Dover Street Market Is Launching a Book From Raf Simons' Longtime Photographer, Willy Vanderperre

Willy Vanderperre releases photography book '635' at Dover Street Market.

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Complex Original

Image via Complex Original

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Willy Vanderperre has connected with innovative publisher IDEA Books to launch his photography book 635. Vanderperre is probably best known as Raf Simons' go-to photog, but he has also created incredible imagery for AnOther, VMAN, 032cand Dazed

IDEA Books developed a concept to create the book in a very short time limit—the book went from merely an idea to fully completed and sent off for printing in only 10 days. The tight timeline prompted Vanderperre to draw from his personal Instagram account to fill out the book—the book's title represents the amount of images on the account when it was sent off for printing—which prints every one of the photographer's 'Grams in the order they were posted. Much like your own Instagram feed, Vanderperre posts haphazardly to his account. This sometimes creates a unified series, like when photos from the same shoot are posted together, while sometimes professional work bumps up against images of airplanes and statues taken during the photographer's downtime. 

Maintaining the order and printing the photos as triptychs in the book was a conscious decision by Vanderperre. "It felt more instinctual and I loved the idea of having a contrasting sequence of pictures," he told AnOther. "It's strange how sometimes they fight with each other, and then on the other hand they can totally enrich each other. It's illogical, but logical at the same time and completely spontaneous!" The photographer also says that creating a book very quickly was inspiring to him. "When IDEA asked me to do a ‘superfast' book, I reflected on how we 'met’ each other mostly on Instagram," he said via a press release. "With that in my mind, I thought about using these images from my Instagram feed. From post 1 to 635. The last image was posted on the day we sent this book to print."

Only 300 copies of the book have been printed. They will be available exclusively at Dover Street Market New York and London starting tomorrow, Sept. 10. Vanderperre will be on-hand to sign copies of the book in NYC starting at 6 p.m. tomorrow.

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