Brian Griffin made SPUD while in residence at Béthune-Bruay, in northern France, during the centenary of the end of the First World War. The region had earlier been a site of British military presence and combat; today it is farmland and home to one of Europe’s largest potato-processing plants. Griffin noticed a linguistic coincidence: “spud” is the informal British word for potato and was also slang for low-ranking British soldiers in the First World War. That doubled meaning gives the book its structure, exploring the relationship between the potatoes grown in the soil and the soldiers who were killed in the very same place over a century ago.

The publisher describes the project as questioning territory, history and war. Griffin does not set out to illustrate history; instead the book draws on the resonance between England and northern France through an ordinary crop and a buried army.

GOST Books published the volume in 2018. It is 224 pages, flexi-bound and cloth covered, with ISBN 9781910401217. The publisher credits Brian Griffin as photographer. The book is in English.

SPUD is a photobook that examines commemoration through indirection, using an ordinary crop, a buried army, and a word doing double duty as its materials. Its subject is local and its occasion fixed, but its method is transferable, making it a considered example of how a residency can become a book with its own internal logic.

Brian Griffin, SPUD, GOST Books, 2018. 224 pages, flexi-bound cloth covered. ISBN 9781910401217.