Hasta La Ideas

‘a close look at trinkets’

Alongside a relaunch of Ken Garland’s website, designer Joseph Marshall and writer Sarah Snaith have also created an online shop for Pudkin Books, the small publishing outfit run by Garland and his wife, Wanda…

Marshall and Snaith worked on making Garland’s extensive site at kengarland.co.uk viewable on mobile devices, but have also launched pudkinbooks.co.uk, from which visitors can view the series of 12 photography and illustration books the Garland’s have self-produced to date – and buy them, too.

‘a close look at fallen leaves’

Pudkin Books was founded in 2008 by Garland and his wife Wanda, an artist, with the intention of publishing books under the broad theme of ‘a close look at …’. Nine of the titles are of Ken’s photography with subjects as diverse as pebbles, trinkets, fallen leaves, the tall windows of Mexico, the rickshas of Bangladesh, fire hydrants, landscape sequences, street graphics of Brighton and the ‘buddy bears’ of Berlin.

Drawings that his daughter made between the ages of 14 and 16 make up ‘playing out’; John Laing’s watercolours are compiled in ‘chance and opportunity’; and Lana Durovic’s photographs of urban decay in ‘between and beyond’.

‘a close look at playing out’

The books are published in A6 format and printed on a digital press in restricted editions, usually of 100. “It is our firm intention to stick to this pattern, restricting ourselves to the short-run limitation of digital printing on demand,” say the Garlands. “We would rather publish many titles in small editions than fewer in large editions.”

All books are priced between £7.50 and £8.50. Three new titles in the ‘a close look at …’ series are also expected to launch soon.

Ken Garland’s site is at kengarland.co.uk. Ken and Wanda Garland’s Pudkin Books is at pudkinbooks.co.uk.

‘a close look at between and beyond’