The Pillar by Stephen Gill. Published by Nobody.
One of my favorite photobooks of the year is The Pillar by Stephen Gill. It is entirely made up of photographs remotely from a camera that is fixed in a single position without variation that is triggered by birds landing on that pillar in the middle of a field, creating and amazing procession of curiosity. What happens on this pillar is related to one of the reasons this is one of my favorite books at the moment is after being thoroughly spent from watching the political disaster unfold in America on a daily basis on the television in my kitchen, I decided one day to find something more positive to saturate myself with and I stumbled across a nature show on the BBC. What a pleasure it was to take in information about wonderment in this world, and as simple as it sounds I feel like I really needed to find that station and that nature show when I did. Gill’s book affirms that the natural world is far more interesting than all the nonsense occurring in our world. Also, don't miss his previous book called Night Procession, another book with similar parameters to this.
Todd Hido (born in Kent, Ohio, 1968) wanders endlessly, taking lengthy road trips in search of imagery that connects with his own memories. Through his unique landscape process and signature color palette, Hido alludes to the quiet and mysterious side of suburban America — where uniform communities provide for a stable façade — implying the instability that lies behind the walls. His photographs are in many private and public collections, including the Getty, Los Angeles; Whitney Museum of American Art; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. Notably, Pier 24 Photography holds the archive of all his published works. He has published more than a dozen books, including the award-winning monograph Excerpts from Silver Meadows (2013) and the innovative B-side box set designed to function as a companion piece. His Aperture titles include Todd Hido on Landscapes, Interiors, and the Nude (2014), part of The Photography Workshop series, and the mid-career survey Intimate Distance: Twenty-Five Years of Photographs, A Chronological Album (2016). His latest book, Bright Black World, was released by Nazraeli press in the Fall of 2018. Hido is also a collector, and over the last twenty-five years has created one of the most notable photobook collections, which will be featured in Bibliomania: The World’s Most Interesting Private Libraries (Random House, 2019).
www.toddhido.com