This month Londonewcastle Project Space is hosting a multi-media exhibition to celebrate the first ten years of the independent publisher Trolley Books, a maverick independent publisher of photography, reportage, contemporary art and recently, literature in their original home of Shoreditch.

The exhibition, running over two weekends contains previously unseen material from the making of the books, including personal images, contact sheets and photographers’ recollections, documenting the unique stories from each book and the importance of this small but potent publishing house and paves the way for the new book publication later in the Spring TROLLEYOLOGY.

The exhibition brings together Trolley photographers such as Nan Goldin, Alex Majoli, Stanley Greene, Paolo Pellegrin, Adam Broomberg and Oliver Chanarin, Tom Stoddart, Nina Berman, Thomas Dworzak, Alixandra Fazzina, Robin Maddock, and Jamie Morgan took on a far greater significance in honoring the late Gigi Gianuzzi, the founder of trolley books who was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer last June and passed away on December 24th.

Previously in September 2012, an art auction entitled Situation Gigi, including works donated by Damien Hirst, Tracey Emin and the Chapman Brothers, raised around £230,000 towards Gigi’s alternative cancer treatment in a Munich clinic.

In 2001, Gigi found financial backing to start a new company, based in Venice. Trolley got its name when Giannuzzi used a shopping cart to push his book proposals around the floor of the Frankfurt Book Fair. Eventually Gigi settled in Shoreditch.

Giannuzzi championed photography that examined issues of social justice and blurred the line between documentary and art with his many of his books touching on the abuse of power by tyrannical regimes.

His first book Open Wounds highlighted the human rights violations imposed on the indigenous Chechen population by the soviet republic between 1994 and 2003 with images that convey a harrowing, very personal account inspired and powered by the sheer anger of the photographer. It fits into the category coined by Martin Bell: “the Journalism of Attachment” in which, rather than trying to provide the unobtainable objective approach, an issue is presented, identifying it as fundamentally wrong and demanding notice be taken of it in the broader world. Giannuzzi was concerned with drawing attention to the ethnic cleansing and displacement of half a million civilians in Chechnya and felt he could better accomplish this through powerful imagery.

More recently “Yes To A Rosy Future” documents Nicolas Rigghettis stay in Damascus and highlights the Orwellian subjugation of Bashar Al Assad’s Syrian dictatorship on its citizens through Assads omnipresence which permeates the Syrian urban streetscape with the despotic leaders smiling face seen throughout on copious campaign posters. “Yes To A Rosy Future” was the political slogan for Assads 2007 election campaign which was presumably chosen as the title by the author with a sense of indignant irony.

Other books by Trolley have highlighted issues such as the war in Iraq, expropriation of natural resources in Nigeria, the consequences of war in Vietnam and the legacy of Chernobyl.

The exhibit which takes place between January 18th- 27th offers an aesthetically stimulating opportunity to sample some of Gigis best work in addition to hearing from some of his closest collaborators about his unique personality and inspiring approach.

More information on the exhibition.