What Remains After Photography
── Daniel Shea, Distribution

Daniel Shea, "Distribution" , book cover

Since the publication of "BLISNER, IL" in 2014, I have continued to follow the work of Daniel Shea.

This book marks Shea’s first monograph in six years and his first collaboration with the UK-based publisher MACK . It brings together a photographer who, in the 2010s, opened up new horizons in photographic representations of the city, and a publisher that likewise played a major role in the dissemination and growing prominence of contemporary photobooks during the same decade. In a sense, it feels like a collaboration that quietly sums up an era.

After finishing the book with anticipation, the first feeling that emerged was one of straightforward admiration. Shea’s perfectionist command of structure remains intact, and his ability to bring a book of this scale to completion without collapse is genuinely impressive. At the same time, however, I was left with the impression that the work is almost too skilful, too correct—too much like a model student.

What does this mean? "Distribution" meticulously adheres to the cultivated grammar and techniques developed for presenting photographs in book form. Not only are sequencing and layout handled with precision, but reflections on the materiality and history of photography itself are seamlessly incorporated. Everything proceeds so smoothly, so perfectly resolved, that the book can feel almost textbook-like—an exemplary answer.

Spread from "Distribution "

In terms of method, theme, and subject matter, the book does not represent a dramatic departure from Shea’s previous work. While his interest in nature has taken on greater weight, much is shared with "43–35 10TH STREET" (2018), a photobook that received widespread acclaim. Going back further, one could even say that the same motifs continue from "BLISNER, IL" . Such consistency is, of course, admirable. Yet combined with the book’s refined physical production, it left me unable to shake a sense of insufficiency that arises precisely from its excessive perfection, as I finished an initial, relatively light reading.

And yet, that very smoothness lingered in my mind.

I had experienced a similar sensation before, with Nigel Shafran’s photobook " Dark Rooms " , also published by MACK in 2014. At first, that book did not leave a strong impression either. But a vague sense of unease remained, and through repeated viewings, I gradually came to realise that it was a work that, while adhering to an existing format, attempted an update from within—harbouring a quietly innovative structure.

Carefully calculated works operate on the reader’s unconscious. Perhaps this book functions in a similar way. With that vague premonition, I decided to return to it once more—this time more calmly and with an analytical eye—turning the pages slowly, one by one.

Photographing a Forest

The project began during the COVID-19 pandemic, when Shea attempted to photograph forests. Standing before them, however, he found that he could not adequately capture something that lay beyond the reach of human cognition. From this impasse emerged a vague but persistent question: what does it mean to photograph a forest?

Photography inherently fragments the world by cutting pieces from it and weaving them together. It is difficult, if not impossible, for it to speak of a whole all at once.

In response, Shea began to experiment with an approach that inverts the old proverb, “not seeing the forest for the trees.” By committing fully to incompleteness, he sought to bring the total image into being paradoxically. He imposed constraints on himself—using telephoto lenses, photographing only from inside a moving vehicle—and within these conditions, searched for new possibilities. Through this process, he re-examined both nature and the city.

Jessica, the Average American Women

“Jessica” series, opening section of "Distribution "

The book opens with portraits of a woman named Jessica, who embodies the statistical median of Americans—across income, age, and occupation. We see snapshots of her daily life, from waking up and going to work to spending her leisure time.

Yet the intimacy produced by this snapshot style is accompanied by an unsettling quality. Who took these photographs, and when, and for what purpose? Where does their intimacy reside? They even evoke the impression of highly sophisticated generated images.

Carrying this unease through the end of the prologue, the reader encounters a title page, followed by a dark black-and-white photograph that feels like an entrance into an unknown investigation. This is where the main body of the book truly begins.

Photobook Grammar

The book is structured around several distinct sections: the prologue featuring Jessica; a first chapter that serves as an introduction; a second chapter built around a grid structure; a third chapter that moves into the city’s inhabitants and its details; and finally, a short story by the writer Catherine Lacey.

In the first chapter, re-photographed framed works by Shea, images of brick walls, urban and forest landscapes, and close-ups of construction workers unfold rapidly in a nested structure. Here, the elements that will be explored throughout the book are introduced, while photography itself is shown to decompose and transform into images, reproductions, printed matter, and even ink.

Let us follow one example as we turn the pages. After an image of a framed work appears on the first page, the next spread places a reproduction of a framed image of bricks and plants on the left and a photograph of a tree on the right. Turning the page again, the left side is left blank, while the right shows a tree photographed in a forest. In the following spread, a horizontally oriented photograph of grassland is placed vertically on the left, while a slightly altered version of the previous tree image appears on the right. This is followed by images of buildings and forests and photographs of architecture incorporating planted greenery. While the motifs shift, a consistent rhythm and continuity run throughout.

Framed vegetation and a photograph of a tree

This orchestration of visual and symbolic elements is what defines photographic sequencing in the photobook. Photographers such as Walker Evans and Robert Frank explored sequencing as a visual language within the format of the book. MACK is the publisher that, through a rigorous commitment to this grammar, has produced many landmark photobooks since the 2010s—making clear, at this point, the natural affinity of this collaboration.

Building on this foundation, Shea further complicates the grammar. The photographs do not simply correspond through adjacency or through paired spreads. Instead, they resonate across different dimensions—image, picture, original, reproduction—generating sequences that unfold across the book as a whole. The viewer is drawn into a labyrinth of visual language, compelled to ask: what is a photograph, what is an image, and what exactly am I looking at?

One of the most emblematic motifs is the brick imagery that has appeared repeatedly in Shea’s work. Here, photographs of photographs affixed to brick walls, photographs of bricks themselves, images of walls bearing the names of major American corporations, and graphics of peeling brick-pattern wallpaper are scattered throughout. These elements make clear Shea’s sustained interest not only in photographic materiality but also in the increasingly complex relationship between photographs and images.

Other disruptions appear as well: framed works that seem to have lost their frames, photographs where ink appears to spill beyond its boundaries, windows layered with multiple visual planes. Because the book adheres so closely to established grammar, the impact of these deviations is all the more pronounced. As the book progresses, images that more directly engage with its central theme—nature and the city—become increasingly prominent.

Here, Shea brings photography and the image into direct confrontation. Revisiting the prologue with this in mind, the reasons for the white borders around Jessica’s photographs and for their snapshot-like style come into focus.

Jessica, it turns out, does not exist. She is not a generated image but a figure cast according to statistical data—a person who exists only as numbers, yet who represents the most “average” American according to those statistics. A model performs this role.

The first chapter then transitions to the next phase of the book, accompanied by a colour photograph of a track-and-field athlete at New York University.

208 Pages of Time

Grid sequence, central section of "Distribution"

This grid-based section can be considered the book’s true highlight.

Here, a grid structure arranges six images across the top of each spread and six along the bottom, through which photographs taken from a car with a telephoto lens, along with images of forests, unfold in rapid succession, almost like machine-gun fire. Although the photographs appear uniformly ordered, subtle disruptions are repeatedly introduced: frames filled with white ink, large photographs layered over the grid, and images of paint extracted from paintings by Ben Kerway. While the overall format is maintained, these slight disturbances continually unsettle it.

Carrying forward elements from the previous chapter, images of animals, construction workers, and plants—inhabitants of the city—gradually increase in presence. Eventually, large photographs of what appear to be carnivals, workers, and flowers emerge, interspersed with collaged texts by Allan Sekula, Peter Schwartz and Peter Leyden, and Monti Umavijiani, as the grid continues to unfold.

The grid itself is not new for Shea. It has appeared in his previous photobooks and installations as a method that suppresses subjectivity, classifying the distribution of images in an almost encyclopaedic manner, and resonating with recurring motifs such as windows, façades, and bricks. (Photography itself, after all, is constructed from evenly distributed pixels.)

In "Distribution", however, the grid is not merely a formal experiment. It carries significant experiential weight. The abrupt displacement forces readers, accustomed to viewing photographs as left-right sequences, to step back, as if confronting photographs mounted on a wall. Because the grid does not follow its own rules consistently, the viewer must continually adjust their focus and position.

Of the book’s 392 pages, 208 are devoted to this grid. What matters most here is perhaps this equation of page count and time. Shea could easily have condensed this material into a thinner book, given the strength of his compositional skills. Yet, faced with this sustained accumulation of fragments, one realises that the volume itself is essential.

Individual images recede, and the work resolves into an ambiguous mass. Even when large images or collages interrupt the flow, the grid continues beneath them. What appears to be a break is not a rupture of structure.

Gradually, the grid fades out—like a blinking lamp dimming—until the reader is led, almost without noticing, into the next chapter.

The City as an Ecosystem

Final chapter, colour photographs

The final chapter begins with a photograph depicting a place that resembles infrastructure supporting a city’s breathing and circulation. Readers attentive to what has come before will notice that the grid structure persists here, transformed into another dimension. With a higher proportion of colour photographs, this section feels unexpectedly calm after the preceding storm.

Previously, construction workers, animals, and plants were treated as nearly equivalent presences. Here, the perspective shifts toward something closer to cultural anthropology, observing human behaviour as a collective. The gestures and routines of city dwellers—and human activity itself—are quietly rendered.

Human beings as a group. Cities formed through their activity. Shea has long been interested in cities, but at its core, the city is human—an ecosystem of sorts. While his earlier work deliberately focused on the symbolic and surface-level aspects of urban space, here, through an approach toward nature, he seems to move closer to a more essential inquiry.

Gradually, human figures recede once again, replaced by animals and abstracted images of nature and the city. As the book nears its end, blur and defocus make concrete information increasingly difficult to discern. A human figure walks along a path distorted by telephoto compression, and with two final images of nature, the main body of the book closes quietly.

The Distortion of Image and Identity

Final chapter, black and white photographs

If you have access to the book, I strongly recommend using a smartphone translation tool to read the short story by Catherine Lacey included at the end. In brief, it unfolds as follows.

The setting is a society saturated with surveillance cameras. One day, a woman named Enid receives a notice demanding payment of a fine for a traffic violation. The photograph attached, however, shows not herself but someone who merely resembles her. She has no way to prove the difference, and her appeal is rejected by an AI system.

“And this woman looks like you, as much like you as anyone might.”

As more notices arrive, Enid gradually loses her grip on what constitutes fact.

As readers of this review will recognise, the story shares the book’s central concern with identity and the image. Where Shea approaches the theme through visual language, Lacey does so through literary and speculative imagination.

Here, Jessica from the prologue returns to mind. She exists statistically, yet without a singular subjectivity. And still, we recognise her as “American.” This distortion resonates with the uncertain identity explored in the story.

In addition, a single image generated based on Shea’s own photographs is quietly embedded in the book. This subtle device weaves together photography, statistics, and fiction across multiple layers.

What Remains After Photography

Shea has long addressed themes such as the city and nature, photographic materiality, and the circulation of images. At first glance, "Distribution " may seem like a refined continuation of this trajectory. Yet something fundamental has shifted. That shift reflects both the transformations of a world shaped by major events and Shea’s own evolution.

We often think of the extraordinary as opposed to the everyday. Yet after disasters and the pandemic, many of us sense that we are not simply moving back and forth between the two. Even when things appear the same, what lies ahead is a new “everyday,” shaped by the path taken to reach it.

While Shea’s earlier work engaged directly with social critique grounded in academic frameworks, here he steps back from using photography as a blunt critical tool. Instead, he entrusts social questions to literary imagination while attempting—through visual language—to grasp areas that resist articulation and the vague premonitions felt at a sensory level. Paradoxically, this shift becomes more pronounced precisely because he continues to work through familiar methods.

As the title Distribution suggests, the book is not simply about the arrangement of images. It examines how images are distributed, how they are perceived, and at what point they become bound to a “fact” or an “individual.” This unstable process unfolds across photography and literature, cities and nature, and human beings and their environments.

What first appeared to be a structure of overwhelming perfection gradually reveals another face through time and sustained engagement. "Distribution" quietly guides the reader toward an unnamed, ambiguous territory beyond correctness and completion.

Article by Yukihito Kono (21 January 2026)

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Title: Distribution
Artist: Daniel Shea
Publisher: MACK, August 2025
Format: Embossed linen hardcover
Size: 215 × 270 mm
Pages: 392
Language: English
Edition: First edition
ISBN: 978-1-917651-29-5
Price: ¥17,600

▶︎Purchase here
https://www.iack.online/en/products/distribution-by-daniel-shea