The Guide

by John Myers

Paperback

Reviews

[Richard · Rating 5 out of 5]

Less-is-more schooling /
and masterclass in abstract /
minimalism.

[Jonathan Walker · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is an excellent compilation of work from several related projects originally created in the 1970s and 80s by Myers, all in b+w using a large-format 5x4 camera (and I imagine all on a tripod). There's brief commentary throughout: very blunt and often quite funny. Myers's avowed purpose here was the sort of documentary realism practised by Stephen Shore in American Surfaces (which he would not have been aware of), or even Warhol (although he might not welcome that comparison). He's very grumpy about refusing the mantle of art/artist, or even the idea that the images might be valued as historical evidence. Rather, he took them because this is where he lived at the time, or went shopping, or caught the bus. This is what was outside the front door, and the people in the portraits were his neighbours. Like American Surfaces, this makes the subject matter feel very prescient of current IG feeds, but these images are much more emphatically flat and deadpan, much more insistently *there* because of the detail on the large-format negatives. They have much in common with the work of the New Topographics photographers: there are typological sets of images here of television sets and electricity substations. But everything is deliberately shot in the most obvious way possible. He's actually dismissive of the examples where he's trying to compose or arrange the images (for him, this compromises the purity of the endeavour), and the last section of the book partially proves his point. These later images (from the 80s) are of a more conventional documentary subject – de-industrialisation – and most of them feel less interesting to me because they're more obviously part of a tradition.

I actually found this book quite inspirational. Reading it resulted in me creating a new little zine juxtaposing photos of the interior or my flat with images of objects taken outside but in its immediate environs.