Assent
2025
Edited, designed & published by Besides Press
Size 205x230mm
50 pages
French-folded
Screw post bound
Screen-printed softcover
First edition of 50 copies, signed and numbered
Assent is a book of portraits of riot police officers made at the Kill the Bill protests against the British Government’s ‘Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill’ — legislation designed to extend police powers to stop peaceful protest. The Bill was passed into law through its ‘Royal Assent’ in 2022 and is widely employed by police forces in the UK today.
Photographing through riot shields and visors, Alberry finds faces caught between aggression, fatigue, and mingling doubt. Drawing on Sartre’s concept of bad faith, the book examines how individuals internalise the institutional roles they perform — how personal conscience becomes subsumed by duty to state authority.
When first opened, the French-folded pages make only the text of the Bill visible. To reach the portraits of those it empowers, the reader must cut open each sealed page — a deliberate act that exposes the fragile, conflicted humanity beneath the machinery of law.
Photographing through riot shields and visors, Alberry finds faces caught between aggression, fatigue, and mingling doubt. Drawing on Sartre’s concept of bad faith, the book examines how individuals internalise the institutional roles they perform — how personal conscience becomes subsumed by duty to state authority.
When first opened, the French-folded pages make only the text of the Bill visible. To reach the portraits of those it empowers, the reader must cut open each sealed page — a deliberate act that exposes the fragile, conflicted humanity beneath the machinery of law.
—Text by Besides Press
Every Cross
2021
Edited, designed & published by Besides Press
Size 116mm x 164mm
80 pages
Perfect bound
Screen printed leatherette cover
First edition of 100 copies
Every Cross On Cross Mountain by Michael Alberry documents crucifixes left as ritual acts of devotion at the pilgrimage site of Cross Mountain in Medugorje, Bosnia and Herzegovina. Made from materials and objects the pilgrims bring to or find in the mountain's landscape, each cross is its own unique sculpture.
A kind of pilgrimage of its own, the project playfully explores the way that we ascribe meaning to the world around us; that the simple arrangement of two sticks can refer to sacrifice, and even conjure feelings of love and oneness with the divine. The work sits as one part of a much larger photographic endeavour; spirituality, ritual, and the human search for meaning are themes that show up repeatedly throughout Alberry’s work.
—Text by Besides Press
