How Can Photobooks Expand the Canon?

Gregory and Rachel Barker founded their photobook publishing house, Stanley/Barker, based in Shropshire in the West Midlands of England, in 2014. Their first publication, Tod Papageorge’s Studio 54 (2014), sequenced the photographer’s unpublished portfolio as a one-night journey into the depths of perhaps the most mythical nightclub ever. Stanley and Barker, who studied photography and art in London, and who are now both in their midthirties, have since published monographs by lesser-known but nonetheless formidable photographers, reviving interest in Mimi Plumb, Judith Black, and Jack Lueders-Booth. Superb black-and-white reproductions and narrative structure have become hallmarks of the Stanley/Barker approach, as well as a sensitivity to the look and feel of a publication held in the hand.