Product Description

‘They’re Not Pets, Susan,’ says a stern father who has just shot a bumblebee, its wings sparkling in the evening sunlight; a lone office worker, less than an inch high, looks out over the river in his lunch break, ‘Dreaming of Packing it all In’; and a tiny couple share a ‘Last Kiss’ against the soft neon lights of the city at midnight.

Mixing sharp humour with a delicious edge of melancholy, Little People in the City brings together the collected photographs of Slinkachu, a street-artist who for several years has been leaving little hand-painted people in the bustling city to fend for themselves, waiting to be discovered. . .

‘Oddly enough, even when you know they are just hand-painted figurines, you can’t help but feel that their plights convey something of our own fears about being lost and vulnerable in a big, bad city.’ The Times

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1523 in Books
• Published on: 2008-09-05
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 128 pages

About the Author

'Slinkachu' is a London-based artist whose creations can be found in doorways and cracks in the pavement across the capital. This is the first collection of his work in book form. See more of his pictures at www.little-people.blogspot.com

Customer Reviews

Brilliant street art
This is a really brilliant idea, and great "little" book. The idea is simple - take small people (1 inch high or so), paint them and put them somewhere, create a story around them, and take close up (macro) shots.

throw in some heartfelt life messages, and you have this book. It's a great alternative view on life, and life in London specifically.

Recommended.

Excellent
It's strange how something like this can be beautiful and hold so much emotion, but I guess that's the whole point of art.

Flick through and you're reminded that we're all little people at the end of the day. Slink captures that lost, vulnerable feeling we all get sometimes and then throws in the comic moments too.

I first saw "Dreams of packing it all in" when I was trapped in a big corporate and had just been prescribed the happy pills. It now takes pride of place on my self-employed office wall and reminds me of how things used to be.

And at this price, cannot we all afford some art in our lives?

Midget gems...
Photographic art and comedy collide in this genuinely funny book.

Will Self (get your dictionaries out) provides a foreword and manages to convey (perhaps more articulately than I can) Lilliputian comparisons to this little gem of a book which surely never fails to bring a smile to the reader.

It's not often that a book of art can appeal to such a large audience. Many find such books to be pretentious - seemingly smug that not everyone `gets it', but with Slinkachu's "Little People in the City" there's a feeling of inclusivity - this is a book of little people for the little people.

Flicking through the pages for the first time I tittered to myself as all the cultural references were plain to see and easy to get - from Wotsits, crisp packets, and cash machines, to dead bees and road signs. I love this book.

Another great feeling this book brings is that the photography itself is technically very basic - a wide shot of a scene followed by a macro shot of the little people in it - anyone with a simple point and shoot camera could do this. Of course there's much more to this than just taking a photo, Slinkachu creates a scene with a social message and visual humour - and therein exists the genius.

In a nutshell: At first this appears to be a book of funny pictures. But quickly you start to read messages into photographs and understand that the most important thing in this big world of ours is the little people. That for every big scene there are smaller events no less important to the people they happen to. You'll come back to this book again and again, and you'll feel proud to be one of the little people.