Hunt and Gather

«Stephen Waddell is one of those patient spirits whose art is devoted to depiction, to the contemplation of sight itself. This is neither the oldest nor the original form of art, nor possibly the most significant these days, but it may be the most stable, consistent, and richest in possibility. Its models are Velázquez, Cézanne, Manet, Atget, and Walker Evans. Waddell’s photographs are usually taken surreptitiously in public places…. He concentrates on notation and suggestion, a delicate and circumspect observation of people in their labor, leisure, and their solitude. He almost never alters anything with a computer.\nWaddell is an outstanding colorist and has a material, chemical feeling for color, both as pigment in painting, and as any and every colored object and creature he encounters with his camera. A photographer who works as Waddell does can’t pick and choose the colors of the things depicted the way a painter can; he or she has to take them as they are and take them quickly. But there are still ways of composing in color, even under these conditions, and Waddell knows about these ways….» Jeff Wall in Art on Paper\nThe photographs assembled in this book were mainly taken in Germany, others are from the last twenty years in Japan, Italy, France, Vancouver, and Lebanon. They give an overview of Stephen Waddell’s photographic work, recently honoured by the Liliane Bettencourt Prix de la Photographie 2010.