Irvine Welsh

Nick Waplington

Over the course of four years, Waplington became intimately acquainted with two large, working-class families residing in a municipal housing estate in Nottingham, England. The resulting book, Living Room, proved the photographer had achieved an entirely unself-conscious relationship with his subjects. Five years later, Waplington is still shooting. He revisits his Nottingham friends in The Wedding, a colorful, lively visual narrative with the mesmerizing flow of a soap opera. Times have changed in one of the living rooms. The kids are older and Mum is on the verge of a new marriage. With the wedding as a centerpiece, Waplington plunges into the midst of a communal group whose upbeat life-style seems able to overcome all obstacles. Working with Waplington, the cutting-edge British writer Irvine Welsh, author of Acid House, contributes an essay illuminating the social and political context for Waplington's work. Waplington also provides a personal introduction chronicling the evolution of the "Living Room" project, his intensely close relationship with his extended family, and the nine years he has spent photographing them.

New Pictures from the Continuing "Living Room" Series

The Wedding

Nick Waplington was born on Bikini Atol and lives and works in London. The Indecisive Memento is his fifth book, previous titles include Safety In Numbers 1997 and Other Edens 1993. He is currently riding his unicycle from London to Beijing to hightlight the plight of paparazzi photographers whose livelihood is being threatened by the advent of digital technology and overzealous protectionist new legislation.

The Indecisive Memento

In his first body of work, Living Room, British photographer Nick Waplington found the chaotic, multidirectional, often joyous choreography in the everyday lives of two working-class families living in council houses in Notthingham. In Other Edens, his global series of panoramic images. Waplington imposes his body as a physical and metaphorical presence in the landscape. The omnipresent artist--head shaven, and naked so as to deny the possibility of locating him in time--appears in evocative scenes ranging from Naples to Easter Island, from the Peace Park in Hiroshima to the swamps of the Louisiana Bayou. The book's text, by renowned author Marianne Wiggins, includes an interview with Waplington about his extraordinary working methods and the far-flung locations he has chosen to photograph. Invoking the spirits of Friedrich Nietzsche, Eugene lonesco, and Peter Pan, Wiggins provides a brisk and insightful counterpoint to Waplington's exceptional imagery. Other Edens integrates personal, cultural, and comic visions to present an idiosyncratic view of a planet in flux.

Other Edens

Mark Sanders

This insider's expose of the collisions between international youth culture and the subterranean worlds of drugs and clubbing was photographed during a two-year odyssey to New York, Los Angeles, Tokyo and London.

Safety in Numbers

Nick Waplington is a major new discovery in the world of photography. For his first book, this prize-winning young artist has produced a documentary "sitcom" celebrating the working-class family, offering lushly colored glimpses of "the communal spirit". 50 photographs.

Nick Waplington

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