Unsigned Three

Unsigned Three is a small, stapled zine by the photographer Valerie Phillips, produced to mark a signing event at Dashwood Books in New York.

Issued in a hand-numbered edition of 150 copies, the sixteen-page zine gathers black-and-white photographs in Phillips's characteristic snapshot style — informal, close, shot on the fly — continuing the diaristic portraiture of teenage girls and young women that runs through her wider body of work. It is one installment in an ongoing, loosely numbered Unsigned series Phillips has produced for Dashwood over several years, made specifically to accompany in-store signings rather than for general trade distribution.

Phillips, born in New York and based in London, built her reputation on a snapshot aesthetic that treats fashion photography like a teenage diary; her photographs have appeared on album artwork for musicians including PJ Harvey and Amy Winehouse. Unsigned Three sits alongside her published monographs, among them Baby Blue and Another Girl, Another Planet, as a smaller, more immediate counterpart to that book work.