Following the success of his book Comedians, photographer Steve Best has started a crowdfunder campaign to help him publish a follow-up, Comedians 2 (Too).
Best recently went over thousands of photos he has taken over the last decade and realised he'd missed out so many great pictures in the first book. Also he has taken some brilliant new ones since publication. The picture on this page is of Mae Martin in action.
COMEDIANS was a classy product, 236 glossy pages of comedians on and offstage, in public and private moments never seen before.
COMEDIANS 2 (Too) will be the same but with different photographs - a very limited first edition beautiful fine art photographic documentation of the UK comedy circuit.
A planned publication for September 2023. All copies SIGNED by Steve Best.
For those that want to support the publication there are packages that include a logo in the book, numbers of signed books, very limited edition fine art prints (signed by famous comedians), invites to the launch party, and more - PLEASE ASK if you think you can help.
If you pre-order NOW you will receive a 20% discount off the RRP - £50
PRE-ORDER Price: £40.00 + £5 P&P
And, and there's more - A SPECIAL OFFER FOR BOTH BOOKS
COMEDIANS 2 (Too) & COMEDIANS
If you buy both books you will get a 20% discount on the whole order, and only one P&P
COMEDIANS will be sent to you immediately
COMEDIANS 2 (Too) sent in September 2023
Contact details and pre-order links here: www.stevebest.com
You can also watch Steve Best in action with comedians on his YouTube channel here: YouTube Channel
Comedian Simon Evans has already written this introduction for the new book:
"But now my good friend Steve Best – the photographer laureate of the circuit - has produced a wonderful, luxuriously bound collection of his matchless onstage and backstage photographs from the world of stand-up comedy. This is the artefact his work has long deserved. And it has generated in me an undeniable and quite possibly terminal sense of happy melancholy. It turns out comedy was bitter-sweet all along – but it took the frozen moment to see it.
Why it eluded me I don’t know, but there are few things so overwhelmingly bitter sweet as the pathos of the comedian, caught in the tragic act of trying to be funny. Transfixed by the photographic pin, the amber of light sensitive cells, the calculus of the shutter.
There are very few forms of expression quite as ephemeral as stand-up comedy. It is the May Fly of the creative arts. You can’t even wrap chips in it...
...See an old black and white photograph of Vladimir Horowitz bent over a keyboard and you can immediately sense the artistry, the bone china strength, the exquisite colours the audience are seeing shimmer before them. See any contemporary comedian, from Max Miller to Lee Mack, coaxing the laughs over his mic stand and you sense the fragility, the imminent fragmentation, the immediate desiccation of the rose leaves drifting already into the bowl. The echoing laughter receding into silence as the circle and stalls mysteriously empty is the clichéd scene setter for everything from Osborne’s Entertainer to Inside No. 9. It is the natural fate of the Jovial. And this is what is captured so poetically, so painfully and joyfully in Steve’s best work."
Pictured: Mae Martin by Steve Best
