First edition of The Pillar byStephen Gill (2019)
Large format hardback in fine condition
Some very minor wear to extremities of boards
Pges clean
Binding firm
Comes with a small paperback booklet containing an essay by Ove Knausgrd (booklet loosely laid in at rear of book)
About The Pillar
A pillar knocked into the ground next to a stream in a flat, open landscape, trees and houses visible in the distance, beneath a vast sky. That is the backdrop to all of Stephen Gills photographs in this book. We see the same landscape in spring and summer, in autumn and winter, we see it in sunshine and rain, in snow and wind.
Yet there is not the slightest monotony about these pictures, for in almost every one there is a bird, and each of these birds opens up a unique moment in time. We see something that has never happened before and will never happen again. That it takes place in the midst of a landscape characterised by repetition, in which time is cyclical, sets up a keen existential dynamic: on the one hand, everything has happened before, theres nothing new under the sun; on the other, every moment is unique and carries the hallmark of the miracle: what happens, happens only once and never again.
But this wasnt what I thought about the first time I looked at these photographs. In fact, I barely thought at all, for I was shaken, as a person so often is when confronted with an extraordinary work of art. Id never seen birds in this way before, as if on their own terms, as independent creatures with independent lives. Ancient, forever improvising, endlessly embroiled with the forces of nature, and yet indulging too. And so infinitely alien to us.
Karl Ove Knausgrd
