Please join us for a conversation about my recently published book Métier, Small Businesses in London

I will be in conversation with Dawn Lyon and Karen McQuaid
at
X Marks the Bökship
210 / Unit 3 Cambridge Heath Road
London E2 9NQ
Thursday 30. Jan, 7pm
http://www.bokship.org

Métier, small businesses in London, is a book by photographer Laura Braun about small-scale independent and specialist businesses in London and the people who run them. In a time when the high-streets of London are taking on a more and more corporate character, this book about independent traders offers an unusual and interesting perspective on this city and an insight into the working lives of people who strongly identify with their occupation. Over 6 years Laura Braun slowly added to this collection of portraits and interior photographs of very individual London businesses. Her subjects are people with fascinating lives shaped by their longterm involvement with their line of work and business. The spaces they work in reveal interesting details about the persons inhabiting them and the work they do.
Laura will be talking to sociologist Dawn Lyon and photography curator Karen McQuaid about the project the making of the book.
Métier, Small businesses in London was published by Paper Tigers Books in 2013.

Now available online

My book Métier, Small businesses in London can now be bought online through the Paper Tigers Books website:
http://www.papertigersbooks.com/index.php?/coming-soon/metier/

 

Métier launch at TPG

The launch of MÉTIER was this week at The Photographer's Gallery Bookshop.
It was a lovely lovely night. I was particularly happy that a few of the poeple I photographed for the book made it to the launch. Here I am talking to Lorenzo Marioni of the closed down New Piccadilly Café, Gary Arber of W.A Arber and Co., printer and stationer in Bow and Klaus Kalde, black and white photographic printer with his daughter.

Thank you to everyone who came!

Photos by Kristian Buus.

 

 

Métier on Hole & Corner

Over the next few weeks Hole & Corner Magazine is publishing a few of the stories from Métier on their site. So to have a sneak peak of what's to come have a look here:

http://www.holeandcornermagazine.com/notes/w-f-arber-co-ltd.html

Please join us at The Book Launch for MÉTIER on December 3rd.

MÉTIER, Small Businesses in London, Book Launch and Signing
The Photographers' Gallery Bookshop
16 - 18 Ramillies St, London W1F 7LW
3 December 2013, 18.00-20.00
Free event, no  booking

The book will be avaulable in selected Bookshops and via the Paper Tigers Books Website from Dec 3rd. www.papertigersbooks.com


Métier, is about small-scale independent and specialist businesses in the capital and the people who run them. Over six years, Laura Braun slowly added to this collection of portraits and interior photographs of very individual London businesses. In a time when the high streets of London are taking on a more and more corporate character, this book offers an unusual and interesting perspective on the city and an insight into the working lives of people who strongly identify with their occupation.

Métier contains photographs of 26 people and their places of work, accompanied by a short text about each person and business and an afterword by sociologist Dawn Lyon.

New book - pre-order to raise funds for production

Some of you will know that over the last 6 years I have been slowly working on a project about small-scale, independent, specialist businesses and the people who run them here in London. It has been a labour of love, a truly personal project, which I added to slowly whenever I came across another person or business that made me curious and which I wanted to let people know about.
Now I am working on putting this project together as a book to be published via Paper Tigers Books in December. But making books is expensive and so I would like to ask for your help.
I have started a crowd funding campaign on Indiegogo where you can essentially order the book in advance helping me raise the funds to produce it. If you want to contribute a little more you can also order a limited edition print of one of the photographs from the project or a book and a print together.
Please have a look at the campaign here, and at the facebook page here, support it and spread the word!

Two talks and an exhibition

Tomorrow morning I will be heading to Cromer in Norfolk to give a talk about my printmaking and bookmaking work at Cromer Public Library. Looking forward to the talk as well as the day out!

On the 10th of June I will be talking at You can now take pictures, organised by YCN at Shoreditch House. I will be discussing my personal as well as my commercial work. Also talking will be photographer Luke Stephenson, stylist Anna Lomax and image collection professional Rebecca Swift.

From 6 - 27 June prints from my project The Weather will be exhibited as part of the group show Adrift - The Unfamiliar Familiar in Modern Society at Galerie Ruberl in Vienna.
Exhibition Reception: June 6 at 5pm.
Location: Galerie Ruberl, Himmelpfortgasse 11, A - 1010 Wien.
Gallery Opening Times: Mo - Fr 11-6pm, Sat 10am-1pm and by appointment.

A small book of this project with a text by Susana Moreira Marques, published by The Velvet Cell and Gasket on the occasion of the first time Adrift was shown in London last year, is available from The Velvet Cell's website.

Notebook 5: Photo Book and Print Sale

The Studio
3 Ravenscroft Street
London E2 7SH

Wednesday 28. Nov & 5. Dec. 4 - 9 pm
Saturday & Sunday 1. & 2. Dec. 12 - 4pm

With:
David San Millàn Del Río and Heather McDonough


Hand made and limited edition fine photographic books and prints by Laura Braun, David San Millán Del Río and Heather McDonough available directly from the makers at this 4 day sale.

Please join us on the opening night, Wednesday 28.11.2012 for a glass of wine or for a cup of tea at any other time during the opening times.

"The Head and the Garden" and "Detours" show at Wimbledon Space

My artists book "The Head and the Garden", the work resulting from my residency in the printmaking workshops at Camberwell College over the last 6 months is stilll on display in "Detours" at Wimbledon space. It is a book of photo polymer etchings made from glass plate negatives found almost 20 years ago in an abandoned printing plant in eastern Germany a few years after re-unification.

Detours is a group show with work by all the artists who were on residencies at Camberwell, Wimbledon and Chelsea College this year: Jonathan Gildersleeves | Danny Greaney | Nick Hornby | Carolyn Lefley | Kate Lyddon | Ryan McClelland | Emma Neuberg | Tom Smith | Laura Taylor | Willem Weismann and myself. It is on until the end of the week.

Here are some installation shots.

Solarplate

For the last few months I have been so lucky to have access to the printmaking workshop at Camberwell College through a scheme called Artists' Access to Art Colleges.
I have been working on improving my technique in making solarplate prints. Solarplate is similar to photo etching but uses a polymer instead of metal and there is no need for acids to process the plate.
I am making a limited edition artist's book of a series of glass plate negatives found around 20 years ago in an old printing house in the ex GDR. I have always wanted to do something with them and have finally found the right format.
Here are two test prints, a positive and a negative solarplate print of one of the glass plates:

Salford Zine Library

Salford Zine Library will be at Salford Art Gallery from 15 October 2011 to 29 January 2012 showing the archive along side some original artwork, film showings and workshops.

My book TRIP will be included.

TRIP - book launch

On Saturday 9th July at 6pm
I will launch my new little book TRIP at:

X Marks the Bökship
210/ Unit 3 Cambridge Heath Road
London E2 9NQ

There will also be a screening of the work during the launch.

TRIP
London to Lisbon and back, November 2007 – June 2008.

Many photographs have been taken on road trips, pictures of the towns and landscapes passed through without the pretense of a deeper analysis of them; images that tell not so much of the places visited as of the experience of being on the road. ’Trip’ is another collection of impressions of a journey.

Trip is the first book to be published under Paper Tigers Books Publishing.
For more info please see:

http://www.bokship.org
http://www.papertigersbooks.com
http://www.laurabraun.net

Long overdue

At the beginning of November we had another open studio. I showed two book projects, one finished one not.
LONDON  STUTTGART  LISBOA STUTTGART  LONDON Is a collection of polaroids I took while traveling by car from, well, London to Stuttgart, to Lisbon and back through the year of 2008.  I've been meaning to make a small book out of these for ages and what I showed at the studio was still less than a dummy, but I am slowly getting there. I displayed the original polaroids in sequence on shelves in the studio windows.

The second book was is a unique book made of the prints used in my exhibition Wo bin ich? Where am I? last year in Stuttgart. All prints had been wallpaper pasted to the walls there. They are now in the book kinks and tears and all. The title of the book: BILDER AUS ARCHIVEN UND SAMMLUNGEN - STUTTGART translates Pictures from archives and collections-Stuttgart.