ANNELIES OBERDANNER

Wien

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NOBUYOSHI ARAKI

Ararchy Photobook Mania

Masashi Kohara & Koji Nagahara (Eds.)

Japanese photographer Nobuyoshi Araki has, remarkably, produced more than 450 photography books so far. This astounding chubby little exhibition catalog, created by the Izu Museums, documents every publication to date, making it an invaluable catalogue raisonné for photographers and artist-book lovers. This treasure trove of information begins with his extremely rare Xeroxed  Photo  Album series from 1970 and finishes with works as recent as May, 2012. Also documented are four volumes of photo scrapbooks—the prototypes of his photobooks— that Araki produced while he was still working for the Japanese advertising firm Dentsu. Complimenting this in-depth book project are essays by Robert Frank, Yayoi Kusama, Rem Koolhaas, Yoshikazu Ebisu and Toshiharu Ito, among others. This book, produced in a small edition, is a must for all followers of Araki’s career.

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AROUND 1979

Intractable and Untamed: Documentary Photography
around 1979

Barbara Engelbach (Ed.)

In 1979, Roland Barthes in his book Camera Lucida set the stage for the critical understanding of photography as a medium capable of reevaluating the relationship of aesthetics and ethics and distinguished between two different approaches to photography—the aesthetic and the documentary. Extensively illustrated, this comprehensive group exhibition catalog takes Barthes’s notion of the “intractable reality” of the photograph as the starting point for an examination of the aesthetic, ethical, performative and political in documentary photography. Artists featured are Robert Adams, Derek Bennett, Joachim Brohm, David Goldblatt, Candida Höfer, Miyako Ishiuchi, Ute Klophaus, Karl C. Kugel, Boris Mikhailov, Gabriele and Helmut Nothhelfer, Thomas Ruff and Raghubir Singh. Essays presenting critical questions in the debate on the image as document are discussed by curator Barbara Engelbach, Jennifer Crowley, Lena Fritsch, Laszlo Glozer, Shanay Jhaveri, Jasmina Merz, Andreas Prinzing and Inka Schube, as well as a comprehensive bibliography.

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MICHAEL ASCHAUER

7 C-Days

This stunning artist’s book, signed and numbered by media artist Michael Aschauer, was born of a deceptively simple idea. The seven panoramic photographs were taken on the Greek island of Syros, from 6am until 9pm, over the course of one week in November 2007. Shooting from a hilltop called Oros Harasson (“the mountain that inscribes the direction of light”), Aschauer used a specially designed line-scan camera that was oriented precisely at the point where the sun hits the sea at the winter solstice. The photos, arranged in one continuous frame so both the continuity of each day and the contrast among the separate days is evident, range from black through the colors of the daytime sky and back to black. The “decisive moment” of the photo becomes an eternity, and the click of the shutter lasts seven days.

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MATTHIAS ASCHAUER

Albanian Stars

It’s hard to believe, but the achingly poor and isolated country of Albania has the highest concentration of Mercedes-Benz automobiles in the world; supposedly 60 percent of the cars and trucks in Albania are Mercedes-Benz. Austrian photographer Matthias Aschauer grabs onto this astounding factoid and investigates the relationship between Albanians and their Mercedes-Benz. His 35mm, black-and-white photos show the essential part that Mercedes play in keeping Albanians on the road. Aschauer’s stark, unadorned images of Mercedes in the barren landscapes, rutted highways and dilapidated cities of Albania show the unlikely yet passionate relationship between the luxury brand and the hardscrabble Albanian culture.

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Asia City Strangers

Andreas Böhmig, Nicola Meitzner, Elisabeth Neudörfl, Valentina Seidel, Heidi Specker

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AT YOUR SERVICE

Art and Labour

Roswitha Muttenthaler (Ed.)

Work concerns us all, and opinions about it are as varied as they are numerous. Showcasing art in a Technical Museum opens up unusual prospects that engage technology and art in active dialogues. Seven artists were invited to respond to the technological developments in steel production, energy extraction, the railways and everyday life. Pavel Braila, Anna Jermolaewa, Daniel Knorr and Ulrike Lienbacher created new art around the concept of working, while videos by Harun Farocki, Adrian Paci and Anne Tallentire complemented the spectrum of ideas. Through these thought-provoking works, questions about 19th-century industrial norms crash into the tech-driven 21st century. Essays by Silvia Eiblmayr, Christiane Erharter, Peter Fleissner, Sabine Hess, Nataša Ilic and Roswitha Muttenthaler.

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Eric Bachmann

Muhammad Ali, Zürich, 26.12.1971

Hundreds of close-up, fast-paced photographs of Mohammad Ali taken over a period of 10 days before his fight against German heavyweight Jürgen Blin in December 1971, in Zürich, Switzerland, make for a dynamic portrait of the prize fighter. Swiss photographer Eric Bachmann accompanied Ali everywhere— on a winter jog through Zürich’s woods, buying shoes in a working-class neighborhood, going through his training drills and finally to the big fight, which rapidly climaxed in the seventh round with a knock out of Blin. The historical black-and-white photographs are presented full bleed and organized in brisk chronological order against the placid urban backdrop of mid-1970s Zürich. Accompanying the photo essay is a richly illustrated section of the boxing match program pages and newspaper clippings, as well as a photographic index on a variety of individuals who attended the fight.

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ERIC BACHMANN

Casa Verdi

In 1981, Swiss photographer Eric Bachmann and German journalist Christian Kämmerling put together a report for a Swiss magazine on the elegiac world of the remarkable Milan retirement home Casa di Riposo per Musicisti—an old-age home founded in 1896 by Giuseppe Verdi for musicians and opera singers who find themselves penniless in their sunset years. A deeply compassionate document of the fates of the residents, Casa Verdi now brings together in a single volume the bulk of Bachmann’s photo archive of these peculiar figures within their living quarters, Kämmerling’s sensitive essay and by-andlarge reconstructed biographies of the retired musician and singers. Bachmann’s past publications with Edition Patrick Frey include Muhammad Ali, Zürich, 26.12.1971 (2015) and Leutchenbach Karambuli (2001).

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Lewis Baltz

Lewis Baltz, with his iconic, minimalist photos of suburban landscape, is considered the founder of the New Topographics movement. Reproduced for the first time, his earliest portfolio, The Tract Houses (1971), and his preliminary forays into a minimal aesthetic, The Prototype Works (1967-1976), illuminate Baltz’s drive to capture the reality of a sprawling Western ecology gone wild. Together with The New Industrial Parks near Irvine, California, this trilogy reveals the indelible importance of Baltz in the development of contemporary photography. “Baltz turned his camera on the virtually featureless built environment of California … He pushed his compositions to an astringent minimum,” writes curator Sheryl Conkelton in an informative essay. Either available as individual publications or in a handsome cloth slipcase for all three. Includes stunning tri-tone reproductions of Baltz’s magnificent prints. Co-published by RAM Publications, the Whitney Museum of American Art and Steidl Verlag, this edition is truly worthy of collectors.

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Related titles
The Tract Houses
The New Industrial Park Near Irvine, California
The Prototype Works