King, Queen, Knave
Gregory Halpern
Gregory Halpern was born in 1977 in Buffalo, New York. He first gained international recognition with his photobook ZZYZX (2016). A hallucinatory portrait of the City of Los Angeles shot between 2008 and 2014. His later works, Confederate Moon (2018), Omaha Sketchbook (2019) and Let The Sun Beheaded Be (2020) cemented his reputation. For his latest photobook King, Queen, Knave Halpern uses photographs he has been photographing in and around his hometown of Buffalo for over two decades.
King, Queen, Knave has been nineteen years in the making. Every time Halpern visited his hometown over the last two decades he took pictures capturing the harshness and hidden beauty in Buffalo. Although the photographs are taken over a period of twenty years, the book feels as though it captures a moment in Buffalo.
In King, Queen, Knave Halpern investigates the concept of home. It is a central theme in American photography. Halpern’s work for King, Queen, Knave underscores the value of returning to a place you know. Buffalo is located in America’s Rust Belt. An area of industrial decline in the United States. But what the book conveys is the sense of a city remaking itself from the embers of the old.
The book feels quite close to cinema. The first picture shows a white deer. Possibly something of a spirit animal. Several times the white deer reappears and guides us through the book. There is also a dramatic role for the elements and the seasons in the book. In the book seasons alternate. Winters cold and barren, the summer equally feverish. But it seems winter bears a greater weight. It represents the harshness of life in Buffalo.
The book starts with images taken in winter showing the environmental and social catastrophe in Buffalo. But later in the book seasons change and the future becomes brighter. When spring arrives images of the city’s crumbling, tilting and smouldering architecture are exchanged with portraits of the city’s residents. These are mainly portraits of working class members. People who make the city.
King, Queen, Knave
Photographer: Gregory Halpern
Publisher: Mack
Published in 2024
Embossed linen hardcover with tipped in image
24 x 29 cm, 112 pages