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.
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
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