Near Dark

I generally don't trust invitations to back Kickstarter-type campaigns. You know the sort of thing, I'm sure: "we need to raise £50,000 to start production of our innovative tin opener", backed with various levels of reward if the target sum is raised and if it doesn't turn out to be either a scam or a fantasy that fizzles on first contact with reality. However, I am backing this one – a book of photographs by Chris Dorley Brown, and encourage you to do the same.

Why? Well, first, these are truly excellent photographs that deserve publication, and second, Dewi Lewis is a well-established and trustworthy publisher of photobooks: this is definitely neither a scam nor a pipe dream. Yes, it's a shame that work of this quality can't find a publisher without begging for support, but that's the reality.

Those of you who, like me, are fans of the Hoxton Mini Press will probably recognise Chris Dorley Brown's name from their list, both as a photographer of London's East End and as a compiler of vintage photographs (I have his book The Corners, as well as a couple of the collections). However, if you've been following that press's progress, you'll have noticed their move away from being a specialist in photography (one of their earliest, On the Night Bus by Nick Turpin, is one of my favourite photobooks) to a publisher of "opinionated" guides and themed photographic compilations. In the end, you have to publish books that sell – they, too, had to resort to Kickstarter during the Covid shutdowns (see my post Hoxton Mini Press of 2020) – and the sad fact is that most photobooks do not sell as well as they might. In fact, it is the dirty secret of photobook publishing that many, if not most of the deluge of unexciting books that appear now are vanity projects paid for by the "artists" themselves.

So, Kickstarter is a necessary evil, if work like Near Dark is to, um, see the light of day. If photobooks are your thing and you can afford it, why not give it your backing?