Let the Sun Beheaded Be: Limited-Edition Box Set

In Let the Sun Beheaded Be, Gregory Halpern focuses on the Caribbean archipelago of Guadeloupe, an overseas region of France with a complicated and violent colonial past. The work resonates with Halpern’s characteristic attention to the ways the details of a landscape and the people who inhabit it often reveal the undercurrents of local histories and experiences. Let the Sun Beheaded Be offers a visually striking depiction of place—as it has been worked on by the forces of nature, people, and events—as well as a thoughtful engagement with the complexities of photographing in foreign lands as an interloper. A text by curator and editor Clément Chéroux grapples with Guadeloupe’s colonial past concerning the French Revolution, Surrealism, and the Martinican poet Aimé Césaire, whose writing inspired the title of the book and much of the imagery itself. A conversation between Halpern and photographer and critic Stanley Wolukau-Wanambwa delves into Halpern’s process, personal history, and the politics of representation. This collectible set includes a signed, limited-edition printing of Let the Sun Beheaded Be with a special silver-foil-stamped cover encased in a clamshell box. It is accompanied by a signed and numbered 8-by-10-inch digital c-print. This box set is limited to an edition of seventy and has been produced with the goal of supporting two nonprofit organizations; the artist’s proceeds will be donated in their entirety, shared equally between Locust Street Art in Buffalo, New York, and the Pan American Health Organization. Let the Sun Beheaded Be was produced as part of Immersion, a program of the Fondation d’entreprise Hermès, in partnership with the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and the Fondation Henri Cartier-Bresson.

C-Print accompanied by a signed, clothbound copy of Let The Sun Beheaded Be, enclosed in a clamshell case
Print Title: Untitled, 2019
Image Size: 7 x 8 3/4 inches
Paper Size: 8 x 10 inches
Edition of 70 + 7 Artist Proofs
Signed and numbered by the artist

Gregory Halpern (b. 1977, Buffalo, New York) received a BA in history and literature from Harvard University and an MFA from California College of the Arts. In 2014, he was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship. He has published six books of his work: Harvard Works Because We Do (2003); A (2011); East of the Sun, West of the Moon (in collaboration with Ahndraya Parlato, 2014); ZZYZX (2016); Confederate Moons (2018); and Omaha Sketchbook (2019). He is co-editor of The Photographer’s Playbook (with Jason Fulford, Aperture, 2014) and teaches at Rochester Institute of Technology, New York.