Peckham loves me // Steve Ball

From the smal UK London independent press publisher “Jane & Jeremy” I find a very nice small book with title, Peckham loves me! The photographer Steve Ball say in the first page that this book is about friendship, experience and a life in Peckham and south London between 1982 and 1994. This book is formated in A5, upright format 14,5 cm x 20 cm.

It’s a hardbound, but in the back you can see right in to the binding and it make everything a bit different. Cool, and the layout are easy and minimalistic. I like it as the way it is. Handmade in just 100 numbered books. My book is No. 47 out of 100. When we come to the photography it’s printed on matt paper, but the texture of the paper match the picture well done. It sims to me that the whole book is full of picture with different people, youngones and something I can think it’s some family of mr. Ball.

The pictures are representative for the time they was captured, mid 80’s to mid 90’s in a conservative England and south London as well. I visited Peckham two weeks ago, and the place are just a small part of London, a typical suburb to the main city, but this place, Peckham, are grooving to be the new art aera in town and by the way may be the new Shoreditch and Brick Lane.

Jane & Jerry make books for collectors, thats really clear. But they are good enough to do it right. Very nice books coming out from this small independent press.

Here is what Jane & Jeremy it’self write about this book:
Taken in the 1980s and early 90s, Steve’s work captures the frayed but colourful and resilient fabric of working class life in Peckham, South London. Steve was born into a family of 15 children in the 1960s at a time when Britain’s inner cities were undergoing vast changes – as indigenous families moved to the suburbs and satellite towns of Kent, new immigrants arrived from former colonies, and the influence of American mass culture began to be felt in homes and on high streets.

The book is a personal diary of Steve’s life in Peckham, from playing in his band ‘The Psycho Daisies’, long gone nightclubs such as ‘Lost’ and ‘Smashing’ to featuring best friends, family, prisoners wives and a young Jarvis Cocker on the verge of Pulp’s breakthrough release.

Steve’s work is conceived and shot without sentimentality or voyeurism by a man who has spent most of his life in Peckham – as an aspirant teenager and lately as a husband and father. It challenges the viewer to see British working class life in the round, at a time when it’s being demonized and demolished by some, and hopelessly romanticized by others.

  • 145mm x 200mm
  • Foiled cover
  • 68 pages
  • Handmade
  • First edition of 100
  • Hand numbered
  • With signed print

And, -I’m sorry to tell you, but the book is sold out from the publisher. But you will still find it in some of the best photobookstores in London… for example “Claire De Rouen Books”. Run and buy 🙂

-A collectors choise 🙂

Peckham Loves Me // Steve Ball

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