{"id":710872,"date":"2026-07-25T18:15:24","date_gmt":"2026-07-25T18:15:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/710872\/"},"modified":"2026-07-25T18:15:24","modified_gmt":"2026-07-25T18:15:24","slug":"adam-peter-johnsons-portrait-of-apolline-rocco-fohrer","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/710872\/","title":{"rendered":"Adam Peter Johnson\u2019s Portrait of Apolline Rocco-Fohrer"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Paris-based photographer\u2019s debut photo book distils friendship and boredom across suburban AustraliaJuly 24, 2026<\/p>\n

Photography has long been used to preserve what disappears. Youth, by nature, is temporary and fleeting. It is the making of us and sometimes the breaking of us. Often documented through its playfulness or through its despair, what we choose to remember is heightened and momentous. What we choose to forget is the waiting, the boredom, the silence. \u201cI love to capture a moment in order to never forget that feeling,\u201d says Adam Peter Johnson. In his first photography book, No Birds, the Paris-based French photographer and director turns his camera towards these forgotten stretches of inertia, examining the subtleties of friendship across rural, suburban Australia.<\/p>\n

6No Birds by Adam Peter Johnson <\/a><\/p>\n

No Birds emerged from a road trip across that country with Johnson\u2019s long-term friend and collaborator, the model Apolline Rocco-Fohrer. More personal and open-ended than his commercial work, the project depended on their familiarity. \u201cI rarely shoot someone I don\u2019t know,\u201d he says. \u201cWe wanted to explore expressions and emotions she hadn\u2019t shown on camera before.\u201d Like Sophie Calle and Gregory Shephard\u2019s No Sex Last Night, in which a deteriorating relationship is documented during a road trip, No Birds uses a cross-country odyssey to examine the intimacy between photographer and subject \u2013 an intimacy that is exposed and intensified by being removed from familiar surroundings.\u00a0<\/p>\n

For Johnson, Australia also echoed the landscape of Provence, where he grew up. It was during the vacant hours of a childhood in the countryside that the ordinary could become strange to Johnson, whose photographs inhabit this tension, drawing out the starkness of the everyday and coating it with the sticky translucency of childhood fantasy. \u201cThere\u2019s a lot of melancholy in youth,\u201d he tells me. \u201cWe\u2019ve all been young, sitting in our bedrooms, thinking about life.\u201d His images return to that state of introspection: \u201cthat exact moment of intimacy with yourself, that moment of fragility full of strength and hope, where thoughts turn your mind and your heart.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Pin<\/a>\"NoNo Birds by Adam Peter JohnsonPhotography by Adam Peter Johnson<\/p>\n

Through the pages of No Birds we are taken through barren interiors and vast landscapes; along the highway, the beach and into the toilet. \u201cMost days I would wake up early and have a coffee by myself. I would always be ready with my camera,\u201d Johnson recalls. \u201cI would shoot Apolline during her morning or night routines. I wanted to capture our connection and friendship, us living together.\u201d She guides us through the book, but the photographs feel as revealing of Johnson as they do of their subject. <\/p>\n

There is an atmosphere of stillness but also sound in these images: the distant hum of traffic; the echoes of birdsong; the creaking of a door. \u201cWe shot in the middle of nowhere. Sounds were very rare. Only cars passing, the door of our house shutting, the wind. If you wake up one day and don\u2019t hear birdsong, something is wrong. That is the wrong kind of silence. I wanted to capture the silence we\u2019re all drawn to. The silence of contemplation.\u201d All that is left is a deafening tinnitus, which forces us to confront the gaps in our memory, the holes in our brain.<\/p>\n

\u00a0No Birds by Adam Peter Johnson is published by Antenne Books and out now<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Paris-based photographer\u2019s debut photo book distils friendship and boredom across suburban AustraliaJuly 24, 2026 Photography has long…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":710873,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[6225,6485,6486,1120,96,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-710872","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-arts-and-design","tag-arts","tag-arts-and-design","tag-artsanddesign","tag-design","tag-entertainment","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/710872","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=710872"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/710872\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/710873"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=710872"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=710872"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=710872"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}