Guy Archard: Cumulus (signed)

Guy Archard’s latest photobook Cumulus is a concise yet heady accumulation of cloud portraits in which he fixes and materializes that which sashays and drifts overhead. He restores and celebrates what a contemporary excess of photographs denies: the rarity and preciousness of the isolated form. He reminds us that the formation of a cloud, watching it traverse the sky, remains as subtle and magic as a print appearing in the developer tray.

Published by Y-Junction as a handcrafted limited edition of 200 copies, the book folds out concertina-style to reveal nineteen panels of individual giclee prints tipped-in without glue. Clouds shapeshift from swollen greys to lithe beiges and flush pinks, their size and orientation also fluctuating with each page-turn. Archard uses different methods of copying and printing on textured paper to fragment and distort each cloud’s personality, sometimes letting the ink run out as reflection on instability and a gradual decline into disorder. The text, heat foiled onto the covers, is at once deep and elevated. (Odette England, from publisher's website)

 

Title: Cumulus
Publisher: Y-Junction, 2022
Photographer: Guy Archard
Format: Concertina folded from a single 3m sheet, in slipcase
Size: 14 x 21 cm, 21 pages
ISBN: 9781999849016
Edition: 200 copies