THE LONELY ONES by Gus Powell
2nd Edition, Lazy Dog Press, 2017
Hardcover, 96 pages, 40 gatefolds, 5"x7". Trilingual Edition with captions in English, Italian, & Japanese.
Inspired by the late, great cartoonist William Steig and his classic book, The Lonely Ones (which pairs Steig’s line-drawn characters with simple one-liners of dialogue-to-self), photographer Gus Powell made his own “lonely ones”—quiet but evocative color photographs of interiors and landscapes, inhabited by people, animals and inanimate characters. Every photograph is paired with a suggestive text, functioning here as the opposite of a caption—each of the 40 color photographs in The Lonely Ones is hidden by a gate fold, on which is printed the single phrase. Every photograph is revealed individually behind its gate fold. “Which way to the symposium?,” paired with a photograph of a butterfly in midair. “Let’s not ruin it by talking.” “Mistakes were made.” “This might hurt.” “Another small victory.” “I am the host of this misadventure.”
THE LONELY ONES by Gus Powell
1st Edition, J&L Books, 2015
Hardcover, 96 pages, 40 gatefolds, 5"x7". Edition of 1000
OUT OF PRINT
THE LONELY ONES – Trailer
Special Thanks to Steven Brahms for the cinematography & editing, and Craig Ward for the titles.
REVIEWS
“Powell performs this balancing act between text and image masterfully, using sparse sentences to invoke and enhance the symbolic power of his imagery – to pry his photographs open even further, uncover their potential for both emotional and psychological insight, and infuse them with a subtle yet very personal sense of poignancy that is at once both playful and profound.”
-Aaron Schuman, TIME Lightbox, “See How Gus Powell Mixed Words and Images for Wits”
“Powell’s photographs are delicate, itinerant, at times balletic, and always unfalteringly specific in their affection for the flotsam and jetsam of everyday life. They are woven together in the memory with these miniature verbal fragments, and they suffuse his pictures with a sense of unwavering curiosity, wry wit and unalloyed reverie.”
-Stanley Wolukau-Wanambwa, Photo District News, “Best Photobooks of 2015”
“It’s the subtle, funny one-liners Powell adds to his photos that elevate the collection of images to something that’s part poetry, part comic strip.”
-Betsy Horan, T Magazine, "Gus Powell's Word Play".
“Some books are powerful because they make you believe they were written expressly for you to find. Powell’s The Lonely Ones made me believe this; his work feels like intercepting a series of mysteriously encoded communiqués.”
-Heidi Julavits, Aperture, "Gus Powell, The Lonely Ones"
Also featured in:
Vogue, "Best Photobooks of 2015" by Suzanne Shaheen.
Photo-eye, "Best Books of 2015" by Jeffrey Ladd.