage of time, the fate of aging, the existence that once existed, and things that have lost their role. There is a dispassionate depiction of the state of this world, intertwined with time.

At the beginning of the book, a small inscription reads, "For my family, past, and present," without the use of the word "future." The photographer's approach is to connect the present to a time that has stopped (the past), and this is very similar to the way a heavenly messenger freely stops time and interacts with the present world in the 1946 British film "A Matter of Life and Death," which Shafran cites as another influence in creating this work.

However, the crucial difference here is that while the messengers of heaven can relate to still time, we are not allowed to do so. What we can do is to connect to the past through the fragment of a photograph, and find light neither in it nor in the future, but in the present.

The book ends with a photo of his son Lev sleeping in his room, and a photo of his bicycle, a symbol of everyday life. It is clear what Shafran saw in the dark room. This is the quiet strength that permeates the work "Dark Rooms," and what photography is to him.

This book does not employ unusual methods or play with images, but rather employs a traditional structure while at the same time seeking to further elevate it, and perhaps it offers a new perspective on the modern photobook medium.

(This article was originally published on 22nd February 2017)

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Title: Dark Rooms
Artist: Nigel Shafran
MACK, 2016
Hardcover, 210 x 272 mm
180 pages
¥6,750 + tax

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