James Newton

A photographic study of Fondation Fiminco, former research and control laboratories by architect Jean Barot in Romainville on the outskirts of Paris. Now an arts venue, the industrial past remains visible in every surface.

29 x 20.5cm
50 pages
Laser print on Real Silver Perigrina 120gsm
Cover Real Silver Perigrina 240gsm
Perfect bound – handmade
Published 2025
£25

These photographs were taken on the first three days of a ten day summer retreat at Vajrasana, a retreat centre in Suffolk purpose built for The London Buddhist Centre by Walters & Cohen Architects.

Soon after loading the third roll of film I came to realise that I should not be taking photographs, the point of the retreat was not to ‘do’ anything. For me photography could also be construed as ‘work’ – the one thing that we had been asked not to bring with us – and I also realised that it was a form of self- protection, a hiding place, I was safe behind my camera.

So I stopped & the retreat started…………

(Experimental printing on the risograph, using combinations of layouts, juxtapositions and overlays of 33 photographs, making each copy slightly different.)

28 x 20cm
100 pages approx
Risograph on Canon Yellow label 80gsm
Screenprinted cover on recycled card 500mic
Published 2024
Edition of 20
£20

Any discussion of architecture by Mies van der Rohe quickly turns to materials. Steel, glass, marble, stone – clean lines and hard edges are used to create purity of concept and image.

The Neue National Gallery in Berlin (1963 – 1968) is perhaps the ultimate example of Mies’ quest for his concept of “universal space”. As architecture it has become iconic, as a space for showing art it is at best problematic – form before function? Mies himself states, “It is such a huge hall that of course it means great difficulties for the exhibiting of art. I am fully aware of that. But it has so much potential that I simply cannot take those difficulties into account.”

During a recent refurbishment by David Chipperfield Architects (2012 – 2021) some of its deeper faults were exposed once the surface layers were removed, as Chipperfield describes “it was as if the surface was holding everything together.” For an architect who espoused truth to materials some of those surfaces were paper thin.

Upon completion it was realised that in order for the space to function as a gallery some form of diffusion would be required to protect works of art from sunlight coming through the full height glass walls. This was one compromise that Mies was persuaded to accept but only on the proviso that “it must under no circumstances impair the structural clarity and must be an independent addition to the building.”

Hence the curtain, the only soft material in the space, is introduced as a diaphanous mesh around the perimeter. Rarely included in official photographs for fear of diluting the image, the curtain responds to the most fundamental architectural element of all – light. The curtain catches the light whilst all the other materials around it reflect. As a material it is organic, ephemeral, translucent, insubstantial; and yet it practically holds the building up by enabling it to function as an art gallery.

29 x 21.5cm
12 pages
6 Photographs
Laser print on tracing paper 41gsm
Housed in glassine bag with text sheet
Published 2024
£20

Does architecture have memory? What would buildings remember? 300 years after the death of Sir Christopher Wren many of his churches remain in London. Once the high points on the horizon, the towers and steeples are now submerged amongst surrounding skyscrapers, it is at street level in close up that we encounter these buildings.

The photographs presented here focus on the textures and patinations imprinted on the exterior stone walls over the passage of years; the viewpoints are from eye level, we are face to face with them in the present. But they are evocative of the past, providing a feeling of history rather than a factual retelling of dates, names and places.

Published 2023 to coincide with Wren300 & the exhibition ‘Wren on Paper’ hosted by Art+Christianity.

28 x 19cm
72 pages
56 Photographs
Risograph on Evercopy 80gsm
Screenprinted cover on colorplan 270gsm
Published 2023
Edition of 30
£40

Found surfaces photographed in close up and represented as pure abstract imagery, these urban fragments are traces of human activity which ofter go unseen or ignored as visual noise. Seen in detail as they really are reveals their textural and gestural beauty, all the more so because of they are non-industrial, non-designed and unrationalised. Taking influence from Antoni Tapies whose ‘political and rebellious attitude sought to give value to materials, objects and images traditionally despised by society.’

32 x 23cm
16 pages
16 Photographs
Xerox on Real Silver Perigrina 120gsm
Colorplan 135gsm cover with screenprinted text
Published 2023
Edition of 50
£25

Based on the idea that the views we hold and carry around with us become what we see.

A series of photographs of windows in museums and galleries across Europe where blinds are installed to reduce daylight levels and prevent UV light from damaging the artworks. Works are usually hung chronologically and labelled to explain their origins and place in the lineage of art history. Works are removed from the present (and our immediate experience of them) and placed in the past as historical artefacts. We are told both what we are looking at and how we should be looking at it.

30 x 21cm
60 pages
30 Photographs
Risograph on Evercopy 80gsm
Published 2023
Edition of 50
£18

With a gentle hand the most frantic of daily activities, that of parcel deliveries, is slowed. The ubiquitous Ford Transit, or ‘white van’ is photographed in close up to make a mini-typology of patterns created on the van doors. Here, every mark, scratch and smear is recorded and compared offering a joyful analysis of these mini histories. Temporary abstractions captured and in all likelihood never seen again.

30 x 21cm
40 pages
36 Photographs
Inkjet printed on Accent smooth 270/130gsm
Handbound into Satogami 80gsm cover
with an essay by Francis Hodgson
Published 2022
Edition of 50
£35

A catastrophic failure is a sudden and total failure from which recovery is impossible.

Following a trip to Catania in 2016 the hard drive on which I stored my RAW files (digital negatives) corrupted. Whilst some of the data was recovered most of it was lost to a catastrophic failure.

Looking at them again has made me realise that they were not in fact ‘lost’, rather, they had become something else.

The ‘new’ images are equally as valid as those I had intended, in fact they translate something of the place and still describe the architecture and city I was photographing. They are less self conscious, less controlled and no longer chasing after an idea, some sort of photographic perfection. They also illustrate the digital landscape that we now inhabit.

They can be seen as good or bad, beautiful or ugly, meaningful or meaningless, but at least they exist.

38 x 29 cm
Digital newspaper
31 corrupted Photographs
1 unique inkjet print (27 x 18cm on found A4 card)
Published 2021
Open Edition
£22

‘Cities Underneath Cities’ is a personal project I have been working on for the last couple of years (2013-15) whilst visiting Italian cities.  Places visited include Naples (above), Florence, Pisa, Palermo (below), Bologna, Ferrara and Venice. ( The project is now featured on documentary platform a visual archive of Italian photography projects.)

It became a self published book which was created by Highchair Editions and it is held in the Tate Collection of Artists Books.

When we visit Italy where do we go? Do we hope to find an idea of ‘Italy’ that we carry in our mind, or do we hope to discover ‘Italy’ for ourself and experience our own version? The image of the Italian city is fantastic, built of grand palaces and piazzas, colonnades and churches; a rich cultural history awaits the visitor. I travel to Italian cities searching for a certain kind of place; a place that I imagine has existed for hundreds of years, but perhaps has never existed at all. I hope to find evidence. Within the (old) city walls sits the medieval core and what remains today is a curious mix of living city and tourist destination. Life on the streets seems to continue as it has for centuries. The scale and plan of the townscape dictate how one lives and works and aspects of the city seem to be from a different time. Seen in the early morning before the people and traffic have filled the streets I can appreciate the slower movements of the city. I can see the background. Over time nature will reclaim the streets. Not through a lack of habitation and activity but as a result of it. Use and repetition create a patina. Weathering, wear: every contact leaves a trace. The buildings crumble, the colours fade, the writing is on the wall. But this is not a gloomy scene, there is no desolation or ruin here, only signs of life and a patina of activity and use. The city is as alive now as it ever was; functioning, vibrant, ongoing. If it exists then I will find it in the background. That is where it will be, unaware of history and architecture, indifferent to achievement and its monuments. Each generation has left its marks on the fabric of the city, evidence of the stratification of time visible on every surface. Stone is worn by diurnal, annual, centennial activities which seem to have carved a way through streets like a glacier. Patched up, painted over, scrubbed off, replaced – we try to conceal the evidence – but left long enough it becomes visible again gradually obscuring the surface, becoming the surface. Its course is never run.

26 x 21 cm
36 pages/17 colour photographs
Loose bound with elastic cord
HP Indigo printed
Published 2015
Edition of 100
£40 (3 remaining)