Vape Shop Olympia

Vape Shop Olympia is the concluding volume of Peter De Potter's loose photobook trilogy, a hopeful, hypersaturated portrait of a culture running on sign language, hip-hop, and clickbait.

Claire de Rouen Books published the 224-page softcover in London in 2018. It pairs De Potter's photographs of young men, mostly found through Instagram and pictured nude or posing with props like pliers pulling at skin and fingers pointing at the sky, with drawings by Giovanni Wetzl and graphic design by Sven Bauweraerts. Sharper and more brightly colored than his earlier books, it reads as a meandering, multi-layered dispatch on how texting, sexting, and social-media iconography have reshaped everyday gesture and belief. The edition ran to 500 copies.

De Potter is a Belgian artist based in Antwerp. From 2001 to 2010 he directed the imagery and designed books for Raf Simons, including the designer's Redux monograph, and in 2016 he designed two of the sleeve variants for Kanye West's The Life of Pablo. Vape Shop Olympia followed The Vanity of Certain Flowers (2016) and All Statues Sing Protest Songs (2017). Together the three books move from retreat, to rebuilding, to this book's outward-looking present tense.