Photo Books

‘The Past is a Foreign Country’ is a series of nine photo-books based on photographs taken between 1998 and 2004.

Each book is like a short poetic film without a soundtrack and each story is organised around a place – or more specifically, a place in a foreign country.

Prices vary but as a guide, the e-books cost around $15 and can be viewed using Kindles or any IOS device.
The Hard Copies are 8″x10″ portrait or 10″x8″ landscape (25 x 20 cms).
They are all printed on lovely 120gsm matte archival paper (Mohawk Superfine Eggshell) and sell for between $60-$100, depending on number of pages. Most are around 50 pages and $80.

Coney Island

Coney Island was only a short train ride from Manhattan, near the border of Brooklyn and Queens. Part of Coney was a burnt out ruin, the rest was trashy and down in the mouth.

e-book
hard copy

Xharp

Xharp is a small Siberian town in the foothills of the Urals. The town used to be a Stalinist prison camp, now its raison d’être is a cement works and long-term gaol for murderers and rapists

e-book
hard copy

Forbidden Zone

The sign on the gate was a remnant from secretive Soviet days: Forbidden zone. Now ‘the zone’ was a Black sea holiday camp for fish scientists and their families. It housed a rusty marine research institute and some relics of cold war paranoia.

e-book
hard copy

Moscow Summer

After she left, I wandered the streets of Moscow wailing like a baby in the morning sun. Eventually my tears dried. It was summer and Moscow was light, warm and like a fairy-tale; a neo realist fairy-tale.

e-book
hard copy

Shanghai & up the Huangpu

Shanghaied in Shanghai. It sounds sort of cool but it wasn’t. Nor was I really a sailor. I had a job, of sorts, working as an intern on a film: Red Rose, White Rose.

e-book
hard copy

Suzhou & Doyle Colour Theory

There’s a Chinese saying: ‘In the sky there is heaven and on Earth there is Suzhou …’

e-book
hard copy

Ticket to Paradise

Twenty million live in São Paulo and three million of these are of Japanese descent. Many have been here for generations but still have the speech and outward mannerisms of the Japanese.

e-book
hard copy

Buenos Aries & the Russian Mafia

I was only there 24 hours so I completely surrendered to being a tourist. I avoided the underground and walked and walked all day. Just being the outsider and looking.

e-book
hard copy

The Wild East

Vladivostok is a frontier town; eight time zones or 7000 kilometres east of Moscow, but only 100 k’s from the Chinese border and a short flight to Seoul, Tokyo and Shanghai.

e-book
hard copy