John Gossage: From the Garden to the Darkness
14 Mar —30 May 2026“Photography has always seemed to me a place where formality meets reality, or if you would like to say, opinion finds a place in fact.”
We are delighted to present the first exhibition of American artist John Gossage in the UK.
John Gossage (b.1946) is renowned for his artist books and photographic publications. His first monograph, The Pond (Aperture, 1985, reissued in 2010) is considered a classic by photographers and educators alike.
Gossage’s photographs have been exhibited and are represented in major public collections, including the Museum of Modern Art, New York; the Philadelphia Museum of Art; the Canadian Centre for Architecture, Montreal; the Bibliothèque National, Paris; the Sprengel Museum Hannover, and the National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC, among others. Other notable publications include There and Gone; The Things That Animals Care About; The Romance Industry; Berlin in the Time of the Wall; The Thirty-Two Inch Ruler; Looking up Ben James – A Fable, and Should Nature Change.
In From the Garden to the Darkness, we focus on two key works which serve as bookends.
Gardens is a portfolio of twenty-four photographs with text excerpts selected by Walter Hopps. It was published by The Hollow Press and Castelli Graphics in 1978. The photographs were made between 1973 and 1977 in Washington, DC, where Gossage lives.
The second is from a series of pictures that photograph the darkness in Berlin 1982 - 86. They are the subject of Gossage’s book Stadt des Schwarz (City of Black) and the heart of his later book Berlin in the Time of the Wall.
Positioned between the bookends are what Gossage calls “photographs with distractions”, pieces made from single, small photographs mounted on board with collage-like elements and handmade marks. “I think of them as assemblages. They are not collages because none of the elements intrude upon the photographic reality”, he says in a conversation with Darius Himes.
The images are from There and Gone (1997), a book in three chapters… the first chapter being the bathing beach in the Mexican border city of Tijuana. The pictures were taken from a distance, using a long telephoto lens and surveillance film. John Gossage: “There’s a lot of illegal border crossing and at the same time it’s the beach of the people of Tijuana. What seemed interesting to me was the photographing of strangers. I could go on the beach and do the standard photojournalist pantomime where you spend a couple of days blending in, getting to know the people, but it’s a lie, an illusion. Given this I decided to stay at a distance and photograph people who didn’t know that they were being photographed. All of the pictures taken of Mexico are done from America, about a quarter mile down the beach. I could just stand there and shoot all day, anything that went on, taking another culture on its own terms.”
In 1987, Gossage started his own publishing imprint, Loosestrife Editions, which has published a number of photographic monographs to great acclaim, including A New Map of Italy, Guido Guidi’s first book published outside of Italy. The exhibition includes an homage to Gossage by Guidi.
We are delighted to present the first exhibition of American artist John Gossage in the UK.
John Gossage (b.1946) is renowned for his artist books and photographic publications. His first monograph, The Pond (Aperture, 1985, reissued in 2010) is considered a classic by photographers and educators alike.
Gossage’s photographs have been exhibited and are represented in major public collections, including the Museum of Modern Art, New York; the Philadelphia Museum of Art; the Canadian Centre for Architecture, Montreal; the Bibliothèque National, Paris; the Sprengel Museum Hannover, and the National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC, among others. Other notable publications include There and Gone; The Things That Animals Care About; The Romance Industry; Berlin in the Time of the Wall; The Thirty-Two Inch Ruler; Looking up Ben James – A Fable, and Should Nature Change.
In From the Garden to the Darkness, we focus on two key works which serve as bookends.
Gardens is a portfolio of twenty-four photographs with text excerpts selected by Walter Hopps. It was published by The Hollow Press and Castelli Graphics in 1978. The photographs were made between 1973 and 1977 in Washington, DC, where Gossage lives.
The second is from a series of pictures that photograph the darkness in Berlin 1982 - 86. They are the subject of Gossage’s book Stadt des Schwarz (City of Black) and the heart of his later book Berlin in the Time of the Wall.
Positioned between the bookends are what Gossage calls “photographs with distractions”, pieces made from single, small photographs mounted on board with collage-like elements and handmade marks. “I think of them as assemblages. They are not collages because none of the elements intrude upon the photographic reality”, he says in a conversation with Darius Himes.
The images are from There and Gone (1997), a book in three chapters… the first chapter being the bathing beach in the Mexican border city of Tijuana. The pictures were taken from a distance, using a long telephoto lens and surveillance film. John Gossage: “There’s a lot of illegal border crossing and at the same time it’s the beach of the people of Tijuana. What seemed interesting to me was the photographing of strangers. I could go on the beach and do the standard photojournalist pantomime where you spend a couple of days blending in, getting to know the people, but it’s a lie, an illusion. Given this I decided to stay at a distance and photograph people who didn’t know that they were being photographed. All of the pictures taken of Mexico are done from America, about a quarter mile down the beach. I could just stand there and shoot all day, anything that went on, taking another culture on its own terms.”
In 1987, Gossage started his own publishing imprint, Loosestrife Editions, which has published a number of photographic monographs to great acclaim, including A New Map of Italy, Guido Guidi’s first book published outside of Italy. The exhibition includes an homage to Gossage by Guidi.