John Gossage

A signed first edition of LAMF by John Gossage.

• John Gossage (American).
• [Washington D.C.], [Self-published], [1987].
• 48 pages.
• 26 mounted gelatin silver photographs, each numbered with a red or black ink stamp.
• Number 14 of 100 copies.
• Signed by the artist.
• With a mounted sealed letter of introduction.
• Blue cloth-covered boards, title stamped to upper side in gold, original dustjacket made from a contemporary Berlin newspaper, title stamped in black and red on upper panel and in black on spine.

Each copy of LAMF contains a different selection of 25 and 30 photographs chosen from the complete series of around 100 images.

In 1982, Gossage was invited to exhibit and give a workshop at the Werksatt für Fotgrafie in Kreuzberg, Berlin, founded in 1976 by Michael Schmidt. In the early 1980s, Schmidt invited several American photographers, including Lewis Baltz, William Eggleston and Gossage, to exhibit and teach workshops. These cultural exchanges greatly informed the work of all who took part. Gossage made many subsequent visits, and it was here in Berlin, where the past was manifestly visible, that he began making photographs that would inform all of his subsequent work.

Gossage took these photographs in Berlin using a telephoto lens and surveillance film. The series title relates to Gossage’s memory of a graffiti warning he often saw whilst growing up in New York City in the 1950s and ‘60s. LAMF (Like a Mother Fucker) was an acronym used by street gangs to mark their territory. However, when Gossage saw the same letters on walls in Berlin, it seemed more likely that they were written in homage to Johnny Thunders and the Heartbreakers’ 1977 album, which had the same name. When prompted some twenty-five years later, he offered ‘Lost Angels and Missing Friends’.