Kickstarting GARY — a new photography book by Brian Griffin.
GARY will be our third book for legendary photographer Brian Griffin. With a fundraising Kickstarter launching in September, we created an animated, type-led social media campaign to build momentum for this brand new body of work that is essential Griffin.
The photographic series, shot in black and white, features Brian’s friends and neighbours who live in Rotherhithe, London — the place Brian has called home for over 40 years. Central to them all is the eponymous masked figure of Gary.
In life, Gary is an acquaintance of Brian; an ordinary bloke he sees down the pub. But through Brian’s lens, Gary resurfaces as an enigma. A blank cipher for other subjects or objects in the photograph to take on meaning. The raw power of this work is in Brian’s love of ordinary people and his ability to imbue them with a sense of complex mystery. Gary — who he is, what he represents, and what he reveals to the viewer in this series of photographs is the mystery. They’re also a cracking set of portraits full of humour, spontaneity and affection.
We wanted to create a digital campaign that leant heavily into our own desires to understand more, while at the same time didn’t show too much. After all, the campaign needs to promote and sell the coming book; not only to established Brian followers, but new audiences too.
The social posts we’ve designed are led by typography, animated and seriously black and white. For one set, we use alt tags to describe what’s in a photograph, before a split second teaser of the image itself. It leaves the viewer craving more, or plugging the visual gaps where memory hasn’t had time to record information. For the other, we worked with Brian to craft a series of messages. Interpretations of who Gary is, or could be. And we invite audiences to continue this exploration, via provocations and hashtags. But one thing is for sure — Gary is all things to all people.
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To follow the project’s progress, follow Brian on Insta here or check out our own channel here.
