Published by Steidl in 2012, *Exposed* is Bryan Adams’s first comprehensive photographic monograph and a retrospective of a practice that developed alongside his work as a singer, songwriter and producer. Its point of origin is unusually direct: in the late 1990s, Adams began making self-portraits for his own album covers. That practical decision opened a second, sustained field of image-making, gathered here at monographic scale.

The book centers on portraits of Adams’s friends and colleagues across entertainment, fashion and art. Morrissey, Ben Kingsley, Amy Winehouse, Michael Jackson, Louise Bourgeois, Lindsay Lohan and Judi Dench are among its subjects. Such a range places performers beside actors and artists, allowing the collection to be read not simply as celebrity portraiture but as a record of encounters within several overlapping cultural worlds.

Its distinctive tension comes from the relationship between recognition and disclosure. Many faces arrive with public identities already firmly established; the photographs ask what a portrait can add to that familiarity. Viewed retrospectively, the work also clarifies the seriousness and breadth of Adams’s photographic activity, presenting it as a parallel creative practice rather than an incidental extension of his music career.

For collectors, the book’s significance is specific and well grounded. As Adams’s first comprehensive monograph, it establishes an early substantial account of his photography in book form, while its publication by Steidl situates the project within a distinguished tradition of photographic publishing. The hardcover volume brings together an unusually broad constellation of cultural figures and documents the emergence of a photographer from within another highly visible artistic life. Its interest therefore lies both in the individual portraits and in the coherent view it provides of Adams’s development behind the camera.