John Gossage: LAMF

An expanded facsimile edition of Gossage's much-sought-after photobook documenting Berlin shortly before Germany's reunification

American photographer John Gossage's (born 1946) LAMF, first conceived in 1987 as a hand-assembled work exclusively for his friends, is a consummate example of the photobook as art. For the project, Gossage employed a custom telephoto lens and 6000 ASA film to shoot the area around the Berlin Wall in near-total blackness, capturing the dark atmosphere of a divided city. This new facsimile edition of LAMF, made in close collaboration with the photographer, features an expanded edit of 44 images (twice as many as the original) and a new interview with Gossage about the book's genesis and his long affinity for Berlin, which is also the subject of his acclaimed books Stadt des Schwarz and Berlin in the Time of the Wall. The result is both a masterpiece of the photobook medium and a moving artifact of Cold War history.