Ed Templeton photos in new book Wayward Cognitions, like you've never seen them before
- Text by Shelley Jones
- Photography by Ed Templeton
Ed Templeton’s got a new book out Wayward Cognitions on artist friend Thomas Campbell’s Um Yeah Arts imprint, and it’s not quite like any of his work he’s published before.
Wayward Cognitions is a selection of Ed’s archives from the last twenty years and shows a different side to the youth documentarian’s extensive output. Where his previous books have focused on teenage smokers, kissers and suburbia, the images in Wayward Cognitions are less explicit and reveal the subtlety of Ed’s roaming eye.
Ed’s Wayward shots have a style and spirit – wild, free and often flawed – that unite them and the resulting body of work is truly epochal, standing up with street photography greats like Robert Frank and Weegee.
“All my books before have been very specifically themed, where the title basically tells you exactly what the photos are about,” says Ed in a short video made by Um Yeah Arts. “And with this book the name ‘Wayward Cognitions’ is just a more poetic way to say ‘stray thoughts’. So that’s how I started compiling images for the book. Thinking about these stray images and how I could string these images together to create an entire story.”
Wayward Cognitions is available now from Um Yeah Arts and there are exclusive prints in the special editions.
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