Gian Butturini - London - 2017

“Butturini’s London portrays the poor and the working class who failed to make themselves felt in the 1960s, contrasting this view with the tourist one” – Martin Parr

In 1969 Gian Butturini was a little over thirty and already an established advertising graphic designer. His journey as a photographer began at Victoria Station when he saw a young man staggering with a syringe inserted into a vein. He thus began to explore 1960s London through the Nikon he wore around his neck.

Butturini’s London photographs are imbued with pain and sarcasm, but also with joy and lyricism: hippies and fashionable young women share space with the homeless, pacifist demonstrations, and Speakers’ Corner orators. Butturini’s London, to use the photographer’s own words, “is true and naked… I did not ask them 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 note to this new edition, has acknowledged the photobook’s merit for containing some of the best photographs ever taken of the British capital.

The volume presents in overall good condition. The dust jacket and cover show staining along the lower margin, as in the photo. Binding is firmly intact. Interior pages are clean with no creases or stains. A good copy for collectors.