Simon Larbalestier
Encyclopedia
Simon Larbalestier is an English photographer.

Larbalestier is noted for his collaborative work with Vaughan Oliver
Vaughan Oliver
Vaughan Oliver is a British graphic designer based in Epsom, South of London. Oliver is most noted for his work with graphic design studios 23 Envelope and v23...

 and the design studios 23 Envelope
23 Envelope
23 Envelope was the name given to the graphic design partnership of graphic designer Vaughan Oliver and photographer/filmmaker Nigel Grierson from 1983-1988...

 and v23 with whom he has provided photography used on album artwork for bands such as the Pixies, Red House Painters
Red House Painters
Red House Painters were an alternative rock group formed in 1989 in San Francisco, California by singer-songwriter Mark Kozelek.-History:While in Atlanta, Georgia, Ohio-born Kozelek became friends with Anthony Koutsos, a drummer. He then moved to San Francisco, California, adding guitarist Gorden...

, Heidi Berry
Heidi Berry
Heidi Berry is an American singer-songwriter who recorded for Creation Records and 4AD in the late 1980s and 1990s.-Biography:Born in Boston, Massachusetts in 1958, Berry's mother was a jazz singer with French-Canadian roots, and her father was an actor. Her mother re-married and the family moved...

 and other artists on the 4AD
4AD
4AD is a British independent record label that was started in 1979 by Ivo Watts-Russell and Peter Kent, funded by Beggars Banquet Records, and is still active today...

 label. Much of the pair's collaborative work has been featured in the book Vaughan Oliver: Visceral Pleasures. His work has featured on many magazine covers for New Scientist
New Scientist
New Scientist is a weekly non-peer-reviewed English-language international science magazine, which since 1996 has also run a website, covering recent developments in science and technology for a general audience. Founded in 1956, it is published by Reed Business Information Ltd, a subsidiary of...

 and book covers for the publishers Random House
Random House
Random House, Inc. is the largest general-interest trade book publisher in the world. It has been owned since 1998 by the German private media corporation Bertelsmann and has become the umbrella brand for Bertelsmann book publishing. Random House also has a movie production arm, Random House Films,...

 and Secker & Warburg.

Graduating with a Masters of Art from the Royal College of Art
Royal College of Art
The Royal College of Art is an art school located in London, United Kingdom. It is the world’s only wholly postgraduate university of art and design, offering the degrees of Master of Arts , Master of Philosophy and Doctor of Philosophy...

, London in 1987, Larbalestier has described his final degree show as a turning point. Some of the images from this show became album artwork for the first Pixies EP Come On Pilgrim
Come on Pilgrim
Come On Pilgrim is the debut mini-LP release by the American alternative rock band Pixies, released in September 1987 by 4AD.- Background :...

. Larbalestier went on to shoot images for all the Pixies albums notably Surfer Rosa
Surfer Rosa
Like Come On Pilgrim, Surfer Rosa displays a mix of musical styles; pop guitar songs such as "Broken Face", "Break My Body", and "Brick Is Red" are featured alongside slower, more melodic tracks exemplified by "Where Is My Mind?". The album includes heavier material, and prominently features the...

, Doolittle
Doolittle (album)
Doolittle features an eclectic mix of musical styles. While tracks such as "Tame" and "Crackity Jones" are fast and aggressive, and incorporate the band's trademark loud–quiet dynamic, other songs such as "Silver", "I Bleed", and "Here Comes Your Man" reveal a quieter, slower and more melodic...

 and Bossanova
Bossanova
Bossanova is the third album by the American alternative rock band Pixies, released in August 1990 on the English independent record label 4AD in the United Kingdom and by Elektra Records in the United States. All of Bossanovas original material was written by the band's frontman Black Francis; it...

 providing a distinctive and influential imagery for the band. Larbalestier has had many solo and group exhibitions in Britain, Europe, Scandinavia and USA. His work during the 1990s and 2000s has included several landscape series of Italy, the USA and Australia and several documentary series on Thailand, Cambodia and other areas of South East Asia.

Larbalestier's work is predominantly black and white with subsequent toning added in the darkroom. More recently he has been producing digital images and working with strong colour. He retains an interest in decayed textures and unusual juxtapositions of subject matter as well as "empty spaces, desolation and loneliness". His documentary series shot in Angkor Wat and Siem Reap deals strongly with the human condition through portraits and atmospheric images of vacant rooms and landscapes and details of possessions revealing how people live.

In 2009 Larbalestier and Oliver collaborated again on a limited edition box set re-issue of Pixies recordings, Minotaur, that includes a 72 page book of new photography and graphics.

External links

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