Under The Radar

• Zen Foto 2019
  
• Softcover, new edition
  
• New
  

A new edition of Chinese artist Muge’s tranquil photobook “Ash”, released by Japanese publisher Zen Foto Gallery.

Based on Lao Tze’s “Theory of Nature,” Muge’s series approaches objects, sceneries and places from the perspective not of an intruder or observer but as an insider, as someone who belongs, giving his subjects the necessary space to weather, grow, decay, and simply exist. Divided into three parts (“Still Life,” Shan Shui,” and “Scenery”), Muge’s images draw on symbolism and metaphor to create larger connections between the pages of the book. The three parts of the book are stacked on top of each other, forming a staircase-like design, with each photo printed in black and gray and finished “with glossy varnish, matte varnish or special color varnish, depending on the delicate state of each object.”

When I used the large format camera to re-understand my hometown as it is now, I’ve discovered that all things in the real world derive from our internal desire: the Karma cycle of yearning for nature, destroying nature, and mending nature (...) These images are taken from the understandings gleaned from my daily life, conveying the traces of time and history in nature, and a person’s thoughts of the future when faced with reality. — Muge

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• Peperoni 2013
  
• Hardback, 2nd edition
  
• New
  

From today's perspective, it sounds like a fairy tale when Thomas Hoepker speaks about the start of his America Reportage. “Would you like to discover America?” editor-in-chief Horst Mahnke asked one day. “Sure,” we said. “But what exactly do you want us to do there?” “I think,” replied the editor, “you’ll fly to New York and then you rent a car and you drive westward until you meet the Pacific, and then you drive back on another route and you take pictures and write about what you see.” The year was 1963 and Hoepker was 27.

• Silas Finch 2016
  
• Softcover, 2nd edition
  
• New
  

These photographs depict various places in the American West. They were taken over a one hundred-year period, from the 1870s through the 1970s. The photographers presented here range from the completely unknown to some of America’s most distinguished practitioners of the medium. All images were sourced from digital public archives, primarily the Library of Congress and the United States Geological Survey.

• Ceiba 2018
• Softcover, 1st trade edition
  
• New
  

"I am often attracted by what repulses or scares the others. I like misfits, outcasts, eccentrics, those who don’t fit in the norms. Although I look quite normal and common, I identify in a way with those who do not fit in society. For this reason, I followed the Black Label Bike Club for about 3 years when I was living in NY.
The Black Label Bike Club is known as the first “outlaw bicycle club.” It was created in 1992 by Jacob Houle and Per Hanson in Minneapolis, Minnesota and has chapters nationwide. They are one of the main contributors to the rise of tall bike culture and organize jousting competitions. It is interesting to see this destructive, rebel culture revolving around such a non-threatening object: the bicycle.

I consider them as a blend of punk, grunge and hippie culture. They are an independent community rebelling against the system. In a society that pushes us to consume, focus on money and overly use technology, it is interesting to see a group of young people resisting and fighting against it. Their community is mainly based on the bike culture, art and on the real value of relationships; these basic, simple values that seem to have disappeared. This particularly affected me when I was in NYC and everyone seemed to be living virtually on social networks and obsessed by success. These “kids” felt real: they speak frankly and are not afraid to take risks and hurt themselves (physically or life decisions). They are living in the moment, in a risk-less society yearning for security. They are passionate, well-read, talented young people with real discussions.

When I find subcultures like the Black Label Bike Club, a creative group, using very little technology, interested in defending causes and resisting the main stream, it gives me hope, and I think it could be very encouraging for today’s youth." 

_ Julie Glassberg

New trade edition (untitled) of 400 copies, of this acclaimed book originally created during the Reminders Photography Stronghold Photobook workshop.

Recommended.

• Mack Books 2017
  
• Softcover, 1st edition
  
• New
  

Part memoir, part tableau, Corbeau is a multi-layered narrative collage tracing life and death in the rural farm on which Swiss artist Anne Golaz grew up. Made over a twelve-year period and bridging three generations, the three-part book weaves together photographs, video stills and drawings, with texts by the author, screenwriter and playwright, Antoine Jaccoud, as well as the artist’s own writings. Jaccoud reconstructs transcripts of conversations between family members and memories recounted by the artist in order to help to build this intricate story of stories into a dramatalogical work. The protagonist of Corbeau is a young man seen in each chapter dutifully working on the farm. Gradually, however, his sense of duty appears to be instilled with doubt – one that infuses the entire book.

Exploring themes of time, life, destiny and death, Corbeau – which takes its title from an enigmatic poem by Edgar Allan Poe – eludes a chronological order to picture a place in which the future is only reminiscent of the past. And where destiny is shaped in the claire-obscures nooks of childhood. In the artist’s words, the narrative construction exists ‘in a vacuum’, which tellingly offers a framework for both support and destruction. It is within such a circumscribed space that mixed feelings towards heritage arise.

Signed copy.

• La Maison de Z 2019
  
• Softcover, 1st edition
  
• New
  

In the series“Lost Souls” that Sun Yanchu begun in 2013, the subject, or object, can be loosely described as landscape, but it feels like much more. As through the evolution of “shanshui” painting in China, in his work, nature serves as metaphor or vehicle for conveying a state of mind. This may be the photographer’s state of mind, but equally that of his generation, the society in which he exists, or the general aura of the times.

On the basis of “Lost Souls”, the book “Even Us, Even Me” includes also a medley of “Obsessed” and Sun’s latest work of “Ficciones”, to make its strongest appeal through its underlying sense of confirming the existence of a world outside of ourselves. The quivering images draw us in. We feel the vibrations of elemental energy coursing through the panoramas, sweeping us along on its currents. We get lost in their motion, taken out of ourselves, while simultaneously recalling times when we have been out in the embrace of nature, bracing the wind and realizing how good, if hard at times, it is to be alive.

• Chose Commune 2019
• Hardback, 1st edition
  
• New
  

Amour diaries photographer Claudine Doury thirty year quest along the banks of the Amur River in Russia. She journeyed along its banks in 1991, 1997 and 2018, making images that meet together in this book. As generations pass, the surroundings of the river shift and the traditions of the Siberian-descended people – wither.

During her ‘odyssey’, the ties Claudine Doury patiently wove with the families and landscapes around the river translated into powerful and timeless images. Amour brings together her black and white and colour photographs with archival images, and reveals the photographer’s intimate and sensitive relationship with this territory and its history.

‘All they know is that in winter people arrive from the far north on reindeers to buy some bread, but not even the old men know what sort of people they are or where they come from.’

Anton Chekhov, The Island: A journey to Sakhalin, Washington Square Press, 1967

Text in French and English.

Signed copy.

• Akina 2019
  
• Hardback, 1st edition
  
• New
  

THE GRAY LINE is Laura Rodari’s first book, ‘the work who came out of visceral feelings and melancholy’, as she would tell you. Laura whispers, sometimes. She does it to time, to thoughts, to the universe and to its inhabitants. The response is mutual, bodily gut-deep mutual. Landscapes bend under her eyes, faces crumble, time evolves in the opposite direction and its arrow moves continuously as the most unrest being. THE GRAY LINE is this place in between past present and future, barely visible, an acknowledgment of absolute solitude. Both the origin and the end, along with light, beauty, joy and death. Nowhere life is more viscerally needed.

the womb is frail, the distance ephemeral, the consumption of a latent promise, the fog, the sentimental no, the agreement of death, the key to the senses

the lack of language, hers, after her.

the womb is frail when empty, the presence ethereal, time produces quakes on the shroud of eternity, the thickness, the density, nearly here never again

men and women walking, the darkness they bear, beating the glimpsed years ahead until they are, you Mother, the dim and the faint, flowers in your garden smell, they died and they bloomed again, they die and they bloom always.


Slipcased edition of 300 handmade copies. 61 images of which 24 torn and tipped in.

• Overlapse 2019
  
• Hardback, 1st edition
  
• New
  

The Saxons of Transylvania documents a fading civilization with a mix of archival images, new photographs, illustrations and storytelling. In their second book photographed in Romania, Martínez + Sáez focus on ethnic German Saxons returning to Transylvania to preserve their distinct culture and heritage built over eight centuries. Indigenous to the region, their conflicted story is told through legend and history, and with current texts, revealing an uncertain future for what is now a dispersed group of people.

New settlers arrived in ‘the land beyond the forests’ beginning in the mid-12th century. According to legend, a Pied Piper lured local children away from the German town of Hamelin; they disappeared into a mountain and travelled underground until emerging from a cave in Transylvania where they settled into seven cities. The tale is believed to be inspired by the colonization of Central European territories by King Géza II of Hungary, when young Germans were led to Transylvania to fortify border towns. The skilled ‘Saxons’ built a productive society there and for generations lived peacefully alongside Hungarians, Romanians and Roma, while nurturing their specific identity.

In the 20th century wars and communism uprooted the people. During World War II they served in three armies (for Romania, Germany and Hungary) and became both victim and executioner. In 1945 more than 70,000 Transylvanian Saxons were apprehended by Soviet occupiers and deported to labour camps in Siberia. The new pro-Soviet government of Romania suppressed their historical rights and confiscated properties.

After the fall of communism in 1989, around 90% of the Saxons who remained fled Transylvania within a few months. Half a million people migrated to Germany and Austria, or to North America in search of a new life, and the deserted medieval villages their ancestors founded began to deteriorate. Now that very few Saxons remain in Transylvania, their history and legacy are in danger of disappearing entirely.

Today some who left Romania have returned in search of their roots and are working to preserve their heritage. This book highlights some of the last Saxons’ own stories surrounding their identity, memory, traditions and life experience.

• Ceiba 2019
  
• Softcover, 1st trade edition
  
• New
  

In March 2016, the Japanese Academy of Pediatrics announced that they estimated 350 children across the country died due to abuse. According to the Ministry of Health, Education, and Welfare’s tally, roughly 90 children per year die due to abuse, including forced double suicide. So 260 children’s deaths are being overlooked.

Upon discovering this anomaly, Japanese photographer  Miki Hasegawa started her own research on child abuse cases. Hasegawa interviewed the child abuse victims, photographed their portraits, and collected and edited materials that summon up their childhood memories such as their diaries, notebooks and photos. This project “Internal Notebook” is her attempt at visualizing the invisible sufferings and traumas of the abused children from her own perspective as a mother and a possible child abuser. Dealing with the social issues facing Japanese woman and children, Hasegawa tries to visualize what exactly maternal love is in such a traditional country. “It seemed to me that their parents were no different from the rest of us in thinking that we were normal parents,” she states. “We can see that the ones who tormented were not just parents but other adults in society as well.” The wide variety in perspectives mark her work and gives an interesting insight into this well-hidden shame of society.

New handmade edition of 500 copies based on the original handmade edition produced at Reminders Photography Stronghold (which was limited to just 66 copies.) 

Recommended.

• Silas Finch 2015
  
• Hardback, 1st edition
  
• NEW
  

As the sun fell in the west, Grímsey seemed to emit a vibration, a faint buzzing that can only be felt at certain times in that far-removed place. Its tune, persistent and dense, wove through living rooms and careened over the harbor like a slow pull on a cello. It’s a pulse that can only be sensed, if even for a fleeting moment, during periods of change. The first time, for a young boy, with his father on a fishing boat. Or the loss of a brother, his memory now living in photographs and within the folds of a sweater tucked away in a closet. Or, perhaps, the first sunset alone at the northernmost tip of the island, a place the locals call The Foot. A swooping hook of land that curves down to the water, revealing caves that always seem to be whispering—telling, with a slow exhale, the secrets of the island.

• Silas Finch 2014
  
• Softcover, 1st edition
  
• New
  

Includes 48 black and white and full color plates printed with UV inks on uncoated paper. Leporello binding with multiple panel widths and stiff front and back covers. Spine closure printed on synthetic paper with an essay by Mark Alice Durant.

With the spine detached from the front cover, the book becomes an installation piece approximately 34 feet in length.

• La Maison de Z 2018
  
• Softcover, 1st edition
  
• New
  

The boyfriend’s parents can’t accept her age after all, and their relationship ended there. That’s how Chinese photographer Yingguang Guo (b. 1983) became single at the age of 33, a “left-over woman”, considered by the eyes of contemporary Chinese society. Burdened by all of the questions she could not find answers to, Guo went to the People’s Park in Shanghai to perform as her own “matchmaker”, holding a sign with her own accomplishments, while the parents come sniffing around to assess her suitability for their children.

In addition to being a place of relaxation, Shanghai People’s Park is also a well-known market for matchmaking that has been in existence for ten years. Hundreds of parents gather there every weekend regardless of weather, clutching succinct summaries of their children on single information sheets that contain their age, height, education, job, salary etc. all in an effort to find an “acceptable” partner for their child to marry.

 By photographing daily scenes and details of personal adds at the matchmaking corner, Guo also uses photo-etching techniques to create a series of abstract images that reveal the turbulent truths of arranged marriages beneath the seemingly calm surface depicted by peaceful images of the park, such as traditional intergenerational relationships and views of marriage, as well as discrimination against the so-called “left-over women”.

• Chose Commune 2017
  
• Hardback, 1st edition
  
• New
  

Geraldo de Barros (1923-98) is one of the major figures of the Brazilian artistic scene during the second half of the 20th century. He was an inventive and experimental artist with a diverse practice that included painting, photography and design, as well as being one of the founding members of concrete art in São Paulo.

Following a series of strokes, de Barros returned to photography at the end of the 90s. Revisiting his archive with the help of an assistant, he created cuts and collages from old family photographs – making his last and most personal series: « Sobras » (Remains).

The book « Sobras » is the first international publication devoted to this work, and sits somewhere between a historical tribute and artist book. Vanessa Barbara, a young Brazilian writer, compliments de Barros’ last photographs with a quirky short story inspired by his striking world, in which pitch blacks contrast with the dazzling white snow of his winter memories.

Text in English, French and Portugese.  Edition of 1500 copies.

• Witty Kiwi 2017
  
• Softcover, 1st edition
  
• New
  

• Zen Foto 2019
  
• Softcover, 1st edition
  
• New
  

The reality of a politically turbulent Korea, captured by a native outsider.

In 1988, when Seoul was gearing up to host the Olympic Games, Korean photographer Koo Bohnchang had just returned from a long sojourn in Germany. An outsider in his own country, Bohnchang’s senses were acutely tuned to the messier parts of Korea’s shift; he found himself unsettled by Seoul’s treacherous way of marketing itself.

In his brilliant series “Clandestine Pursuit in the Long Afternoon”, Bohnchang positions fragments—furniture abandoned on the side of a road, statues, silhouettes of strangers, a close-up of a holstered gun—into a rhythmic whole that suggests a perilous, explosive atmosphere lingering just below the surface. Each single shot possesses the power to work on its own—due to a photographic sense that seems ahead of its time—but woven together, the series unfolds its true, almost existentialist strength.

30 years after its creation, the series is finally published in a photobook by Tokyo-based Zen Foto Gallery.

• Akina 2017
• Hardback, 1st edition
  
• New
  

“Control deals with the dark side of the aftermath of the 2000s in Turkey, where instincts collided with modernism. The story of a night in Istanbul includes sex workers, dog fights, gun violence and political armed conflict. At first glance, these activities seem different, but once we delve deeper into these stories we can see that they are part of the same chain of motives.  Turkey entered a new political climate after the 2000s. The climate, which has become increasingly conservative, has given certain ideologies a platform and at the same time led people with opposing thoughts be vilified and pushed into the night. These include secret sex parties and dog fight competitions. Armed political conflicts that arise due to social issues and pressures in the country are also emerging at night.

I moved to the Gazi district of Istanbul in 2014 to complete the Night Blind project. I am currently photographing the armed political conflicts, dog fights and sex parties that take place in Gazi and other segregated neighborhoods in Istanbul. The common factor between the segregated neighborhoods is that the residents are mainly Kurds, Alevi’s and refugees. In recent times the government has increased the pressure, and are looking into different policies to wipe out these segregated neighborhoods.  The conflicts in the east of the country, often increase the severity of the pressures applied to these neighborhoods. Long term projects such as urban transformation are being introduced and dissembling the culture created in these neighborhoods. Problems within the education system also bring pressure and problems to the neighborhoods. There are simply not enough schools in these areas to cater to the population and there are also not enough teachers which results in most of the children leaving school without completing high school. This causes the children to carry out their potential in other areas. The children grow up trying to prove themselves from a very young age. Unfortunately this leads some to follow a path that leads to drug trafficking or taking part in illegal dog fights. After a while, this becomes a way of life. Sexual activities are one of the most secretive events that are pushed into the night. Those who cannot live out their different sexual orientations and preferences within society, live them secretly at night. People from different classes and professions come together to organize sex parties. Those who participate in these events are usually people who are forced to hide their sexual orientations and preferences from society. ”

- Çağdaş Erdoğan

Recommended.

• Ediciones Anomalas 2018
  
• Hardback, 1st edition
  
• New
  

“From 2013 to 2017 I walked the 2500 km that comprise the route of Don Quixote and other places of Castilla La Mancha. I covered the five provinces of the region: Albacete, Ciudad Real, Cuenca, Guadalajara and Toledo. In an attempt to create a timeless parallelism between that society described by Cervantes and the contemporary one and thus be able to see and assimilate these places, I positioned myself as Don Quixote. The result is an interpretation of an often misunderstood and ignored land, a personal journey that delves into the lives of the inhabitants of Castilla La Mancha.” Sebastián Bruno

Sebastián Bruno (Buenos Aires, 1989). BA in Documentary Photography, University of South Wales, Newport (UK). His work has been exhibited in festivals and galleries in India, UK and Italy. Duelos y Quebrantos is his First book.

• Little Bag Man 2015
  
• Softcover, 1st edition
  
• Near fine
  

Rare Nick Waplington zine which mixes two separate photographic collections taken between 1979 and 1986. The first one, Made Glorious Summer, traces Waplington’s teenage years living across Surrey and West Sussex during the Thatcher years when British post-punk youth were politically active and the marches and protests would quickly turn into riots. Juxtaposed throughout the gritty black and white images of the UK are brightly colored pictures from Waplington's series Surf Riot, taken during a riot at the Surf Pro Championships of 1986, when hundreds of young surfers rampaged, for no apparent reason, through Huntington Beach, California, overturning police cars and setting the beach alight.

Near fine condition.

• Ceiba 2017
  
• Hardback, trade edition with print
  
• New
  

I have this desire to sum up my life in the form of a story.

My parents killed themselves, one after the other, in the winter of 1998.

My mother’s depression led her to take her own life, and my father followed her nine days later. Having suddenly a closer relationship with death at just 21 years of age, I decided to write down the things I saw around me, as they were, and to capture in photographs the emotions I would only be able to feel then and there.

I was alone in the house we had all lived in as a family. I had almost completely lost sight of the point in living. But even so, I kept on living. Though my parents weren’t there, I had the many paintings my father left me and the family pictures my mother loved taking. They spoke to me and consoled me.

Happiness is “living alongside the people you love”.

Surrounded and engulfed in the love of my parents, I was taught the meaning of happiness. Now, after being blessed with a new family and a child of my own, I am surprised to find myself having conversations with my parents who still live on inside me. The look I give my child overlaps with the look my parents once wrapped me in.It is then I sense my parents are still here with me and I get a feeling of happiness, like I am being watched over.

If you are able to share your love for someone, perhaps you never really die.

In order to continue living with the people I love, I want to share with my family what I have learned from my parents. I would like to also share it with all of you in this book.
- Junpei Ueda

Special edition with a signed print on Hahnemuhle PhotoRag Baryta 315 gsm, 20 x 30 cm.  Choice of sea or trees image.

• Deadbeat Club 2019
  
• Hardback, 1st edition
  
• New
  

Stiya is the newest body of work from the Brooklyn based artist, Cole Barash. He uses a unique hyper-focused approach in a study of two pure forms of raw energy, a Nor'Easter storm and the birth of a child.  Through composition and sequence, this work considers the experience of these two worlds as one.

At first, I hadn’t made the connection between the two events and was naturally drawn out into photographing the storm and the aftermath. I spent a few days hiking the dunes, the beaches, the ponds and woods, focusing on areas that had been impacted by the storm and areas that hadn’t changed at all. Later realizing that in its seclusion, the space of a storm can be much like the space of a delivery room. The pressure, the buildup, the excitement and fear that come along with witnessing this incredible transformation of energy. Both spaces exclusive to the elements involved in conceiving the change, I was so curious. What was this going to look like?

We were on high alert to be prepared and expect the worst. Receiving notifications, one after another that the Nor’Easter storm Stella was coming. With record breaking winds at 75 miles per hour in Wellfleet, MA where two days prior, we had welcomed our first child, Iya into the world.

The labor lasted four long days and in that time I was drawn to the obscurities in the room. The mirror was especially interesting, providing an alternative perspective to the room and to the relationship between the medical personal and my wife. The variety of shapes and tools, the strong bodily language and communication that was happening in the final stages of delivery to the heroic and monumental moments of my child taking her first breath of fresh air. I was intrigued by all the elements that came together to create the landscape where I was going to have the most important and beautiful experience of my life.

• Journal 2019
• Hardback, 1st edition
  
• New
  

“My father wakes me at three o’clock in the morning as agreed. I’m not sure what’s most exciting, to be up watching TV in the middle of the night, or that man is landing on the moon. No matter which, the grainy black-and-white television image of Neil Armstrong in a space suit floating down the ladder has stuck on my retina. While man takes the giant leap, 380 439 kilometres from our living room, I take a small step to expand my very own universe.”

In his third book Simon Johansson focus on children and remember his own childhood. The pictures are taken 2002-19.

Text in Swedish and English.

• Dewi Lewis 2016
  
• Hardback, 1st edition
  
• New

• Chose Commune 2017
  
• Hardback, 1st edition
  
• New
  

Masako Tomiya is a photographer originally from the region of Aomori, north Japan. She has lived in Tokyo for years, and one day, she received news that her sister and sister-in-law, who live near her hometown, were both pregnant. This news inspired Tomiya’s series Kito, a reflection on identity, family, transmission and the passing of time.

“Kito” means “homeward” in Japanese. Inverted, “toki” takes on a completely different meaning: “time”. In her poetic series, Tomiya plays with this dual sense. Her reflective photographic journey is undertaken with a subtle meditation on nature, and its seasonal transformation, alongside a representation of human life through women. Tomiya stages self-portraits and captures the daily lives of her mother, sisters and new-borns, to explore how her sense of home has altered with time.

I’ve lived my life asking myself
“What am I? What is this world?”
For a long time, I wandered without answers, and before I knew it I was older.
Had time flown by, or was it all a dream resembling a memory?
This story transcends time and meaning and self
by staring down the idea of “myself.”

Text in French, English and Japanese.

Edition of 1000 copies.

Signed copy.

Recommended.

• Akio Nagasawa 2008
  
• Softcover, 1st edition
  
• New
  

Kuroyami when translated means “black darkness” and this theme is prevalent throughout the course of the subject matter presented in this volume. An assistant to Araki for a number of years, Sakiko Nomura’s work shares some similarities yet is not as immediately provocative. Sometimes diffused and grainy, the photographs capture people – vulnerable and exposed through (in) direct and filtered light sources. Dark and brooding, the photographs are presented one image per-page in large folio format.

Recommended oversize book. Beautifully printed dark work.

Signed copy.

• Art Paper Editions 2019
  
• Hardback, 1st edition
  
• New
  

Conference of the Birds’ shows an outtake from an analysis of the correlation between time and place and of the historical Iranian landscape. How do places appear and disappear? How do we attach meaning to a certain site and in what way photography can deal with deconstructed icons in comparison to the (a-)historical palm tree sticking out its tongue?

A small desert village has been photographed obsessively and captured from every angle possible. Elements are positioned in the frame so that they are repeated in the next.

The photographs move in closely to the landscape of a palm tree village. The village is small and serene. Palm trees appear all over the place, they are burned, bend, dry and dead. They resemble pillars and artefacts that are left behind on various historical sites and they can be associated with land art installations.

Edition of 500 copies.

• Hartmann Books 2019
• Softcover, 1st edition
  
• New
  

To mark the 30th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, this book premieres the series “Stadtrand Berlin” (Berlin: The City’s Edge) by André Kirchner (*1958), acclaimed Berlin documentary photographer who took the pictures of the then reunited city along its historical border between 1993 and 1994. Kirchner chose a perspective looking inwards on the city from outside. The geographical starting-point was the former border crossing at Drewitz. Moving anti-clockwise, within a year he reached Glienicker Brücke, a bridge on the other side of Potsdam. The 60 single exposures construct a view of the periphery of Greater Berlin within the 234-km boundary defined in 1920, when other parishes were absorbed into the city, which corresponds roughly to its current footprint. The documentary series features not only relics of the Berlin Wall but also farmsteads indicating a rural lifestyle, long avenues, factory ruins left behind by advancing 20th-century industrialisation, and modern-day satellite communities. Kirchner’s quiet panoramas subtly expose traces of 100 years of urban history in a last moment of silence before the rapid post-reunification developments would change these places forever.

Text in English and German.

Signed copy.

• L'Artiere 2019
  
• Softcover, 1st edition
  
• New
  

“The opening picture is a self-portrait from 1994, it is the first one I ever took. There is a road lined by rows of baby pine trees, newly planted after a big fire.  I wanted to confuse the image of myself with that of the trees. I prepared the framing and entered it. We were somewhere around Butte, Montana, USA where I spent a summer working as carpenter’s assistant. I had no consciousness of myself – but a strong desire to have some – and no knowledge of the use of the photographic medium.

For many years I have photographed compulsively almost without looking at the result of my shots. I deeply felt that I wasn’t ready to understand what I was doing. I knew what I was trying to do, but it wasn’t clear on how to shape it, I wasn’t ready to communicate my most intimate work. I was restless (and still am), moving here and there, photographing everything to find my place and my space: this omnivorous longing didn’t and doesn’t allow me to stop.

In 2001 I met Grazia Neri and joined her agency, then in 2003 I was introduced to Christian Caujolle and I entered Agence | Galerie VU’.  Altough I felt like an outsider somehow things moved on and I started to make a living with my photography.

I was working on structured projects more consciously and precisely (Nero, Paradiso) but I always kept photographing (mostly in black and white) everything that mattered to me in a constant flux without a specific direction, logic or practical goal.

Despite all this, my every day personal work was still unripe, I tried to put it together and show it in some exhibitions and slideshows without ever getting close to feeling represented by what I was showing. The way I handled my material – that was growing in quantity and complexity – was not precise, not pure enough.  I decided to put all that on the side, but kept working on a daily basis out of sheer necessity – without any particular ambition because of my failed expectations.

In the very end of 2011 my best friend suddenly passed away. This event was a catastrophe and changed my life. After one very tough year I returned to life and finally started to look back at what I had been doing for so many years – but with new eyes and real determination. Some kind of filter that I had in front of my eyes was finally gone.

I understood I needed to grow and have distance to see things because being into something means understand nothing. I have also realised that I have been through specific periods in which I have lived crucial experiences that then brought me in different places. An imaginary map of belonging was finally showing its boundaries.

The passage of time shapes a new alphabet, a new language, and stimulates a revelation: memory emerges, my experience melts with something I feel is universal.

I have decided to work on A LIFE BOOK MADE OF VOLUMES.

The brilliant book-designer Eloi Gimeno created the size and graphic shape of the series of volumes starting from the covers which are structured on the concept of time conceived as a line that is not straight but takes the form of a maze.

The graphic design is all conceived in black and white.

I have edited the photographic sequence of the first volume 1994-2001 | A BEGINNING and I’ll do the same on the following ones.

There is no rule in terms of length of time: each period (each volume) will be marked by circumstances.

The idea of this collection of volumes is not that of a diary but a literary autobiography.

Soon I will edit the second volume 2001-2007, then the third one 2007-2012, then on and on.

L’Artiere is the publisher of 1994-2001 | A Beginning and will publish all the following volumes of the collection.”

- Lorenzo Castore

• Akaaka 2019
  
• Softcover, 1st edition
  
• New

Emi Anrakuji’s “Balloon Position” is a stream-of-conscious-like unfolding of the artist’s conflicted soul. Taken twenty years ago, the soft, sensual black-and-white photos form a visual poem about loneliness and existential confusion.

“I cannot explain this photobook in words.”
– Emi Anrakuji

Edition of 500 copies. 

Shortlisted for Paris Photo Aperture Foundation Photobook of the Year 2019.

• Kodoji 2019
  
• Hardback, 1st edition
  
• New
  

In LIAR / LÜGNER Ruth Erdt portrays lies and liars. The book is composed of analogue photography of Erdt’s close acquaintances, unknown figures and landscapes; it questions what, if any, fundamental truth lies in photography. The publication is presented as an arrangement of single black and white and colour pictures interspersed with two-part spreads, which lead towards the central layout. Here a shot of a handful of organic material in liquid is presented in black and white on one page and in colour on the other, illustrating the reproduction that occurs throughout the book as the same prints are shown in and without colour. In her artistic practice Erdt works digitally and with film, and chose images made using the latter for this project because the light that reaches, touches and permeates film in the camera is the last vestige of truth in photography. Paging through LIAR the reader is given few reference points with which they can decipher where reality might be found in these images, leading them to wonder if authenticity can be expected from the medium of photography per se.   

Ruth Erdt (born 1966) lives and works in Zurich and Berlin. She studied graphic design and photography at the ZHdK, Zurich University of the Arts. Her work has been exhibited throughout Europe including at the Fotostiftung Schweiz, Fotomuseum Winterthur, Migros Museum Museum für Gegenwartskunst and Haus Konstruktiv among others. Ruth Erdt has been awarded several Swiss federal art awards. LIAR / LÜGNER is her first publication with Kodoji Press.

• Ediciones Anómalas 2017/2019
• Softcover (2nd edition)
  
• New
  

The Gravity of Place is a project made during an artist’s residency at Domaine de Kerguéhennec in Brittany. Kerguéhennec is a contemporary art centre that has over thirty sculptures installed in its surrounding landscape. The place, where other artists have previously left their mark, is charged with memory and meaning.

The series explores the concept of ‘place’ as the essence of emotional connection through darkness, the limits of what is representable and the perception of reality. Night appears as an object of discovery, mystery and pleasure, a hieroglyphic space that leads us to imagine something more that what we are actually seeing. We enter the terrain of the mind, the imperceptible, chance findings. In short, this proposal is sensorial rather than rational, filled with intangible elements that gradually appear and disappear as the pages are turned.

This work has been published thanks to the support of the Département du Morbihan in the frame of Israel Ariño’s artist’s residency at Domaine de Kerguéhennec in October and November 2016. It has also received backing Galerie VU and Grisart.

Elegant slipcased softcover, beautifully printed.

• Journal 2018
  
• Softcover, 1st edition
  
• New
  

“More and more of us live in cities, more than half of us actually and that figure is just growing, rapidly. But it’s not in Europe or North America we live. Well some of us do. The largest and fastest growing cities we find in Asia, South America and Africa. But bigger doesn’t necessarily mean better and the challenges with pollution, overpopulation, poverty, housing, transportation, drinking water, sanitation, energy, crime, social inequality and so on seems endless. Endless cities in every sense.

With curiosity, camera and boots made for walking I set out to explore the streets of Mexico City, Cairo, Mumbai, Kolkata, Dhaka, Shanghai, Sao Paulo, Djakarta and Lagos. All megacities with a population of 10 or more millions, sometimes up to 20 with the greater metropolitan areas included. Cities with two, three, four times as many people than in little Norway where I live. Except from Shanghai they were all new ground to me, not that I recognized anything from my late 1980s visit there, things change fast and with just about a week in each place, accompanied with my usual jetlag and diarrhea, I am just scratching on a tiny bit of the surface here.

Usually when we see photographic work from the megacity it’s often about spectacular architecture so I have focused more on the human element and the energy of the city experienced at a grass-root level. How people move, look, play, dance… small stories, from big cities.”

• Chaco 2017
  
• Softcover, 1st edition
  
• New
  

End of the World / Fin Del Mundo

In 1520, a fleet of four vessels sailing from Spain reach the Isla Grande of Tierra del Fuego. Between the sixteenth and nineteenth centuries, the island was successively occupied. The spread of diseases brought by white men -to which they had no natural immunity-, professional assassins hired by landowners, as well as hunger and malnutrition, gradually wiped out the island’s inhabitants. By the beginning of the twentieth century, only 200 of them remained alive with only one surviving to the present day.

Nicolás Janowski recreates the historical imagery associated with Tierra del Fuego as a boundary-place, the last frontier of civilization anchored at the southern end of the habitable land.

The phrases in this book are fragments from various ship’s logs written on board of european expeditions that traveled through Tierra del Fuego between 1520 and 1834.

• Journal 2014
  
• Hardback, 1st edition
  
• New
  

"While growing into one of the biggest centers of coal and steel, Charleroi in Belgium was populated by migrant workers coming from many countries. Today overgrown slag heaps and closed down steelworks remind me of the city's heyday.

Jens Olof Lasthein walks the streets to discover the power and spirit of present-day Charleroi."

A co-production with The Museum of Photography, Seoul.  Text in English, Swedish, French and Korean.

Recommended.