EXPLORE ‘BEDFELLOW,’ CAROLINE TOMPKINS’ AWARD-WINNING BOOK

In 2023, London’s Palm* Studios published Bedfellow, a monograph of Caroline’s intimate personal project. Below, an excerpt from the British Journal of Photography’s feature on the book:

“It’s about sex and fear,” explains Tompkins. “I was really interested in that binary…  I desire sex, and I desire men, but I’m also tasked with a constant acknowledgement of the fear.” She is referring to the all-too-familiar precautions that women take while dating: lengthy background checks before Tinder dates, texting our friends to let them know we’re safe, walking home with keys clutched between our knuckles. “It’s so commonplace, and something we accept so readily, but the implication is that we are either going to, at its worst, be killed, or at its best have a great orgasm.”

She worked on Bedfellow consciously between 2018 and 2022, but the earliest images in the book are from 2015. “A lot of the images are just me making pictures in my life, and realizing after that I was working towards something,” she says. Other images are staged, based around memories, feelings, or her own experiences. 

Read more here: British Journal of Photography. Bedfellow won a Lucie Foundation Award, was a finalist for the Nobuyoshi Araki MA-g Award, and was one of Lensculture’s Favorite Books of 2023. It was also featured by Aperture, AnOther magazine, and i-D.