Dark Rooms

Dark Rooms gathers five interlocking series of photographs by British photographer Nigel Shafran, all built around domestic scenes and the routines of ordinary life.

The photographs move between the overt, such as supermarket checkout lines and underground escalators, and the quietly charged, including a sequence Shafran made while going through the contents of his late mother's house. Across the sequences, everyday clutter, from till receipts to shop displays to waiting rooms, becomes a study of transition: what people accumulate, discard, and leave behind as time moves forward. The book is designed by Mevis & Van Deursen, co-edited by Liz Jobey, and includes essays by David Chandler and Paul Elliman.

Shafran worked as a photographer for The Face and i-D before turning his camera toward domestic and mundane subjects in books including Ruth on the Phone (2012). Dark Rooms was published by MACK in 2016 and was named among the year's best photobooks by several photography publications.