On the night, Gregory will be in conversation with London based photographer, lecturer and editor Max Ferguson. The event will also include a book signing.
About King, Queen, Knave:
Over two decades, Gregory Halpern has been photographing in and around his hometown of Buffalo, New York, meticulously crafting the series of photographs that forms his latest monograph. King, Queen, Knave is an idiosyncratic vision of a city amidst its contradictions, defying familiar narratives of post-industrial decline and embracing an enigmatic strain of reality verging on surrealism. Halpern’s mesmerising sequence unfurls as a stage across which distinct and unpredictable characters appear in and amongst solitary buildings, snowdrifts, and sun-bleached scenes of everyday transcendence.
The images often locate their subjects within the specificities of the season and balance a historical project with the immediacy of a moment in its individual radiance. Embracing themes of reversal and ascension, Halpern confronts the complexities of his birthplace and of contemporary America at large, seeing beauty intertwined with ugliness and redemption with despair. This lyrical new work is testament to the endless complexity of a place at once familiar and unknown.
GREGORY HALPERN (b. 1977, Buffalo, NY) has published a number of books, including A (2011), East of the Sun, West of the Moon (2014), a collaboration with Ahndraya Parlato, ZZYZX (2016), Confederate Moons (2018), and Omaha Sketchbook (2019). He also edited, with Jason Fulford, The Photographer’s Playbook: Over 250 Assignments and Ideas (2014). He holds a BA in History and Literature from Harvard University and an MFA from California College of the Arts, and in 2014 he was the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship. He teaches photography at the Rochester Institute of Technology and is a member of Magnum Photos.
Max Ferguson is a photographer, writer and curator. He is the Founder of Oval Press and Splash & Grab Magazine, and the Photo Editor of Granta Magazine. Alongside Cian Oba-Smith, he co-authored The Portrait Photographer’s Manual (Thames & Hudson). He is the author of two photobooks: Whistling for Owls and Deadfall. Max is a Senior Lecturer in photography at the London College of Communication and a regular visiting lecturer on various photography programmes across the UK. Previous experience includes five years as the Director of Photography of Port Magazine and several as a Photo Editor at the Financial Times Weekend Magazine.