Dull Ache
Photography by Fiona Lascelles and poetry by Jasmine Gallagher.
Designed and published by Back Space Books
Dull Ache is a small photobook offering a place for readers to meander and seek solace. It was created by photographer Fiona Lascelles, in collaboration with poet Jasmine Gallagher. First published in early 2020, it is now in its second edition, and these are the last few hand numbered copies that will be available. It has been shown at both the Wellington Photobook Fair and Melbourne Artbook Fair in March 2020.
The following quote by Sally Mann guided the development of the interconnected words and images: “As for me, I see both beauty and the dark side of the things … and I see them at the same time … The Japanese have a phrase for this dual perception: mono no aware. It means “beauty tinged with sadness,” for there cannot be any real beauty without the indolic whiff of decay.” Sally Mann, Hold Still: A Memoir with Photographs
The images are quiet, and while made in a period of grief, they are not an expression of sadness but a moment for pause. And the poetic fragments are brought together to form one long poem, which meanders through the pages, forming a conversation with the photographs. This form of ecoGothic poetry responds to the hope found in nature, as a source of solace: where death is revealed not as an ending, but as a crucial part of the endless cycle of regeneration.
The dust jacket unfolds to a secret image, a secret garden, a place of contemplation. A postcard with this image is also included should the reader be willing to share their own thoughts, extending the conversation.
Jasmine Gallagher is a poet, art critic and doctoral candidate at teh University of Otago, where she is reserching landscape mythology in contemporary New Zealand art and poetry.
Fiona Lascelles is an Auckland art director who photographs the quiet and unassuming moments she encounters while going about her day.
RRP$50
softback with jacket| 50 pages
165 x 210 mm
#28 from the first edition of 30
2020
A historic photo-essay by the late Paul C. Gilbert, this book chronicles the early days of the New Zealand phenomenon of DIY house trucks, which appeared on the roads around the mid-1970s as part of an alternative lifestyle movement. The house-truckers were drawn to the alternative life and music festivals of the time, including Nambassa in the late 1970s and Sweetwaters festivals in the early 1980s. Paul Gilbert travelled with the grass-roots music and performance troupes in their convoys of hand-converted house trucks starting with ‘The Original Travelling Road Show and Mahana’, as they journeyed through small communities and music festivals around the North Island.
