Just Looking At : Book Series
You may be feeling lonely and anxious, but have you noticed moss recently?
Somewhere between photography, science journalism, and poetry, the Just Looking At : Book Series is dedicated to exploring the overlooked dimensions of our lives in this digital age. The slow, the embodied and the more-than-human.
Each title focuses on one ordinary sighting, and as the reader immerses themselves in the text and images they find that it's not just about that thing, but about everything. Pebbles are about ancient time scales. Moss is about invisible communication. Grey Skies are about navigating unknowns.
“When we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the Universe.” - John Muir
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This project is really important to us because of the preciousness of attention. Each title honours a part of life that is increasingly becoming invisible due to our digital lives meditating what we notice, and what we don't. The question is who benefits if you do notice it more, and who benefits if you don't?
We plan to start our series with the London Plane trees because our team lives in London and until we met Sam Furness we didn't notice how fascinating and majestic these local trees are, and their historic importance to this city. That's the purpose of these books – to point things out to each other!
The vision is to create a collection of books over time, collaborating with different expert-lookers who are deeply passionate about a subject.
We are inspired by the Observer's Books that were a series of small, pocket-sized books, published by Frederick Warne & Co in the United Kingdom from 1937 to 2003. Like us, their aim was to awaken the observer in each us.