photography october 2014
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Photography October 2014TRANSCRIPT
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Becoming Disfarmer Neuberger Museum Of Art 2014 ISBN 9780979562983 Acqn 23875 Hb 26x31 240pp 240ills 156col £42 Becoming Disfarmer uses a compelling sequence of over 100 images to tell the story of Mike Disfarmer’s vernacular portraiture and its transformation into art. This monograph features his vintage prints along with a selection of enlargements made from his negatives in the 1970s, through which his work first became known. Disfarmer’s postcard-size vintage photographs are reproduced in full colour to accurately convey their varied surfaces, and most of the examples are shown in the condition in which they were found, rather than as restored images. This is also the first publication to reproduce the backs of numerous vintage photographs and to provide transcriptions of the handwritten notes that appear on the objects. In addition, the monograph contains high-quality reproductions of newspaper pages in which Disfarmer’s images appeared, locally produced historical journals that include images by other photographers who worked at the same time and in the same region as Disfarmer and album pages like those for which Disfarmer’s photographs were originally made. These fascinating additions to the scholarship were collected as primary research by the editor over a three-year period and provide historical context for Disfarmer’s portraits. Complete with three scholarly essays, a bibliography and exhibition history, this monograph qualifies as the most comprehensive Disfarmer publication to date. Mike Disfarmer (1884–1959) was born Michael Meyer in Indiana, and began working as a photographer in Heber Springs, Arkansas in 1914. In addition to selling portraits made in his studio, he processed film, sold postcards and worked for hire. He was considered a mythical figure in his own lifetime for changing his surname to Disfarmer in 1939 and claiming to have originated from a tornado. His portraits--commonly considered as honest depictions of a rural population made by an eccentric outsider--have been compared with the work of masters such as August Sander and Irving Penn.
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Osmos Magazine 05 Osmos 2014 ISBN 9780991660803 Acqn 23898 Pb 22x28cm 98pp col ills £17.50 The Osmos brand was initiated 15 years ago with a project space in Berlin, and since then, with Osmos Exhibitions, Osmos Books, Osmos Magazine and the Osmos Preserve Collection, it has developed into a fully integrated concept for curatorial and editorial activities. After cofounding Fantom in 2009 in Milan and New York, Cay Sophie Rabinowitz is continuing the editorial endeavor with Osmos Magazine, a journal of texts and image series by practitioners and professionals investigating the uses and abuses of photography. One outstanding feature is the critical approach to the cover, which acknowledges the delayed effect of image capture or so-called "after image," by featuring an artist or work to be discussed in the following issue. With a blend of arresting images, print quality and distinctive design, Osmos Magazine is among the most recognized photo journals.
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Chloe Dewe Mathews - Shot At Dawn Ivory Press 2014 ISBN 9788494146275 Acqn 24128 Hb 24x29cm 126pp 23col ills £48.95 Commissioned by the Ruskin School of Art as part of 14–18 NOW, WWI Centenary Art Commissions, ‘Shot at Dawn’ is a new body of work by Chloe Dewe Mathews that focuses on the sites at which British, French and Belgian soldiers were executed for cowardice and desertion between 1914 and 1918. The project comprises sombre images of 23 locations where individuals were shot or held prior to their executions. All were taken as close to the exact time of execution as possible, at roughly the same time of year. At least some of those tried and executed were suffering from the psychological effects of the war. With texts by Hew Stracham, Geoff Dyer and Helen McCartney.
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Willinks Clouds Above The Rijksmuseum Van Zoetendaal 2014 ISBN 9789072532244 Acqn 24231 Pb 17x23cm 72pp 45ills 1col £26.50 Dutch painter Carel Willink, known for his style of magic realism, lived in an apartment and studio on the corner of Amsterdam’s Ruysdaelkade, directly across a canal from the monumental Rijksmuseum. From this position he photographed the dramatic and turbulent clouds often seen in the skies above the Netherlands, seeking to capture backdrops for his paintings. Through his studio windows and from the roof of his home, Willink watched the shifting cloudscape for inspiration. Many of these fascinating historical artefacts of Amsterdam’s horizon are reproduced in this book, with the individual and method behind them described in a text by Willem van Zoetendaal.
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Eric Antoine - Port Land 19 80 Editions 2014 ISBN 9782919159116 Acqn 23806 Pb 30x24cm 56p 18ills £43.50 The DIY spirit is deeply ingrained in the genetics of skateboarders. Port Land, Europe’s largest DIY skate park, was constructed in Basel in 2012 by 60 like-minded skateboard enthusiasts driven by the desire to shape their environs according to their own needs. Using the wet plate collodion process, Éric Antoine documents the sculptural concrete forms and stalwart protagonists of the project. His love of this classic photography technique results in a series of unforgettable images that capture the essence of this self-made, greyscale skateboarding paradise. The book includes a text by Oli Buergin, plus two conversations, with Alex Irvine and with Richard Gilligan.
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Else 7 Musee De L'Elysee 2014 no ISBN Acqn 24038 Pb 22x29cm 94pp 150ills 75col £12.95 In its quest to uncover new ways to consider photography, this issue highlights the new territories and approaches of the field, as well as what the photograph itself can convey as a cultural object. The works included vary wildly, from self-portraits as Mao and Rorschach landscapes, to found slides of amateur nudes from the 1950s and staged cross-sections of Indian society. With contributions by Tommaso Bonaventura, Henryk Mierzecki, Olivier Culmann, Jens Klein, Martina Kubelk, Simon Rimaz and Jean-Marie Donat, among others.
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Luc Chessex - Castro/Che/Coca Musee De L'Elysee 2014 ISBN 9782883501041 Acqn 24039 Hb 19x27cm 136pp 80ills £32.95 Luc Chessex lived in Cuba and Latin America from 1961 to 1975. As a photographer for ‘Cuba International’ magazine and a permanent member of the National Cultural Committee, he was an active witness to Fidel Castro’s rule. Committed to his work, but also free and critical, Chessex produced a number of reportages during those defining years in Cuban history. The omnipresent images of the revolutionary climate of the time feature prominently in his photographs, which fascinatingly document everything from its figureheads and street scenes, to Coca-Cola ads and the Cuban people themselves. Includes a text and interview with Chessex by Daniel Girardin.
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Luc Chessex - Cherchez La Femme Musee De L'Elysee 2014 ISBN 9782883501034 Acqn 24040 Hb 22x31cm 96pp 43ills 5col £33 This photographic essay by Luc Chessex comprises black-and-white images he made while in Cuba in the 1960s, now in the collection of the Musée de l’Elysée. Chessex departed Lausanne for Havana in 1961, with the idea of having an intense cultural, political and existential experience far from home. At the time, the country was still undergoing its transition towards a young and creative socialism, with visionary leaders who skilfully fuelled the spectacle of revolution. Chessex quickly integrated into Cuban society, working as a photographer for the Ministry of Culture. His free and critical reportage of women in Cuba tell another side of its history. With a text by Daniel Girardin.
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Andreas Trogisch – Replies Peperoni Books 2014 ISBN 9783941825659 Acqn 24050 Hb 24x30cm 176pp 160ills £64 Andreas Trogisch is not simply a discoverer. Over the past 35 years he has created an extensive body of work, but has himself only recently been “discovered”. The follow up to previous, smaller publications, this book of more than 130 images is compiled to reflect “thirteen small conversations”. In fact, Trogisch has no subject and no concept – just images. The pictures were taken at many different places around the world: indoor and outdoor shots, landscapes, trees, houses, people, stills, close-ups… Not abstract and yet mysterious. Readable and yet never fully understandable, just like our lives.
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Shift Photoproject - Shift Brazil 14/16 Peperoni Books 2014 ISBN 9783941825642 Acqn 24052 Pb 21x28cm 128pp 82ills 52col £40 A group of artists from Germany travelled to Rio and Sao Paulo to investigate the complex processes that unfold when suddenly newly built roads carve through the urban fabric, huge stadiums overtake the cityscape and new sports facilities, housing estates and parks arise where previously were affordable living spaces. Through texts and images, this publication explores the social and urban change in Brazil in the face of the FIFA World Cup 2014 and the Olympic Games in 2016. These are processes that directly alter the lives of millions, and the mega-events are catalysts for seemingly unstoppable changes. Yet many still protest, fighting for a city that serves their needs.
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Petra Stavast – Ramya ROMA Publications 2014 ISBN 9789490119270 Acqn 24218 Hb 18x25cm 222pp 220ills 200col £33.75 In this book Petra Stavast manages to capture the intimacy which can exist between photographer and photographed. While portraying Ramya and her surroundings, photography became their means of communication. The subtle changes, recorded over a longer period, show how slowly life can go. The project was made over a period of 14 years, and contains various photographic and video works. In the book all separate works are deconstructed and edited in a way that a visual search for an identity is revealed.
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Josef Sudek – Labyrinths Torst 2012 ISBN 9788072154371 Acqn 21395 Hb 22x28cm 96pp 64ills £43.95 Like the previous volumes The Window of My Studio and Still Lifes, this new Josef Sudek monograph collects a series of photographs made within the confines of the Czech photographer’s workspace. Sudek’s studio famously verged on installation art, as the poet Jaroslav Seifert recalled: “Breton’s surrealism would have come into its own there. A drawing by Jan Zrzavy lay rolled up by a bottle of nitric acid, which stood on a plate where there was a crust of bread and a piece of smoked meat with a bite taken out of it. And above this hung the wing of a Baroque angel with Sudek’s beret hanging from it.... This disorder was so picturesque, so immensely rich, that it almost came close to being a strange but highly subtle work of art.” Gathered here in all their surreal beauty, the Labyrinths series depicts multilayered assemblages of objects in endlessly permutated combinations.
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Valerie Phillips - hi you are beautiful how are you? Longer Moon Farther 2014 ISBN 9780954340353 Acqn 23999 Pb 17x21cm 120pp 106col ills £20 Phillips has been photographing Byström for the past two years. Introduced to each other by amutual friend who intuited the creative relationship that has ensued; it did not start easily. Phillips and Byström met on skype, Phillips asked if she could fly Byström to London to photograph her. The reaction was lukewarm – “That isn’t really what I had in mind”. The unenthused response didn’t put Phillips off; she found it amusing and strangely compelling. Since that interaction the two have met many times, both in Byström’s comfort zone - online, and in person, Phillips’ preferred medium. Their work together over the past two years has resulted in three zines: Meow, A Fantastic Kitten and This Is My Drivers License. The first, Meow, so titled because of Byström’s obsession with cats, was almost not produced. Phillips received a call from her printer demanding a scan of Byström’s driving licence as proof of age before printing any images of her topless. She was 21. When it came to naming their third collaboration, the title came naturally. hi you are beautiful how are you? Is a culmination of these meetings. In true Phillips’ style the images are raw and real. Her interest lies in portraying people and the lives they lead. The fantastical elements within the book are simply how Byström lives. She changes her hair colour monthly but rarely washes it, dresses in cartoon 90s clothing, glittered shorts and candy necklaces and she wears her body hair naturally and openly – daring you to question its existence. The pair are occasional opposites and seem fascinated with one another. Byström grew up online, creating blogs and tumblrs, interacting with friends, fans and audiences across oceans through the power of the Internet – she is an online celebrity. Phillips likes to meet people, face to face, to build pictures of them through the physical presence she brings with her camera. She trusts her instincts. The end result of hi you are beautiful how are you? is multifaceted: It is a portrait of a woman, a serious but funny, smart and elusive, fierce, fragile, feminist whose personality reaches out from the pages; It questions traditional societal expectations of female beauty, demeanour and lifestyle; and it is another string to Phillips’ bow. Exposing her skill, yet again, as an exceptional portrait maker and storyteller.
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Frank Watson - Soundings From The Estuary Hush House Publishers 2014 ISBN 9780954835316 Acqn 24121 Hb 25x22cm 72pp 32col ills £20 These photographs explore a shifting relationship with the landscape as a consequence of global warming. The project sets out to consider the existing terrain of the Thames Estuary whilst also engaging with a future landscape blighted by rising sea levels. Recent writings around landscape theory suggests a more anxious and alienated relationship with the environment as technological progress continues to impact on any traditional relationship we might once have had with nature. Representing a future landscape implicates ideas of science fiction that often unconsciously speculate on contemporary anxieties by projecting them onto future events. The photographs, while considering both present and future, also acknowledge the past by revealing military and industrial ruins that lie along the Estuary. These traces of past events within the landscape act as an environmental reminder of the way the industrial debris of the past becomes the responsibility of future generations. Essay by Jonathan Meades. Also available by Frank Watson: The Hush House - Cold War Sites in England Frank Watson 2005 ISBN 9780954835309 Acqn 12035 Pb 30x30cm 48pp 20col ills £15
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Jan Svoboda Torst 2012 ISBN 9788072154241 Acqn 21393 Pb 17x18cm 140pp 92ills £18.50 Czech artist Jan Svoboda (1934–1990) spent a lifetime labouring to redefine the language of photography. This catalogue gives an overview of his career, from early still-lifes to works that questioned the rules and boundaries of the photographic image to his pioneering conceptual photographs of the late 1960s--pictures that frequently quoted from other works of his.
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Bernd und Hilla Becher - Basic Forms Schirmer Mosel Verlag 2014 ISBN 9783829606943 Acqn 23975 Hb 17x24cm 176pp 135ills £29.50 In celebration Hilla Becher's 80th birthday, Basic Forms, presenting the range of industrial buildings documented by the artists, has been reprinted.
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Hedi Slimane – Sonic Editions Xavier Barral 2014 ISBN 9782365110549 Acqn 24134 Hb 22x26cm 224pp 252ills £44.50 Hedi Slimane gathers in Sonic more than 200 photographs and invites us to look through five years of musical archives from 2009 until today. He takes us on the musical scenes from London to New York, with a particular focus on California. The monograph features Slimane’s emblematic series. The studio portraits – of Lou Reed, Keith Richards, Christopher Owens, Linda Perhacs and Chuck Berry – stand alongside photographs of performers taken outdoors or during concerts.
