US / THEN gathers photographs Robin Laananen made of Warpaint across roughly seven years on the road. Laananen was the band’s tour manager as well as its photographer, and the publisher describes the images as previously unpublished and intimate. Her own account is plain about her motives: she writes of waking early to wander unfamiliar streets and take photographs that remind her how it felt to be in a city at that time, and of traveling with these women for nearly seven years, describing them as family.

According to the publisher, Stella Mozgawa, Warpaint’s drummer, contributes a foreword. Setanta Books issued the collection in 2017 as a clothbound hardback, 180 pages, first edition and first impression. It was limited to 2,000 numbered copies and included a free live 7-inch single featuring ‘Bees’ and ‘Whiteout’ — described by the publisher as the first live tracks ever released by Warpaint.

Laananen is a Los Angeles-based photographer who has shot for publications including MOJO, Rolling Stone and Rock Sound, and for labels such as Universal, Rough Trade, Epitaph and Sub Pop. The publisher states that US / THEN, her first book of photography, received international press and was displayed with enlarged prints at Somerset House in London.

For collectors, the appeal lies in that combination: a sustained body of work by a photographer embedded with her subjects, released with the band’s participation, in a considered physical format. The publisher frames the book as encapsulating Warpaint’s journey over those seven years and as documenting a period from inside the touring party.