Catherine Yass is one of the most prominent artists of our time. Her photographic portraits, illuminated on light boxes, have become well known for exposing patronage, promotion, funding and history within and outside the gallery system.

This book provides a new site for her portraits and shows her subjects, including herself, as spectators in the act of ‘looking’.

In the accompanying text, Valerie Swales examines the book as a new site of the placing of Yass’s work and the new narratives which are created in its reading, while Lisa Moran considers the complex relationship between the artist and the commissioner and Yass’s directorial role.