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A Selection of London Booksellers

An exhibition of photographer Mike Tsang at the Biblion Gallery in Mayfair (London)



4th September - 2nd October
Opening hours: 10am-6pm Mon-Fri
At: Biblion Bookshop, 1-7 Davies Mews, London W1K 5AB
 
From towers toppling in cavernous basements to polished leather tomes in mahogany cabinets. This exhibition at the Biblion Gallery, housed within the antiquarian and rare bookshop Biblion, presents London booksellers in their natural habitats. One of the last havens of British eccentricity; the booksellers and their various environments are captured in this exhibition from photographer Mike Tsang, who is fast achieving renown for his evocative portraits. The exhibition, the first of its kind, serves to shed new light on the strange and rarefied world of the book dealer and to stand as a testament to a unique and very British breed.

Mike Tsang began his photography career freelancing in Tokyo after having received commissions across Asia. In 2009 he spent time in Africa on humanitarian and development commissions, culminating in a portrait project shot with the Dinka people of Sudan. Mike Tsang is now based in London and shoots a range of portrait and documentary photographs. Clients include BBC News Interactive, Tearfund, WWF, Lovebox.org and a range of Japanese and Mauritian governmental and cultural agencies. A Selection of London Booksellers is his first solo UK show.
 
A world away from ‘art as commerce’: The Biblion Gallery is a unique space within the renowned antiquarian bookshop Biblion, where art resides amongst cabinets of important and rare works of literature. Here the Biblion Gallery displays exhibitions of contemporary art that strongly resonate with the gallery’s remarkable setting.

The exhibition shows portraits of Adrian Harrington, Pom Harrington, Bernard Shapero, Jonathan Potter and many others.

details: www.miketsangphotography.com

“The London Book Trade”
By Sheila Markham

The Biblion Gallery may be found within Biblion Bookshop, and provides a most congenial, intimate and extremely well-lit space for what is believed to be the first exhibition of its kind. ‘The London Book Trade’ is also the first solo exhibition of emerging photographer Mike Tsang, who is fast achieving renown for his evocative portraiture.

The exhibition comprises twelve 16”x20” portrait studies of rare book dealers photographed in their widely differing working environments. The photographs are framed and mounted, each limited to twenty colour prints signed and numbered by the photographer. A further selection of 11”x14” photographs is displayed in a portfolio.

The idea for the exhibition was conceived by Ben Houston of Biblion Bookshop, who acknowledged the influence of Sheila Markham’s A Book of Booksellers: Conversations with the Antiquarian Book Trade by inviting her to write the following introduction to the exhibition.

“The rare book trade comes into focus in Mike Tsang’s wonderfully evocative series of portraits. A gift of a subject for a photographer, the trade is rich in individualists, united only by a love of books and a determination to preserve a certain way of life. For the rare book trade is more than an occupation; it is in today’s parlance a ‘lifestyle’ and one which has thrived largely unchanged since the Middle Ages.

The portraits capture in their sitters and settings a tremendous sense of resilience and strength, of permanence and continuity. There is no suggestion here of defeat in the face of the onslaught of modern technology. Indeed reports of the death of the book seem greatly exaggerated. The Internet has of course transformed certain aspects of bookselling. But it is only one of a number of recent challenges to confront the trade – the rise in high street rents, the fall in library budgets, the competition from charity bookshops... the list goes on. But as the exhibition reflects, there are still many different ways to sell rare books – old-established businesses, family firms, partnerships, and sole traders continue to serve the world of collectors, whose requirements remain unchanged - and not least of these is the age-old human desire for personal contact.

Book collecting is a highly visual and tactile activity. The quality of the binding, the paper, the printing and the illustration contribute to the appreciation of a rare book – and stimulate the desire, and certainly enhance the pleasure of reading a wonderful or important text. It is no doubt amazing that you can read a novel on a mobile phone, but perhaps more amazing that you would want to. These photographs reveal the richer pleasures that await the collector who hunts in the corners of bookshops, and not in the margins of LCD screens.

Where is the thrill of the chase in much of today’s online book buying? You can do a life time’s browsing in a few hours on the Internet, but surely this is the fast food equivalent of book collecting. Mike Tsang’s photographs reveal the book trade’s answer to the Slow Food movement. Here is a faithful documentary of the rare book trade as an appreciation of the finer things in life - the pleasures of connoisseurship, and the satisfaction of education through experience. While humanity still has a soul, there will always be a role for rare and beautiful books.”