Gravity Begins at Home by Guy Bolongaro
Publisher: Here Press
Year: 2021
Format: Softcovers in Slipcase
Edition: First
Condition: New
Guy Bolongaro (born Crewe, 1978) studied sociology before moving to London to become a social worker. Around 2014, burnt out by work and frustrated by his attempts at making documentary films in his spare time, he began taking photographs as a form of ‘daily art therapy,’ making images on his lunch breaks and walks home from work. A few years after the birth of his first child he shifted focus from the public sphere to the family cosmos, turning attention from his walking routes to his domestic routines.
Capturing the strange and vibrant moments within the daily maelstrom of childcare and child’s play, and in documenting the cyclical patterns of family life, Bolongaro began a process of working through his feelings of ambivalence about how we live within the idealised ‘family unit’, attempting to persuade himself that family – or at any rate, his own – can work.
Composed of four expandable books held within a slipcase (finished with stickers applied by Bolongaro and his children) ‘Gravity Begins At Home’ gives us a dynamic, unsentimental view of family life: ambiguous, chaotic, unsettling and joyous in equal measure.