Raymond Meeks: A Commonplace Book

Raymond Meeks: A Commonplace Book
Category: Photographer Monographs & Art Books
Author: Raymond Meeks
Publisher: Steidl
Publication Date: October 2026
Print Length: 120 pages
Language: English
Price: paid paid paid

A Commonplace Book brings together 59 photographs by Raymond Meeks, selected and arranged by fellow photographer John Gossage. Published by Steidl with The Agency, Hudson Valley, the book presents Meeks’s subdued black-and-white images of the American landscape without a chronological sequence or continuous narrative. The selection instead allows each photograph to stand on its own, while the differences in style and subject reveal a consistent photographic sensibility.

Meeks, born in 1963 and based in the Hudson Valley, has worked for decades with landscapes, domestic spaces, and the traces left by human activity. His photographs often rely on precise framing rather than dramatic events. Roads, fields, buildings, trees, fences, and overlooked details become subjects through the way they are isolated and positioned within the image. The photographs in this volume vary in form and tone, but retain a restrained approach to observation.

Gossage has been an important influence on Meeks, particularly in his understanding of how a camera constructs a picture. For A Commonplace Book, Meeks supplied a large body of work, from which Gossage made the final selection and established a new context. The edit does not function as a conventional retrospective or a collection of highlights. It focuses instead on the strength of individual photographs and on the connections that emerge when they are viewed together.

The book contains 120 pages and is published as a clothbound hardcover with a dust jacket. Its title refers to the tradition of the commonplace book, a collection organised around the recording and preservation of notable observations rather than a single subject or argument. In this case, the format reflects Gossage’s decision to present Meeks’s images as separate but related entries. The result is a focused publication about variation, editing, and the ways a photographer’s identity remains visible across different approaches to making pictures.

Selected Books by This Photographer

Doctrine of an Axe

2009 - Nazraeli Press

Raymond Meeks

 

A Clearing

2008 - Nazraeli

Raymond Meeks

 

Sound of Summer Running

2006 - Nazraeli Press

Raymond Meeks

 

Books From the Same Publisher

Nan Goldin: Honey on a Razor Blade

Nov 2026 - Steidl

Nan Goldin


Helen Levitt: New York Archive / Color

Oct 2026 - Steidl

Helen Levitt


Mary Ellen Mark: Passport

Aug 2026 - Steidl

Mary Ellen Mark

 

Martin Schoeller: Drag Queens

Aug 2026 - Steidl

Martin Schoeller

 

Tim Page: Nam Contact

Aug 2026 - Steidl

Tim Page

 

AAP Magazine Travels 2026
 

expand_circle_rightLatest Books in This Category


Win a Solo Exhibition in November