Podcast No.13 - Chris Brooks - The Brooks Press of Wirksworth

Haarlem Artspace Podcasts

An interview with Photographer Chris Brooks about his recent exhibition at Haarlem Artspace. For almost ten years Brooks has been returning to his childhood home in Derbyshire to photograph the land and research the story of his family’s printing press, a business which he knew very little about due to the death of his father when he was a teenager. The Brooks Press of Wirksworth, an imprint founded in 1898 published a wide range of material from travel guides and poetry to books on self-improvement. It finally closed its doors in the early 1970s, having passed from father to son for three generations, winding up just before Brooks was born. By employing a mixture of exquisitely composed, atmospheric, large format colour portraits and landscapes combined with archival fragments and pages of letterpress, Chris Brooks examines concepts around ‘home’ and the complicated nature of belonging. By doing so, he draws our attention to the constantly changing meaning of what it is to be ‘in’ and ‘of’ a place. The Brooks Press of Wirksworth is thus a timely meditation on changing notions of nationhood, identity and the power of place. https://thebrookspress.com/home The podcast includes field recordings by Zach Holt and James Warring and music by South-Facer https://south-facer.com/ https://south-facer.bandcamp.com/