Preorder: Opacities by Ben Stezaker

Ben Stezaker's first monograph of his seminal project Opacities. Published by Bracken books winter 2025 for his solo show at Project 78, this hardback mixed media printed book is an edition of 150 and comes with a signed digital print, a risograph printed folded poster print and Thermograph raised silver dust jacket.

A truly unique monograph for an incredibly talented and up and coming artist.

The ‘Opacities’ are darkroom photo grams of what is often called obscured glass, the kind of glass one finds in private parts of domestic homes. The sheets of glass act as compound lenses, fracturing and refracting light to specific focal points directly onto light sensitive paper. These photo grams or contact prints reveal, as one would expect, something of the hidden structure of glass and its peculiarity as neither a liquid nor a solid. But what couldn’t be anticipated was the strange, uncanny space created in this hybrid world of geometric, crystal structure and fluid, organic form. In the process of making the photo grams a single millimetre movement of the glass from the photographic paper can dissolve crystal formations into visceral, organic shapes. The series celebrates an intimate and indexical connection between these two most dominant media of transparency in our culture – glass and photography. - Ben Stezaker.