Love Story
John Bolloten

Gary is 44 years old and has been injecting heroin since he was 15. He drinks a number of tins of strong Polish lager every day and sometimes smokes crack. Maree is 24 and doesn’t use heroin – she smokes crack and also drinks lager daily.
For eight months, between February and October 2018, I visited Gary and Maree weekly at their flat.
John Bolloten, March 2019

Warning: Contains images of drug use and nudity.

Love Story
John Bolloten
72 pages
292 x 212mm
Numbered edition of 200
b/w digital printing

First 25 copies sold come with a 7×5 print.

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Description

Praise for ‘Love Story’

“I fell in love with John Bolloten’s Love Story at first sight. It’s the tale of two souls manoeuvring through a silvery black & white world where love and drugs are the sustenance of life in equal measure. Bolloten, a talented and empathetic artist, has given us a terrific urban love story. This is not a fairytale romance, yet love and romance are there in every gritty frame. A cautionary tale of a man and a woman holding tight, one to the other, in a space not generally earmarked for happiness. John Bolloten’s Love Story is a masterwork of photography with unparalleled depth and emotion.”
Scot Sothern (Streetwalkers)

“An important, honest and unflinching reportage, Love Story asks questions, raises debate and will hopefully, effect change. Bolloten’s raw, real, claustrophobic and compelling album of intimacy and love, grips you by the eyeballs and doesn’t let go. An uncomfortable, exhausting but necessary look at a love and life.”
Peter Dench (England Uncensored)

“John Bolloten’s Love Story is a menage à trois between two desperate people and their favourite drugs. John Bolloten’s photos raise questions. He is an honest and uncompromising photographer exploring Bradford in the spirit of Don McCullin.”
Miron Zownir (NYC RIP)

“A bleak, brutal, and brilliant documentation of a couple living and loving on the edge of madness. It’s cracking work, full of raw intensity and darkness. Bolloten at his best!”
Tom Stoddart (iWitness)

“A love story amid the background of destruction. John’s images bring to life the smell, blood and chaos of two lives caught up in a cycle of love, hate and war.”
Zak Waters (Birdmen)

“Love Story is a stark and brutal work but also, strangely uplifting. Bolloten has shown, once again, he is one Britain’s most important documentary photographers.”
Colin Wilkinson (Bluecoat Press)

Additional information

Weight 295 g