cover image The Wedding: New Pictures from the Continuing ""Living Room"" Series

The Wedding: New Pictures from the Continuing ""Living Room"" Series

Irvine Welsh, Nick Waplington. Aperture, $40 (80pp) ISBN 978-0-89381-607-0

The 73 color photos here seem artless: the working-class English subjects look like slobs; the house is a mess and overrun with rowdy kids. Yet even stuffy readers will have a great time at this wedding. Waplington's pictures suggest he's a simple guy who enjoys hanging out with his mates, few of whose names we learn since there are no captions and only a brief preface. The pictures unfold the story, leading up to the wedding day of Janet, who is white, enormously fat and the mother of five little kids, and her handsome, dapper groom Clive, who's black. Janet is clearly so easygoing that her neighbors enjoy the freedom of her flat, guzzling beer and smoking while their kids clown around. These people may all have troubles aplenty, but nobody looks to have a care in this exuberant album. (June)