40 Minutes Outside London…

Staple bound photographic card wrappers. SIGNED by the artist to title page. Stamped “29 AUG 2017” to colophon. Unpaginated [c.48 pages]. Full page colour photographs. No text. *** Valerie Phillips is a highly successful fashion and portrait photographer. Most of her work is published in limited edition booklets and zines that are much sought-after. Phillips’s books usually feature one model, often a young woman, whom she follows throughout her day-to-day life. The world that Phillips records in her highly evocative, fly-on-the wall photographs feels very appealing and she gives a real sense of the environment they’re in. *** The full title of this zine is “40 minutes outside London lies a suburban world of alien girls rubbing sleep from their eyes wandering the rooms & parks & spaces they call home wearing 80s swimwear with no pool in sight”. Strange as it might sound, but the title sums up the content beautifully. It features a dreamy looking blond teenager strolling the streets of a Hertfordshire town and posing indoors. Many of the photographs are framed by floral wallpaper, adding to the deliberate artificiality of this unusual shoot.