Heaven and a Hard Place by Frank Keane

This beautifully photographed and designed book by Frank Keane focuses on the granite of Dalkey Quarry and Dún Laoghaire Pier.

In the Book of Genesis, Adam and Eve live out their post-banishment days somewhere “east of Eden”. In Frank Keane’s photobook, 'Heaven And A Hard Place', the rocks that form Dún Laoghaire pier appear to be doing something similar. 

Keane’s playful lens finds subtle anthropomorphic details among these rocks, presenting a gallery of exiles pressed into a life of toil and service, now standing fast with almost military stoicism. The quarry, by contrast, appears as their leafy, bucolic place of origin. It’s in this contrast that the book finds an unexpected poignancy.

But although 'Heaven And A Hard Place' flirts with animism (the idea of spirits inhering in objects of nature) and hints at a critique of industrial development, its playful tone makes it cunningly elusive. Ultimately, it may have more to say about our interpretive inclinations than the “true nature of things”. Perhaps, here, the anthropomorphic takes the mick out of the Anthropocene.

Design by Charles Crimmins
Printing by MM Artbook Printing
Run: 300 copies
Size: 240 mm x 320mm portrait
Thread sewn

Cover:
4 page hardcover onto Fedrigoni Plus Woodstock Cipria 110 gm2
Outside cover with matt lamination 1 side gloss laminated
Endpapers: 2 x 4 pages onto Fedrigoni Sirio Pearl Coalmine 125 gm2

Inside:
40 pages + 8 page gatefold onto 150 g/m2 Lessebo Design Naturel rough
Flaps maximum 230 mm Printed: 3/3 tri-tone
Black, Pantone 426, Pantone Warm Grey 1U
2 mm boards, square spine.

80240 mm320 mm10 mm

• Hardcover