Roe Ethridge: Rude in the Good Way

Comprising a mixture of fashion shoots, portraits, still-life arrangements, and interior scenes by Roe Ethridge, and edited by the artist and Sarah Chaplin Espenon, Rude in the Good Way features over seventy plates and continues Ethridge’s hallmark investigation of conventional photographic categories and modes. Exploring desire as both subject and method, the selection of images represents a visual bricolage of commercial glamour and private sexuality, oblique snapshots and studio experiments.

Conceived as a companion to recent reissues of Ethridge’s earliest books, Rude in the Good Way reads as both a self-aware echo of those foundational projects and another step forward in his practice. Interspersing a variety of images with works from his eponymous exhibition at Gagosian, Athens, in 2026—including intimate shots of his collaborator Lulu Sylbert and outtakes from a look around painter John Currin’s studio commissioned by ArtReview magazine—the book further stakes its maker’s claim to the intersection of consumption, desire, and personal identity.