phot(o)lia

VOLTA NY 2012 does not offer a lot on photography books but there were two wonderful presentations on photobooks.

Booth #F4 [Robert Morat Galerie]

Redheaded Peckerwood by Christian Patterson is a visual crime dossier in a book form. The book is a re-construction of American crime story: in 1958 two teenagers Charles Stakweather and Caril Ann Fugate murdered eleven people during a three-day killing spree across Nebraska. Robert Morat Galerie offers a great opportunity to see prints, documents and objects featured in the book. Christain Patterson is also there to introduce his work and answer questions. The second edition of the book will be available for purchase shortly.

Video of the Exhibition

Booth #D6 [Galleri Flach]

Swedish Galleri Flach introduces a solo presentation “From Where the Sun Now Stand” by Andreas Johansson (edition of #5). It is a beautiful large format pop-up book with six inserts, depicting a desolated and mythic environment. The artist has long worked with collages where he cuts apart photographs and then builds up new environments. A poetic title also reminds that we never know when something is about to happen.

Video of Andreas Johansson’s pop-up photobook

Exhibition: Francesca Woodman
Location: Guggenheim Museum (1071 Fifth Avenue, New York)
Date: 16 March - 13 June 2012  

Ontem (Yesterday). André Cepeda (Portugal).

Photographs by André Cepeda
Texts by Miguel von Hafe Perez

Published by Le Caillou Bleu, 2010.

[Purchase Le Caillou Bleu, photo-eye]

Ontem, the title of the book, refers to the sense of timelessness (it means Yesterday in Portuguese). Andre Cepeda is Portugese photographer concerned with social issues, especially social injustice and poverty. The project was inspired by every day life in his home town. Andre Cepeda spent several years photographing few couples who live in the Portuguese city of Porto. The photographer provokes situations by having long conversations with couples, trying to understand the circumstances they live in. He developed very personal connections with people and it is reflected in book narration through intimate portraits, deserted landscapes, interiors and silence which is felt throughout the book. 

The book is very well produced. It has an elegant linen cover with a tipped-in print.

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Have a Nice Book!  

Exhibition: The AIPAD Photography Show 
Location: Park Avenue Armory (643 Park Avenue, New York)
Dates: Thursday, 29 March -  Sunday, 1 April 2012
AIPAD Opening Gala Night: Wednesday, 28 March 2012, from 5 to 9 

Event: Book signing with Brad Zellar & Alec Soth 
Book: House of Coates published by Little Brown Mushroom 
Location: Dashwood Books (33 Bond Street, New York)
Date: Thursday, 8 March 2012, 6:00-8:00 p.m.  

Rome Pocket Guide. Harvey Benge (New Zealand).

Photographs by Harvey Benge

Self-published, 2011. Limited edition of 50 copies, signed and numbered.
48 photographs over 48 pages, printed on 150 gsm art paper, 158 x 108mm. 

[Purchase: directly from Harvey Benge]

The project was inspired by Alec Soth’s La Belle Dame Sans Merci, but with idea to create a simple book, of a guide book size. Harvey Benge spent one week in Rome in October 2011, partially following the path of Alec Soth, exploring city’s landscape, corners, objects. Rome Pocket Guide offers an interesting glance at Rome: it captures details, unusual and bizarre places, very often overlooked by people passing by. You probably won’t recognize most of the places depicted in Rome Pocket Guide, but maybe it will inspire you to take a different approach in exploring the city while in Rome. 

The book is printed on a very nice paper, - you just dont want to put it back on a shelf!

More
Harvey Benge: Blog

Event: Artist Talk and Book Signing
Book: Infra, photographs by Richard Mosse, text by Adam Hochschild
Location: Aperture Gallery (547 West 27th Street, 4th Floor)
Date: Monday, 5 March 2012, 6:30 p.m.

Sasha. Claudine Doury (France).

Photographs by Claudine Doury
Text by Christian Caujolle and Melanie McWhorter

Published by Le Caillou Bleu, October 2011. 

[Purchase Le Caillou Bleu, photo-eye] 

Sasha. A beautiful book, with calm colours and a cloud of mystery, tells a story of a girl who turns into a woman. Claudine Doury, Sasha’s mother, shares personal moments of this process. Pictures are taken over the period of three years, and don’t follow chronological order. Observations: Sasha alone in the forest, Sasha in the water, looking at a crystal ball, reflection in the mirror, Sasha with a fox. Mixed together images portray doubts of adolescence, search, fears, re-birth, transformation, freedom. Sasha is a symbolical journey of girl who experiences a marking period in her life and a mother who witnesses her daughter leaving the world of childhood. 

A beautiful book cover: a black bird on a dark green background. End papers in light green and pink colours add a little bit of melancholy. Poetic book, full of silence, dreams and memories.

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Photo-eye by Colin Pantall 
A Photo Editor 

Paloma al aire (Pigeons in the Air). Ricardo Cases (Spain). 

Photographs by Ricardo Cases
Design by Ricardo Cases 

Published by Schaden/Photovison, 2011.

[Purchase: Dalpine, Photo Book Corner]

What a beautiful book! You open it to enjoy the story of colours, passion, mystery, tradition, humour, - all created through great photographs, design and picture editing. This is a story of traditional game of pigeon racing in the Spanish regions of Valencia and Murcia. Bird-keepers mark their pigeons’ wings and bellies with beautiful bright colours turning them into surreal exotic birds. One female pigeon is released and dozen of male pigeons take part in a race  to get her attention. Everyone places bets. The winner is the one who spends the most time with the lady. 

Those mostly middle-aged men invest time, money and of course hopes in their birds. These painted pigeons in some way become re-incarnation of their owners. Once the race is over, bird owners go through trees and bushes to retrieve their birds. 

It is a wonderful little book. The book is well-printed and has a metal ring binding, breaking pictures in two. Paloma al aire will fill you with happiness, colours and fun. 

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Have a Nice Book!
Photo-eye by Sarah Bradley

We had the first NY photobook meet-up on Saturday, 25 February 2012! Thanks everyone who joined and introduced books from their collections! It was a wonderful opportunity to share photobooks and meet like-minded New Yorkers who found passion in photography books. Over 40 photobooks and zines: beautiful self-published books, books of small print run, rare old titles and many recent publications. 

We have also screened a documentary “How to make a Book with Steidl”. This is a beautiful film about German publisher Gerhard Steidl, and his incredible passion and dedication to publishing. It captures wonderful creative moments in the production of photography books. The film follows the entire creative process (from editing to printing, including colour correction, the “making of” a cover) of Joel Sternfeld’s iDubai photobook.

It was an inspiring event and we are planning to organize them regularly. Announcements for upcoming photobook events will be posted on this blog and if you are looking for photobook meet-ups in other locations, you can find many of them here. Fore more photobook links and news, join Facebook group on PhotoBooks.

Special thank you to Alive Mind Cinema for the permission to screen the film (purchase here) and a HUGE thanks to Vaudeville Park for hosting the photobook meet-up!

Der Mensch auf seiner Erde. Georg Gerster (Switzerland).

Photographs by Georg Gerster
Text by Georg Gerster (German) 

Published by Atlantis Verlag, 1975.
 

If you love The Earth from the Above (1999) by French photographer Yann Arthus-Bertrand, take a look at Der Mensch auf seiner Erdeby Georg Gerster. It came out in 1975 and had an enormous success for its time. It was published in German, French, English, Dutch and Swedish and has several editions.

Both books, with almost 25 years apart, show aerial photographs of the Earth. Images of the planet, taken from the airplane, always amaze, surprise and seduce. Seen from the above, everything transforms and becomes unrecognizable, abstract, allowing to discover different world.

Aerial photography is a fascinating branch of photography. The first aerial photographs were taken from hot-air balloons back in the 19 century (Swiss photographer Eduard Spelterini is one of the pioneers of aerial photography and the balloons). Aerial images were widely used during wars in 19 century and became a significant military asset during the First and Second World Wars. American photographer Edward Steinchen was one of the first specialist in aerial photography. While the images at the beginning of 20 century were used for scientific and military purposes, it was already clear that they will have a significant impact on art movement.

Georg Gerster spent almost forty years taking photographs from helicopters and airplanes. He explored every continent and claims to have visit over hundred countries. He has published over forty photobooks.

In 1976, this book won a the Nadar Prize for the best photography book. It is curious to look at this book almost 40 years after first publication. The book combines 200 black & white and colour images, and a lot of text by the photographer. The book is printed on a very thick paper. These photographs document human presence on earth: lines, shapes, shadows, colours - many of them is the result of human industrial activities.  

Der Mensch auf seiner Erde is mentioned in Swiss Photobooks, p. 314.

It is time to have a New York meet-up on Photobooks!

Let’s bring a bunch of beautiful photography books into a real space and discuss photobooks in informal atmosphere over a glass of wine or a cup of coffee/tea/chocolate. I will bring many of my books!

Bring your favorite photobook to discover new books and meet other New Yorkers who love photography books.

I will also screen a film “How to make a book with Steidl”. This is a beautiful documentary about German publisher Gerhard Steidl, and his incredible passion, love and dedication to publishing. It captures creative moments in the production of photography books.

Date: Saturday, 25 February 2012
Time: 6:00 (ish)
Location: Brooklyn

Space is limited. Please RSVP or email

Colors Cacas: A Coffee-Table Book (Shit). Oliviero Toscani (Italy).

Photographs by Marriso Toscani Ballo
Idea Oliviero Toscani
Design by Thomas Hilland

Published by Leonardo Arte, 1998. 

[Out-of-Print]

Oliviero Toscani is an Italian fashion photographer, known world-wide for his controversial advertising campaigns for Benetton, an Italian clothing brand. Colors Cacas (Shit) is a project of Colors Magazine which was established by Toscani and Luciano Benetton. 

Feces. Excrement. Stool. Poop. Caca. Its name changes but not most people’s reaction to it. As stated in the introduction, it is as old as creation and … we will never run out of it. We produce it from the moment we born, yet we can’t bear to look at it, smell it, touch it or even talk about it. But everything you ever wanted to know about poo, you will find in Colors Cacas. Did you know that “according to the Bible, Adam and Eve (the earth’s first humans) didn’t defecate once during their stay in the Garden of Eden, an earthly paradise. Scholars attribute this to immaculate digestion (the perfect food available produced no waste)”. Or have you heard of the luwak? “A tropical weasel found in Indonesia loves to munch coffee beans. Unique fermenting process the beans undergo in the luwak’s stomach makes the best-tasting (and the most expensive) coffee in the world”.

Build on repetition and comparison, this glossy book is an amazing record of animals feces. Different in colours, shapes, sizes, textures cacas are laid out page by page on white background for everybody to explore. Each page documents excrement from various animals (including humans). 68, never alike, types of poo from Antelope to Zebra. Short text on each page provides the most curious facts and fascinating stories from science, biology, history and every day life. 

It is time to admire cacas! and to quote Milan Kundera, ”Kitsch is the inability to admit that shit exists”. 

Colors Cacas (Shit) is mentioned in The Photobook: A History volume II, p. 281.

- los Amorales. Carlos Amorales (Mexico).

Photographs by Delphine Bedel, Tanja and Roderick Anderson, Gerald van der Kaap, Carlos Amorales
Concept by Carlos Amorales
Design by Mevis & Van Deursen
Texts by Patricia Ellis, Cuauhtemos Medina, Philippe Vergne, Rein Wolfs, Carlos Amorales

Produced by Gijs Stork
Published by Artimo Foundation, Amsterdam, 2000. Print run of 2,000.

[Purchase: out-of-print]

Mexican artist Carlos Amorales works in different medias including video, installation, performance, sculpture. Los Amorales is a record of his project on Lucha Libre, incredibly popular Mexican amateur wrestling. Amorales went beyond everything: he became a wrestler, organized matches and filmed and photographed his work. The book is a creative evidence of this conceptual artistic ideas.

[A need to have a real mask made for myself, to invent my own character and live the rest of the story.] Carlos Amorales is interested in the meaning of costumes and masks in Mexican culture, and this is the theme he explores in los Amorales. He reinvented himself as a Luchador named Amorales (a play on author’s name). He went Ray Roses, one of the best mask maker specialized in professional wrestling masks. [A story grows together with its teller.] He used the mask in several performances (the most known “Amorales vs. Amorales”). But he desired to separate himself from the character. He lend his masks to professional wrestlers who assumed identity of Amorales and participated in a number of fights. [My responsibility towards the wrestler and the character will be limited to collecting and documenting his media experience.]

The book is mixture of photographs, video stills, texts, captions and colours. It uses typo-photo, the synthesis of typography and photography. Los Amorales was designed by Armand Mevis and Linda van Deursen, influential figures in the Dutch graphic design scene. Book design is a reference to the avant-garde graphic design of the 1920s: constant changes of colours and font size, overlapping paragraphs, sanserif typefaces (used for emphasis), mixture of text and images. All these elements, especially the text-image relationship and image treatment, bring new meaning to the book.

- los Amorales is mentioned in “The Latin American Photobook” by Horacio Fernandez.

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An interview with Horacio Fernandez  by Rémi Coignet (in French)
Review: Foto/Gráfica @ Le Bal by Marc Feustel

In the Car with R. Rafal Milach (Poland).

Photographs by Rafal Milach
Text by Huldar Breiðfjörð
Design by Ania Nałęcka

Published by Czytelnia Sztuki, Museum in Gliwice, 2011.
The first edition: 700 copies (450 in English, 250 in Polish). Special edition of 50 copies, signed and numbered, with 2 signed 13x18cm prints on archival paper.

[out-of-print]

Polish documentary photographer Rafal Milach traveled around Iceland with Icelandic writer Huldar Breiðfjörð. “They did the Ring”: the expression refers a trip around the country a lot of Icelanders take at some point of their lives to learn more about their nordic country, native beliefs, other fellow Icelanders and unavoidably about themselves. In the Car with R is a personal journey around the land of fire and ice told through images and road notes.

Ten days on Route #1 as seen by a photographer and told by a writer. H and R have different culture backgrounds, visions and mediums to tell their stories. The photographs are beautiful. Shot in beautiful calm colours and different formats (including iPhone pictures with hipstamatic camera), they document Icelandic landscape, empty roads, (un)ordinary people, places, random objects. Images of R’s diary with his hand writing and polaroid photos hint a little bit more about his personality. 

29 notes mixed with 158 pictures reveal questions R has about Iceland and answers H cannot give. It is a 1,450 km of discoveries, doubts, boredom, beauty, learning and thinking at the end of which R takes a picture of nothing and H asks questions. The process is a journey!

Beautiful and creative design. The book has hard cover in 4 options put together by two red rubber bands. It really feels like a hand made art object. Playful design, attention to details, binding, hand-written title, excellent text, great picture editing, sense of humour - all perfectly put together, creating a beautiful and enjoyable book.

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Short trip video
Book video by Joerg Colberg
The F blog by Marcin Górski

Yanomami, la danse des images. Claudia Andujar.

Photographs by Claudia Andujar
Text Alvaro Machado 

Published by Marval, 2007.

The first edition of Yanomami was published by Praxis in 1978. Print run of 1,500.

Few photographers documented life of Yanomami Indians of Southern Venezuela. Claudia Andujar, originally from Switzerland, was one of them (Barbara Brandli, Los hijos de la luna, 1974; Christian Belpaire, Dejaste atrás lo lejano, 1985). Yanomami are indigenous people who live in the Amazon rainforest on the border between Venezuela and Brazil. Yanomami (means human being) believe that they are the only human beings on the earth.

Claudia Andujar was born in Switzerland in 1931. At the age of 24 she moved to Sao Paulo, Brazil. For the first time Claudia Andujar met Yanomamis in 1971 when she while working on an article about Amazon region and Brazilian Indians for Realidade magazine. She was fascinated by Yanomami closed community, culture and a way of life. She gave up photojournalistic carrier and dedicated herself full time to document life of Yanomami community in the Northern Brazil. Many of her earlier pictures of Indian communities were published by Aperture Magazine, the New Times Magazine and Life, and it helped her to received Guggenheim Fellowship to work on Yanomami project. Claudia Andujar spent her life documenting their culture and customs, and helping to protect their rights. Her other book Amazonia, one of the most beautitful books from Latin America, was created and designed together with George Love (her husband at that time). 

Yanomami, la danse des images is different from the first edition published in 1978. It has more pictures and a different design. This book is the result of 30 years that Claudia Andujar spent documenting people, traditions, shamanic ceremonies, and every day life of Yanomami community. The images reveal beauty, sensuality and vulnerability of Yanomami. 

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La Lettre
Bint Photobooks 

An interview with Horacio Fernandez  by Rémi Coignet (in French)
Review: Foto/Gráfica @ Le Bal by Marc Feustel

Other Histories. Christopher King (UK).

Photographs by Christopher King
Design by Steve Burgess, Historic Royal Palaces 
Texts by Christopher King, Alex Drago, Zinta Jauntis

Printed in 2009. Edition of 1,000 copies. 

[You can ask for a copy here]

In 2008 Christopher King was commissioned by the Historic Royal Palaces as the Tower of London’s Artist in Residence. Not an easy task considering how difficult it is to produce something new and fresh about a place layered with so many myths, legends and public imagination.  He was given complete freedom and spent 8 months working on several projects. Christopher’s photographic experience of the Tower and its rich history was recorded on his blog Light of Many Days.

This book was published to accompany the exhibition of Other Histories project. It contains black and white pictures, interesting parts and comments of the blog, sketches from notebooks, thoughts, contact sheets. It is an interesting and creative way to record work in progress during the residency, thinking process, fears, inspirations behind the photographs, influences, feedback and of course the results. The final photographs are very personal and depict unfamiliar and overlooked corners of the Tower, but as Christopher says “where the layers of official historic interpretation were at their thinnest or totally absent and where other, quieter stories could be found”.

More
The Independent Photobook
An Interview with Christopher King

Hide & Seek. Beata Szparagowska (Poland).

Photographs by Beata Szparagowska
Text by Jean-Marc Bodson

Published by Le Caillou Bleu, 2011.  

[Purchase Le Caillou Bleu]

Hide & Seek by Beata Szparagowska has an intriguing cover and playful yet serious title. People covering their heads with masks, empty spaces just filled with furniture, landscape pictures, portraits of people, moments - this combination makes one think that the book actually hides more than shows. Beata Szparagowska spent 2 years at residency at L’L for emerging artists. There she became interested in young artists working on theatre performance. She used photography to explore what is happening between rehearsals, stage and every day life. What is the relationship between those worlds? Can they be really separated? Is there a border? The book is an observation of this process through photography.

The first picture in the book is of a woman walking away. She has a tattoo of a Chinese character Mu on her shin which means “not to have”, “without”, “no” and is commonly used to indicate the absence of something. And, as Jean-Marc Bodson writes in the preface “it is no longer therefore so much about knowing what the device presents, but instead what it reveals based on what it hides from us”.

Alphabet City. Squale (France). 

Photographs by Squale

Printed in the USA. Self-published in April 2011. First edition of 100.

[Purchase: out-of-print]

This is a nice self-published book of black and white pictures of Alphabet City (a part of East Village in NYC) by French photographer Pascal Anders. The book comes in an envelop and with a small print. The photographs depict the traces of human presence on ABC Avenues, - graffiti, signs, cars, etc.

Adam und E. Alexander Johannes Kraut (Germany).

Photographs by Alexander Johannes Kraut
Design by Christoph Dohse

Published by Alexander J. Kraut with the support of Casa Zia Lina Foundation.
Edition of 450, 2010.

[Purchase this book directly from the artist, info [at] ajkraut.de]

Alexander J. Kraut is a German artist, working in drawing and printmaking. Adam und E is a beautiful mini book Alexander Kraut created while being artist in residence at Casa Zia Lina, Italy. Photographs of artist’s shadows on rocks and sea create interesting dynamic and mood. This is a very simple mini book with elegant design and beautiful colours.

And here is a wonderful piece by Elizabeth Volk about Adam und E.

”The Artist’s Creation

To begin with, the book’s title, incomplete and noticeably off center, nudges us to enter, instilling hopes we might find those missing letters we expect somewhere inside. But there is absolutely nothing to prepare us for the blaze of golden color in the pages that bear this primal story, its theme stirring the very essence of our being, making us feel the warmth and heat of genesis. Like those shoes left on the rocks, we shed all vestiges of civilization to increasingly immerse ourselves in the elements, following Adam’s journey into his primordial world of the very nature of creation. The story has certainly never been told quite like this before. We feel in ourselves an innate need to have it related to us again, like this. We turn the little book round and round in our hands, gazing at the pictures from different angles. Who could resist doing otherwise?

This is a very big story for such a little book. But over time, after handling it for a while because of the tempting and tantalizing glow it emanates, we realize that this primal narration is perfect in all its details. The story is well borne by the book’s endpapers and spine. Their sumptuous blue color is as deep and rich as the universe itself, able to embrace the procreative warmth of the contents with ease. Closing the little book, only to open it and look yet again, we recognize now how the book’s thick cover insulates it from all of life’s trivialities, so mundane in comparison. It fills us with joy”.