Rory Mulligan: Freddie

"A beautiful meditation born out of unrequited love, willful engagements and wanderings. Freddie is an instant classic" —Deana Lawson

Published with Matte Editions.

In his debut monograph, American photographer Rory Mulligan (born 1984) presents a body of black-and-white photographs that span more than a decade of the artist's work. Spurred on by the death of a childhood friend and unrequited first love, Mulligan turned to photography and toward home to unpack his personal history, relationships with other men and his own place in the canon of documentary photography. Crystalline yet strange images of suburbia are punctuated by charged portraits and self-portraits, resulting in a poetic, rhythmic rupture of traditional documentary narrative. Mulligan's process of creating this work was deliberately paced, often stepping away from it for months or even years at a time to focus on other projects. He considers Freddie to be something beyond simply personal; it is a revelation of the artist and his navigation through loss and the search for intimacy and self-affirmation.