Epic45 - We Were Never Here (Japanese Edition) (2020)

We Were Never Here by epic45 is a 12x12" full-colour photography book and CD accompaniment.

epic45 have dedicated their music-making career to the ordinary threads that run through life. Their releases have always featured documentary photography either curated from family albums or created by themselves. We Were Never Here is the duo’s first photography book with a CD companion of all new work. Photographs were taken and the music was created in South Staffordshire 2019-2020.

In 48 pages the book documents familiar suburban and semi-rural ‘nowhere places’ that exist between large towns and cities, motorways and dual carriageways. A convenience of commuter belt paradises, with row upon row of clinically aligned sensible housing (for those that can afford it!). And the spaces between these where you might find a gate restricting access that leads to no place in particular, or an abandoned outbuilding claiming territory as a dilapidated indicator of ownership.

"I found a kinship with the works of George Shaw. It mirrored the eye for mundane detail that runs through our visual work and the poignancy that can convey" ~ Ben Holton, one half of epic45.

Ben Holton and Rob Glover started writing music together at school. Without the means or funds to do anything else, they looked to their surrounding views; of South Staffordshire’s farmed undulations, Wolverhampton’s high rises, and the radio tower dominating Cannock Chases’ woodland. The duo grew up rurally inspired yet self-consciously flanked by stacked chimney ghosts of post-industry, the mysterious lines of Clent and Clee hill, and the looming peak of the Wrekin; all of which appear closer or further away depending on the days’ visibility. Something immense was always happening in the distance along the hazy horizon; so they looked inwards to the houses, streets and communities.

We Were Never Here, is about home at the centre of nowhere, but it’s also home to a life lived on the periphery of everything else.