The Independent
Bookstore Renaissance
Is Here

I remember being 13 or 14, and there was a big Borders on Charing Cross Road, which is around the corner from where we have Climax now. But it was quite a kind of iconic book space, where you would have very dusty, old bookstores and then a Borders with a Starbucks inside. As a non-American person, Starbucks was a big deal. I remember it would be eight or nine PM—because Borders was open till ten—and getting a Starbucks even though I was 13 and didn’t drink coffee—God knows what I ordered—and going through the fashion and art and culture magazines. Not having enough to buy lots of stuff, but being able to spend time and engage with the material.

So much of culture is preserved in those objects. It was such an amazing way to kind of discover image-making and artists. This is maybe even a stronger memory, but at school I was obsessed with the library books and the art library books. I’d steal them and take them home. Even now, I still have so many that have my school’s name on the spine—which I feel guilty about.

Yeah. I grew up in London, really in the city, and my dad is such a book nerd—he probably reads like three or four books a week. Neither of [my parents] worked creatively; my dad was an accountant. They didn’t come from major cities: My dad grew up in remote New Zealand [and] my mum in remote Black Forest in Germany. I think there was such an obsession with living in London and being so close to culture.

I think I am. A lot of collectors discover things and hold them really close and don’t want to share them. But when I was in Tokyo last week, finding all this amazing stuff, I’m like, I can’t wait to put this on the shelves; or, I know this customer will love this and I can’t wait to show this to that person. Climax is about the sharing of information, education, and discovery; that’s what excites me the most. My personal collection gets smaller and smaller, because I enjoy sharing. If things are sentimental, or incredibly hard to find, I hold onto those things. It’s quite amazing to have photographer friends or art directors or stylists that come in and they’re working on a specific project and then they find a book that then I can see bleed into the work that they’re doing.

It’s always looking at the intersection. There’s a playfulness to how we present and curate material, even if it is very intellectual, culturally important material. We keep everything quite elevated, with the packaging and the details. We have these glossy pink envelope shopping bags that are slightly perverse, and we have fun stickers. The name too is about playfulness and that sense of excitement and spark and energy.

X-rated was a category originally, but we had to take it off because we kept getting flagged. We had to change it to counterculture, which is not as fun as X-rated.

We have a lot in store, but with the website we try to have a slightly different point of view. But it’s about the intersection. One object that cemented for me is this periodical that Yayoi Kusama did in the late ’60s called “An Orgy.” It completely met at that intersection of art culture, sex culture, radical happenings—this really crazy mix of things coming together in one object. [At Climax] we can have some amazingly designed softcore porn from a porn store in Japan next to Catherine Opie’s “Dyke Deck.” And then we could have a book by Deana Lawson or Martine Syms, and then a book on ikebana.

Climax is something that I wanted to do and I wasn’t sure of the form it would take or the role it would play in my life and my work. But those two objects specifically, that is what Climax is. I can’t find a word to articulate it, but it’s the idea of this VHS tape, an ephemeral object that has such cultural history and weight, and only 160 were made. The design is hot pink, it’s hand-numbered on the back, with a leather dominatrix image on the front. And it’s completely symbolic of everything we’ve spoken about.

It was fun to respond to a theme that almost felt unlike us. So it was, how can we find the most perverse, crazily designed books that fit into that world? Things like Rude Cocktails, which is essentially a cocktail recipe book, but with these funny softcore pictures. We were thinking about weddings and brides, and the kitschiness that comes with that. So we found books on cake decorating and sugar-craft that are playful and perverse, with incredible design.

A hundred percent. We’re almost inundated with images and I think there’s a resurgence of archive imagery, especially fashion and pop culture imagery. But often we see one image [from an editorial]. We see the same image again, and it’s so amazing to then pull out a book or magazine, and then you see the context in which that image sat, and you’re like, actually there’s a way fucking better image on the next page that no one has posted about. It’s the context, it’s how the paper feels, the design, the color, the physicality of it. When you work in editorial, you understand that so much of putting something together is all about those details and threads.

There’s a huge resurgence around Hiromix, the Japanese photographer, and other female image-makers in Japan from the late ’90s and early 2000s. Hiromix pioneered this girl image-making culture in Japan, a lot of point-and-shoot and self-portrait work as well.

I think so. I also think it’s like this sense of discovery of images and discovering forgotten artists, or photographers and this sense of wanting to learn and understand the history of cultural movements. Take for example ’90s grunge: The photographers and image-makers who come out of that scene, it gets reduced to one person. But you don’t have people working in Japan, like Hiromix, who wasn’t necessarily grunge in her imagery but her work exists in the larger context of ’90s grunge. The context in which Juergen Teller exists is connected to what’s happening in other places. There’s often a whole world of image-makers around a scene that have such influence on that style of image-making, but people are lazy, or it takes too much time to dig deeper, and so artists are forgotten. From an archive publishing point of view, I’m really interested in telling those stories and being like, OK, this is what was happening in the late ’90s, in London, with female photographers? Or this is what was happening in the dyke, queer scene in the ’80s in London?

I think the best bookstores in the world are in New York. I have so much respect for Dashwood and David [Strettell]. Mast Books is amazing. Karma is great. In LA, I really love Arcana and Alias Books. I also love the Strand [in New York]. It’s my favorite bookstore in the world, I always find the best stuff there—not [books] that are special enough to be crazy rare, but it just hits in the best way.

Yes, I think they have an amazing program and selection of things as well.

It’s still in his basement, right? And you have these like dusty lamps and I’m always afraid I’m going to break out with some allergy. I went with my friend Ava [Nirui] and she bought this book on trolls, and you know how he takes a picture of the customers and then always hashtags the name of the books? So there’s a picture of me and Ava, holding our books, and the hashtag is #trolls. It was quite funny that he did that.

Crazy. I think she follows Climax. We have a few celebs that follow us.

With celebrities and musicians—or anyone where a big part of their role is self-image—that they’re actively researching different image-makers and older material, I think it’s really amazing.