American conceptual artist Pacifico Silano’s practice is rooted in excavating the printed ephemera of gay culture to create new images that comment on loss, longing and queer melancholy. In particular, Silano uses the gestures of framing, cropping and layering vintage gay erotica to comment on the HIV/AIDS crisis and its reverberations on queer lives, which included the loss of the artist's uncle at the height of the epidemic.

I Wish I Never Saw the Sunshine is Silano’s first artist’s book, and engages with an ambitious accordion-folded format that references Silano’s photo-based installations: two twenty-panel long sequences that can be read as both one continuous collage and a sequence of individual images. Included in the book is an interview with the artist by José Diaz, Chief Curator of The Andy Warhol Museum.

• Pacifico Silano is a lens-based artist whose work is an exploration of print culture, the circulation of imagery and LGBTQ+ identity. Born in Brooklyn, NY, he received his MFA in Photography from the School of Visual Arts. Selected solo exhibitions include Baxter ST@CCNY, The Bronx Museum of The Arts Block Gallery, Fragment Gallery in Moscow, Light Work, Melanie Flood Projects, Rubber-Factory, and Stellar Projects. Silano’s awards include the Aaron Siskind Foundation’s Individual Photographer’s Fellowship, Finalist for the Aperture Foundation Portfolio Prize and the 2019 Bronx Museum of The Arts Block Gallery Residency. His work is in the permanent collection of The Museum of Modern Art & Musée de l’Elysée, Switzerland. Silano’s work will be included in forthcoming exhibition Fantasy America at The Warhol Museum, Pittsburgh, PA, March 5–August 30, 2021.

• Risograph poster edition also available
  
  
• 40 pages, 40 colour plates, 200 × 250 mm
• Trimmed hardcover with continuous leporello binding
• Interview by José Diaz with the artist
• ISBN 978-1-912719-24-2
• February 2021
• Final copies shipping from the UK only

• Shortlisted for PhotoBook of the Year, Paris Photo–Aperture PhotoBook Awards 2021
  
  

• Shortlisted for the Rencontres d'Arles Book Awards 2021
  
  
• Pacifico Silano & Lewis Chaplin in conversation on Instagram Live, Saturday 27 February 2021 
  
  
• Narrated video flipthrough by Loose Joints
  
  
• Outdoor socially-distanced book launch and signing, Friday 07 May 2021
  
  
• Press:
• British Journal of Photography
• Financial Times
• Foam Magazine #59: Histories
• Photobook Review Issue 019, Summer 2021
• Brooklyn Rail
• Document Journal, in conversation with Linda Simpson
• American Suburb X, review by Zak Dimitrov
• METAL Magazine
• Elephant Magazine
• Fisheye Magazine (in French)
  
• Tique
• Domus
• MoMA Favorite Photobooks of 2021
• TIME's 20 Best Photobooks of 2021