British photographer Julian Hibbard pairs his signature dark images with the twenty-six letters of the alphabet in his racy new abecedary The Noir A-Z. The collection is a shadowy, voyeuristic look at the noir side of life, tapping into childhood memories, cinematic recollections and strong cultural references like fairytales. We’ve got an exclusive look at the new volume, underscored by commentary from Hibbard himself on selection of images representing U, C, G, K, E, S, and Q. Play along with us after the cut.

Click through for our slideshow of images from Julian Hibbard’s Noir A-Z.

“Almost always for me the psychological placing of characters in pictures is achieved through careful staging. Often if seems I depict men in a state of escape and struggle, perhaps in reference to trying to understand my own condition. We cannot describe ourselves without also describing what we need to escape from, and what, we believe, we need to escape to. The desire to escape is often accompanied with a difficulty to deal with the consequences; hence in my pictures narratives involving endurance or survival accompany those moments. These qualities connect with the world of film noir, which often depicts a man whose world is getting smaller and smaller as the forces that oppose him get closer and closer.”