Johnnie Shand Kydd: Crash

These informal, insightful photographs, many of which feature major figures on the British and international art scenes, are casually framed, as if by a friend and co-conspirator—which is just what Johnnie Shand Kydd is. As a newly active photographer in the 1990s, Shand Kydd fell into the party and- opening scene of the Young British Artists, or YBAs, and participated in that crowd’s growth and success by documenting his friends, including Tracey Emin and Damien Hirst. That work was soon collected into the book Spit Fire, and taken to the country’s heart: a Shand Kydd snapshot of Hirst making faces with Kate Moss is now in the National Portrait Gallery in London, along with 70 related pieces. This second book, Crash, documents the aforementioned familiar faces and more, and shows the ways in which Shand Kydd has refined his straightforward and confident approach, in both theme and technique, while managing to hold onto his subjects’ familiarity and unaffected collaboration. About 200 exposures in strict black-and- white capture art-society luminaries like Gilbert & George, Sam Taylor-Wood, Nan Goldin, Richard Prince, Juergen Teller, Maurizio Cattelan and Tracey Emin.