Documents is the culmination of the second PhotoWorks In-Site project – a year long residency by Marysia Lewandowska and Neil Cummings at the Design Council Archive. Documents presents the Design Council’s original Stock List, an extraordinary poem to materiality, used as a template for promoting British products the world over, accompanied by 100 images of contemporary products, each determined by their retail price of one pound.

A critical response to the Archive as a representation of institutional control, the book suggests the artists’ fascination with the design and utility of objects, and the continually shifting values we ascribe to them. Rigorous and playfully inventive the book re-articulates the Archive’s data and re-considers the Design Council’s attempts to shape the visual and material culture of post war Britain. Designed by Stuart Smith.