Libby

Libby gathers Charles Johnstone's Polaroid portraits of Elizabeth Schoettle, made over seven years of an ongoing friendship and collaboration.

The book was initiated in 2011 by 70South's Corey Presha, who was looking through Johnstone's archive of Polaroids and recognized a project distinct from the deadpan architectural typologies of his earlier self-published books. The 47 photographs, made between 2002 and 2009, are interleaved with reproductions of and excerpts from letters Schoettle wrote Johnstone over the same years, so the book reads as an exchange rather than a one-way study; Johnstone has described it as being 'as much about how I saw Libby as how Libby saw herself.' It was published by 70South in 2013 as a signed and numbered hardcover, limited to 35 copies, bound in black cloth with a Polaroid reproduced on the front cover.

Libby was the first of what Johnstone calls his Walkup Series, three books each built around a different woman in his life, followed by The Girl in the Fifth Floor Walkup and Je ne sais quoi. Together they mark a shift in his practice away from the typological documentary projects, such as Thirtyfour Basketball Courts and Brooklyn Fences, that established his earlier work.