Body Language | Allen Wheatcroft

Body Language
Photographs by Allen Wheatcroft, Text by Jeff Mermelstein. 
DAMIANI, Bologna, Italy, 2020. 80 pp, 9¾x9¾".

This book grew out of Allen's portfolio review with Jonathan Blaustein at the 2017 Filter Photo Festival.  The two continued working together on sequencing and editing and finally on a book dummy that led to this elegant publication.

Allen Wheatcroft’s first monograph, 'Body Language', explores the balance between connection and dislocation, which he observes while roaming city streets, camera in hand. Taken in Chicago, Sweden, Los Angeles, Berlin, and Paris, the book includes an introduction by renowned New York City street photographer Jeff Mermelstein.

The photographs emphasize gestures, movements, and expressions; a visual language without words. The viewer comes to wonder about, and empathize with, the loners and bankers, doormen and gym rats, tourists and sunbathers – eager, perplexed, hurting – who inhabit our cities. This project, which focuses on tension, loneliness, and synchronicity in contemporary life, uses the universal language of the body in the street.