David Spence picks 7 highlights from Offprint Paris 2023

This year, Offprint Paris ran from 9 – 12th November and hosted a selection of independent and experimental publishers across the fields of art, architecture, design, humanities and visual culture. After perusing the fair, we asked our co-creative director David Spence to select his standout pieces.

David Spence’s top picks from Offprint Paris 2023

1. Dorothy Sing Zhang, Like Someone Alive

This book from Dutch publishers, Art Paper Editions, is a collection of aerial shots of people in bed. The photographs appear to be taken in the same bed, but the more you look through, the more you see the subtleties of peoples’ environments. I love the way they are photographed, and the contrast between the tenderness and darkness of the images.

2. Vera Lehndorff and Holger Trülzsch, Veruschka: Trans-figurations

This was at the Reference Point stand – a great bookshop and library in London run by Jonah Freud, who talked me through the book. Vera Lehndorff was a model for David Bailey and his contemporaries in the 60s. The book compiles Lehndorff’s work from the 1960s and ’70s, after she started experimenting with body paint and photography. It includes beautiful photographs of her with incredible body paint. She blends into her environment in some; in others, she is much less subtle. The long exposure shots of her against a dark background resemble a lightning strike – so beautiful!

3. Kara Walker, Book of Hours

I love this book. Her fountain, Fons Americanus, at Tate Modern in 2019 was the first work of hers that I’d seen. These images are so beautiful and powerful.

4. TOPSAFE, Next To Nothing

Freddie Forsyth from TOPSAFE makes lovely books and this is a great introduction to anyone interested in film or imagery in general. It’s all about creating things with a limited budget – hence the title. It features some great interviews too. I found it to be really important and inspiring – we need more work like this.

5. Pierre Keller, Polaroid SX 70, 1977-1997, Photoarchives 11

This was also at the Reference Point stand – Jonah pointed it out to me. I love these Polaroids so much. I actually own the same camera that all these photos were shot on. This book really inspires me and shows how photography has the potential to communicate the intimacy of your daily life. This work feels incredibly personal and the photos themselves are beautiful and not overly composed – they feel real. I really connected with this book.

6. Purple Journal, Numéro Zéro

I’m a big fan of the range of photography in this early edition of Purple. There’s a great balance between beauty for beauty’s sake and a sense of something raw and honest. It’s not a glossy fashion magazine and I love that. Spider webs and Rainer Werner Fassbinder – what’s not to like?

7. Hans Eijkelboom, Together

Another selection from Art Paper Editions. I like the long-lens style of imagery in this book. It was shot over two years, mainly in the centre of Amsterdam. Each page informs the next: a woman in a t-shirt that reads ‘we could all be feminists’ is next to the page of a man whose top reads ‘como estas b*tches?’ It’s both funny and sad and the style of imagery is perfect.