John Gossage
LAMF: Three Days in Berlin, 1987
John Gossage’s LAMF: Three Days in Berlin, 1987, first conceived as a hand-assembled book exclusively for his friends, is a consummate example of the photobook as art.
Gossage used a custom telephoto lens and 6000 ASA film to shoot the area around the Berlin Wall and into the ‘no-man’s land’, capturing the dark atmosphere of a divided city. This new edition of LAMF, made in close collaboration with the photographer, features an expanded edit of 44 images (twice as many as the original) printed in lush tritone with special silkscreen UV varnish to emulate the original's tipped on gelatin silver prints.
The book also comes with a new interview with publisher Jordan Weitzman about the book’s genesis and Gossage's long fixation on Berlin, also the subject of his acclaimed books Stadt des Schwarz and Berlin in the Time of the Wall.
What was once one of the rarest books in Gossage's oeuvre, can now be had by all: a masterpiece of the photobook medium by one of its most prolific practitioners, and a moving artifact of Cold War history.