Jesse Diamond photographs the drum circle at Venice Beach: an open gathering on the sand, sustained by repetition and rhythm rather than by a single decisive event. Nazraeli Press published the work as One Picture Book #44, a hardcover of 16 pages holding ten duotone plates and one original print. In that pairing, the volume becomes two things at once: a compact sequence of photographs and an object carrying a physical trace of the photographer’s hand. The drum circle itself is a subject that rewards patience, since its participants shift and its cadence never quite repeats.
Diamond’s route to the project ran through editorial assignments, including work for Sony Records and Harper/Collins, before he turned toward exhibiting and publishing personal work. He was named one of eight Photographers of the Year at the International Photography Awards. The Venice Beach Drum Circle suits the move from commissioned work to a personal body of pictures: performance, community, and daily public life overlap there, and a photographer can work within an ongoing event rather than toward a single assignment. That shift gives the book its particular weight in his development.
The ten duotone plates give the beach gathering a tonal depth appropriate to its percussive, communal character. In a slim hardcover, Diamond builds the sort of sequence the One Picture Book format was designed to carry: brief, concentrated, meant to be held. The enclosed print is not incidental; it places the book at a meeting point between the printed sequence and the single photographic object, and it is one reason the series continues to hold attention among collectors of contemporary photography.
For a collector, the interest lies less in scale than in fit. This is a coherent, bounded project by a photographer whose personal work developed alongside a commercial career, issued by a press that treats the photobook as a deliberate object. Sixteen pages and ten plates do not attempt a survey; they offer a compact encounter with a recurring public ritual, anchored by an original print that gives that encounter tangible form.
