Gian Butturini - London - 2017

London by Gian Butturini
Edited by Martin Parr

"Butturini’s London portrays the poor and the working class who failed to establish themselves in the 1960s, contrasting this vision with the tourist one" - Martin Parr

In 1969 Gian Butturini was little more than thirty and was already an established advertising designer. His career as a photographer began at Victoria Station, when he saw a young man staggering with a syringe stuck in a vein. He then began to explore 1960s London through the Nikon he wore around his neck.
Butturini’s photographs of London are imbued with pain and sarcasm, but also with joy and lyricism: hippies and stylish young women share space with the homeless, peace demonstrations, and Speakers’ Corner orators. Butturini’s London, to use the photographer’s own words, "is true and naked... I didn’t ask it to pose".
This is the new, facsimile edition of Butturini’s cult photobook from 1969, which alternated his black-and-white photographs with texts by Allen Ginsberg. An authority of Martin Parr’s stature, who contributed a text to this new edition, has recognized in Butturini’s photobook the merit of containing some of the best photographs ever taken of the British capital.

The volume presents in good overall condition. The dust jacket and cover show staining along the lower margin, as shown in the photo. Spine firmly bound. Interior pages clean with no creases or stains. A fine collector’s copy.