Preview: Eating With The Eyes

Harry Pearce’s latest book, Eating With The Eyes, has gone on pre-sale on Unit Edition’s website. The book is a collection of 200 seemingly accidental photographs taken by Harry. It is a visual meditation spanning over a decade and is collected from Pearce’s journeys around the world.

Harry's photographs are the culmination of a lifetime of practice that began during his childhood in the West Country, when his father gifted him with a Pentax camera. From this point onwards, Harry began meticulously documenting quirks, human interventions and coincidences. From these images he began to piece together a sometimes tragic, sometimes funny and always poignant continuity and rhythm in the world that surrounds us.

“I get lost in the process of recording seemingly accidental events," says Harry. "As time has passed, I’ve come to realise that there are no true accidents, only ideas trying to find us. We are surrounded by a constant stream of ideas, insights and visions. Every moment in every place. Abstract and accidental as they may seem, they are to my eyes precise, illuminating and elevating.”

The book is an insight into Pearce’s mind and shows a fundamental part of his creative process. It shows how Pearce collects kernels of ideas that then develop into his work as a graphic designer, for clients including the Royal Academy of Arts, John Lewis and WITNESS, and with artists including Ai Weiwei and Anish Kapoor.

“This is a most beautiful book,” says Stefan Sagmeister. "It contains a very slow beauty, a beauty that took a long while to ripen, one that comes to this world gently. Harry Pearce’s hungry eyes present a satisfying, languorous meal.”

Eating With The Eyes will be released in December 2015. It features an introduction from Charles Saumarez Smith, the CEO of the Royal Academy of Art. There will also be 150 collector's editions of the book released, which include a limited edition poster as well as a signed photographic print from Harry.

“Harry  has always discovered a sense lyricism, mystery and poetry in the ordinary and mundane," says Paula Scher. "This is has long been apparent in his work as a designer. But It is even more striking and astonishing in his photographic works. Only his eye can discover the miraculous meaning in what we would all tend to dismiss and ignore. He makes us a gift of beauty out of seemingly nothing.”

There will be 150 special editions of the book released, which include a limited edition poster as well as a signed photographic print by Harry.

Pre-order your copy of Eating With The Eyes here.