NICHOLAS BARKER

‘Alternatively hilarious and terrifying’
- John Horn, Associated Press

‘Playing fast and loose with documentary conventions, Barker gives us an often hilarious, sometimes poignant, horror story’
– Jonathan Romney, The Guardian

‘Hilariously grim’  – Time Out, New York

‘Fascinating and highly original…’  
– Jonathan Rosenbaum, Chicago Reader

Described as ‘a fly on the wall turned into a vulture’ Nicholas Barker’s fascination for other people’s lives and their secrets is blatantly voyeuristic. He scans the New York skyline and its myriad apartment windows as people make love, bathe, dress cook and clean for his waiting lens.

Unmade Beds is a black comedy of vanity and desire, of love and isolation. Set in the sexual jungle of the New York singles scene it follows four real life characters; Brenda, a former lap dancer, is in search of a wealthy older man to solve her money problems; Michael, 5ft 4 ins and 40 years old, has spent fifteen years in his search for a wife - now he has a professional ‘dating’ coach; Aimee can’t believe that at twenty eight she still isn’t married and at 225lb the only men she seems to attract are big women fetishists; At 54 Mikey seems to be losing his touch with his only conquests appearing to be in his screenplays that no-one wants to produce. Equipped with ample provisions of self-delusion, misogny, anti-semitism and homophobia, Brenda, Michael, Aimee and Mikey frantically pursue their impossible dreams. Four extraordinary characters in a desperate search for love and meaning in their lives!

Nicholas Barker was director of the TV series Signs of the Times, a glorious comedy of manners about ‘good’ and ‘bad’ taste and From A to B, his comic sequel about our obsession with the car. Both books were collaborations with photographer Martin Parr.

ISBN: 1-899235-26-4
Softback, 88 pages
140 colour photos
245mm x 170mm