Published by Asphalt Chronicles & Common Practice

At the heart of Blacktop Memento is Kevin Couliau’s obsession with playground basketball and its imprint on urban landscapes.Through an archaeological exploration, the French photographer traces with Blacktop Memento an original cartography of asperities, wrinkles, and color spectra: memories sculpted by the encounters between man and matter.

Blacktop Memento is an independently published book retracing 10 years of photographic archives. Couliau’s first book, entirely printed and fashioned in French workshops using traditional binding techniques, showcases an unprecedented selection of stills produced from his personal archives, a series of 76 playground close-ups collected worldwide for over a decade.

76 photos
Preface by Kevin Couliau
Foreword by Jesse Washington