The Devil May Care

The Devil May Care is Aaron McElroy's largest book. It is also the point where his diaristic nudes give way to a still life of drug paraphernalia, the body glimpsed in passing rather than held by the gaze.

Published by S_U_N, New York, in 2014, it runs to 158 French-folded pages printed digital offset, with 95 colour photographs at 31.75 x 23 cm. The women of the earlier work are still here, seen in fragments and in unguarded moments. Around them a new set of objects recurs: heroin packets, dextroamphetamine diagrams, crack pipes. Brad Feuerhelm's accompanying text reads these as totems of desire that the pictures neither condone nor disown. He calls the book a personal narrative taken at a glance, not a gaze. The cover sets the title in soft pink rounded type on a maroon ground and carries nothing else. The book was reviewed in Collector Daily in 2014.

McElroy is a New York photographer and a founder of S_U_N, the photographers' cooperative that publishes his books. The library also holds Sweet (2015), his first book of nudes in black and white, Briney Breezes (2015), made with Charles Johnstone, and You Can Count On Me, the 205-A group zine he contributed to.