NICOLE BLAFFERT AND FRANZ WAMHOF

JHQ

Städtisches Museum Schloss Rheydt (Ed.)

JHQ, short for “Joint Headquarters,” designates the merger of various military general staffs of NATO and the British armed forces in Germany. The complex, built between 1952-1954 and scheduled to close in 2013, resembles a small town. German photographers Nicole Blaffert and Franz Wamhof lived at the JHQ over a period of two months, recording the architecture, landscape and people, and resulting in an intimate photographic document in the tradition of Atget and Evans. JHQ details the dissolution of a Cold War relic before our eyes. Additional texts from V&A Museum Senior Curator of Photographs, Martin Barnes.

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BLUE

Inventing the River Danube

Sophie Ristelhueber and Iosif Király

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BOETTI BY AFGHAN PEOPLE: PESHAWAR, PAKISTAN 1990

Photographs by Randi Malkin Steinberger

Randi Malkin Steinberger

More than 15 years after Italian artist Alighiero Boetti’s death, 2011 marks the opening of a major international retrospective of the work of the Arte Povera master, sponsored by MoMA NY, the Tate Modern and Madrid’s Reina Sofia. Adding to the new appreciation of Boetti’s joyous work is this dazzling, multi-layered photo essay on the unseen story behind the making of his seminal arazzi (embroidered works). For the first time, the international web of artisans who made the arazzi comes into focus, through the work of American photographer Randi Malkin Steinberger.

In 1990, Steinberger traveled to Peshawar, Pakistan, with Boetti’s blessing, to document how the Afghan refugee women realized the embroideries which Boetti had outlined. Steinberger, traveling with a Boetti assistant, followed “the journey of the cloths” into the craftswomen’s workrooms as they brought color to these spectacular works. When Steinberger returned to Rome, she and Boetti worked together to choose 55 color photographs for a future book. Now, two decades after the photos were taken, they are being published for the first time in this beautiful edition.

Boetti often said that he considered his art a way to communicate across the globe, and that the resulting works were owned as much by the women who realized the embroidery as by the artist himself. Now, their story is revealed, and their work can be celebrated as Boetti intended.

Included are texts by Steinberger, Boetti scholar Christopher G. Bennett, longtime Boetti assistant Andrea Marescalchi, and a conversation between Steinberger and Rome-based gallerist, Alessandra Bonomo.

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Miklos Boros

Stranded

Socio-documentary photographer Miklos Boros tells a uniquely 21st-century story in this book, chronicling the life of a Hungarian-born single mother of three who makes a living as a pole dancer. Boros spent two years recording, in black-and-white and color images, the everyday personal and professional life of his subject, finding the telling moments that express the pleasures, difficulties and contradictions of her life. Boros neither moralizes nor comments; instead, he uses the documentary approach to create a narrative which fills the spaces between the photographs. The result is a razor-sharp portrait that lifts his subject out of her public status as available object.

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BOUND

Christina McBride & Roberto Bravo

Bound is a collaboration between Scottish film and photography artist Christina McBride and Mexican author Roberto Bravo. A combination travelogue and reflection on travel itself, Bound charts their journey together through Patagonia, Chile. Divided into three chapters, each section begins with entries from Bravo’s diary in which he follows in the footsteps of famous literary predecessors Bruce Chatwin and Pablo Neruda; McBride, in her analogue photographs, explores the interplay between travel and photography as a method of unsettling conventional perceptions and expectations. Through McBride’s eye, the extreme wonder and contradictions of Patagonia’s landscapes become a journey and a search into the possibilities afforded by photography itself. Designed in landscape format the book allows plenty of space around Bravo’s entries and McBride’s color and black-and-white photographs. Text by international recognized video artist Tacita Dean, friend and colleague of both McBride and Bravo, gives a personal introduction to their work.

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NADJA BOURNONVILLE

A Conversion Act

Prompted by an interest in narrative, Berlin-based Swedish artist Nadja Bournonville has worked extensively on the phenomenon of female hysteria. In her latest beautifully designed artist’s book, the artist uses fragmentary traces of this highly elusive pathology to create a discrete world of often-surrealistic images. Bournonville’s photographs, drawings and prints seductively blend fact with fiction. Of her working method, the artist says: “My work focuses on this act of transformation, the spectacle, the staging, the attempt to document and size up the body through photography, the subliminal erotic aspect, and the all-in-all shaky framework as medical theory.” Stunning reproductions create the backdrop for the artist’s complex and personal exploration. Essays by Karin Johannisson, Christina von Braun, and Dorothee Elmiger contextualize the history and aesthetics of hysteria.

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ENDA BOWE

At Mirrored River

Linda van Deursen, Jan Kiesswetter, Armin Linke & Alina Schmuch (Eds.)

Irish-born artist Enda Bowe finds inspiration for his work in the Gaelic concept teannalach (pron. “chann-ah-lack”), a word from the west of Ireland referring to a deeper state of awareness, an awareness of who we are, the questions we ask, and the dreams we project. In At Mirrored River, Bowe constructs an unrecognizable geographical picture of a town that has no recognizable image. Through his pairing of quiet uncluttered color portraits of the town and its people, the soul of the community is slowly revealed. Bowe, who lives and works in London, is an observer of the everyday spaces we inhabit and our ordinary daily lives. To Bowe, the ordinary or overlooked is where universal beauty, magic and possibilities lie. A poem by Scottish poet John Glenday sets the mood for the introduction and award-winning playwright and author Lucy Caldwell contributes a new short story.

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VERA BRANDNER

Picturing the Others

Within the field of tension created by the identification of the Other and the Self through photography, Vera Brandner’s photographic work is to be seen both as a reflexive exploration and as a visual response. In her portraits of people living in countries such as Angola, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Israel and Palestine, she pursues an image strategy built on dialogue and communication. The people before the camera strike the sort of poses which they feel are appropriate for a foreign photographer, very often staring straight at the camera, reflecting the photographer’s one-sided gaze back into the lens and therefore back at the onlooker.

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ULRIKE BRÜCKNER

Space For (Would You Like to Comment)

If you’ve ever wondered why so many people want to chronicle their every thought on Facebook, you’ll be gratified by Berlin-born artist Ulrike Brückner’s look at the new social spaces in the wide expanses of the Internet. Starting with “private” photographs posted on different platforms and forums, she cuts the figures out of their original environment and places them in an artificial, undefined, empty space. Various figures make an appearance on this virtual stage, with the focus on the body language. The image formulation chosen by the photographer is only slightly enhanced and makes visible the aura of unreality which the process of media-based transformation creates around the characters. Includes a humorous fold-out poster covered with random “comments.”

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JOACHIM BROHM / VALENTINA SEIDEL

Trinity

The consecration of a new church for St. Trinitas in May 2015 marks the end of an odyssey for a Leipzig parish community that lasted for over 70 years. A series of about 100 photographs by German photographic artists Joachim Brohm and Valentina Seidel follow the changes at the construction site during construction. The evolving architecture provides the backdrop for a selection of portraits: teenagers at confirmation, workmen, and artists commissioned to develop works for the building. By integrating photographs from different artistic projects into the series, Brohm and Seidel develop an unexpected and complex visual narra- tive. Essay by Karen Irvine, chief curator at MOCP, Chicago. Seidel is known for her interest in intimate but unsettling portraits; internationally recognized German New Topographics artist Brohm introduced color into the photo conversation in the late 1970s. His work is internationally collected and can be found at MoMA, NY; AIC; SFMOMA; and the Metropolitan Museum, NY, among others.

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