Picture perfect
Latest 7 takes a look at this year’s must-have Christmas gift: JJ Waller’s book, Brighton Vol:01
They say you can’t judge a book by its cover! With this one you can, because JJ Waller’s Brighton Vol:01 is full of quirky poignancy matched with wit and laugh-out-loud observation. The book is a great tribute to the bonkers city in which every one seems to want to live. It’s a must-have present to be placed under your Christmas tree.
When you unwrap this little gem, find a quiet moment and head to your favourite coffee emporium, make yourself comfortable and slowly turn the pages and enjoy the reveal.
These unique pictures (did we say this is a photography book?) will remind you of why Brighton is still the place to be and just in case you haven’t been out and about recently, its pages will remind you of how much actually goes on in Brighton Land.
Miles apart from the idealised, picturesque postcard Brighton of the tourism marketing boffins, JJ Waller’s photographs ‘capture the city with its makeup slightly smudged’ and often literally with its pants down. (It would seem that in Brighton people have a predilection for taking their clothes off at any opportunity and not just on the beach). It’s all there within the pages – hen parties and West Street pastors, night-time lug worm diggers, carrot-nosed snow women and kissing police.
As Nione Meakin says in the book’s introduction: “It’s perhaps not surprising his [Waller’s] images are funny and unexpected… a legacy from his earlier years as a pioneering street performer in Brighton and London’s Covent Garden. A discipline where the audience’s attention must be earned and kept.”
Although a solo performer then and a lone photographer now, in JJ Waller’s Brighton he has cleverly ‘collaborated’ with others to get some short but ‘sharp’ quotes about Brighton. Many are from city resident writers like Julie Burchill and Lynne Truss, but also from bus drivers, street cleaners and even the famed local sleuth Detective Superintendent Roy Grace. The quotes entertain and activate the switch of recognition.
This book isn’t gritty, grainy documentary photography informing on the city’s underbelly.
It never intends to go there. It’s a “simple and fun chronicle of some of the people and events that go into making it the place that it is”.
“It’s a simple and fun chronicle of some of the people and events that go into making Brighton the place it is”
A Brighton entertainingly observed through the eye and wit of a photographer who in his own words recognises that: “Making good pictures isn’t about luck. It’s about being there and following people’s lives, visually exploring a place and developing a sensitivity to it.”
Perfectly timed for the Christmas gift-giving season JJ Waller’s Brighton is a book you and those around you will regularly return to.
JJ Waller’s Brighton Vol:01 launches with a special introductory price of £9.99 until 20 December, and then the usual RRP of £11.99.
Available from City Books, England @ Home, Castor & Pollux, Brighton Museum, The Royal Pavilion Shop, Wickle (Lewes), Churchill Square & Kensington Gardens with the Brighton Calendar, Waterstones, Dwellings (St Leonards) and www.jjwaller.com
