Krass Clement
Drum
- PhotographerKrass Clement
PETER FUNCH Krass Clement took photos in a small pub in Drum, Ireland, on a single evening and with only a few rolls of film (and a rumoured “five pints of Guinness”). The year is 1991 and Drum opens in a dark and foggy town, with a workday ending and some men heading off for a drink. The book focuses on one principal character in the shadowy pub: a hunched, weather-beaten old man sitting alone with his drink. It is the story of the outsider, the community, loneliness. In one sense it is an old-school black and white photo book and yet it is incredibly cinematic and contemporary.
A few words from Peter Funch
The bibliography of Krass Clement was my introduction to photography and photo books. Coming from Denmark, he was the one really dictating what the photobook could be. I bought every book he published that came out in the 1990s – they were like small movies of visual impressions. A moody mood which is, on the one hand, Scandinavian melancholy and on the other more like the ‘flâneur’ tradition from the Parisian school of thought.
I have unfortunately lost all the books in a relationship break up and a move to New York, but luckily Errata Editions’ Books on Books is making rare and out-of-print studies of some original books. I hope someone is enjoying these books somewhere, as much as I did.
The legacy
With Drum, Clement distilled the essence of documentary photography into something hauntingly poetic. Shot in grainy black-and-white, the sequence reads almost like a film unfolding frame by frame—quiet, immersive, and deeply human. The old man at the pub becomes both protagonist and metaphor, embodying solitude within community. What might have been a fleeting, unremarkable evening transforms into a timeless meditation on presence, absence, and the weight of ordinary life.
Over time, Drum has taken on the status of a modern classic. Long out of print and celebrated as one of the great photobooks of the late 20th century, it continues to influence photographers and visual storytellers for its raw intimacy and cinematic rhythm. In its restraint, it shows how much can be said with so little—an enduring lesson in the quiet power of the medium.
