The European Photography List of Forty Books
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EUROPEAN PHOTOGRAPHY ART MAGAZINE · NUMBER 104105 The European Photography List of Forty Books Twenty photobook connoisseurs were invited to nominate their favorites from four decades – one from the years 1980 to 1999 and another from 2000 to today. An imaginary library, reflecting the fascinating cosmos of the photobook. Robert Adams: Beauty in Photography – Essays in Defense of Traditional Values. Jens Friis ular book collects many of his best conversations with critics, scholars, New York: Aperture, 1981. 112 pp. Editor and publisher of Katalog images in one large volume, superbly and other stakeholders. Her starting ISBN 978-0893810801 (Revised edition magazine, Kerteminde, Denmark printed in collaboration with six dif- point is the private sphere, but the 2005. ISBN 978-0893813680) ferent European publishers. That the theme expands to a universal ques- Robert Adams: Beauty in Photogra- book is graced with a preface by my tioning, from a micro-cell level to a phy – Essays in Defense of Traditional former colleague and director of the black hole of a big bang. Values Museet for Fotokunst, Finn Thrane, Maija Tammi: White Rabbit Fever. I discovered this collection of essays further adds to its appeal and attrac- Jeanne Mercier Hong Kong: Bromide Books, 2017 when I settled in New York for a short tion. A true gem. Curator and co-editor of 240 pp. ISBN 978-9887760016 while after working for four years in Afriqueinvisu.org, Paris a London gallery. At that moment in Hiromi Nakamura time, I was pretty fed up with photo- Freelance curator, Tokyo Roger Ballen: Platteland graphs being seen as collectors’ items “Platteland” is the literal translation and a commodity. Robert Adams’ writ- Shin’ya Fujiwara: Mémento–Mori into Afrikaans of the term “flatlands,” ing about art and photography simply In the 1980s, on the eve of the bubble which refers to the South African put me back on track as a passionate economy in Japan, people developed countryside with its open, monoto- lover of photography as art. Adams is an excessive lifestyle of superficial joy nous, and at times brutal landscape. Pentti Sammallahti: Here Far Away. Stockport: himself a formidable artist – so he and amusement that everyone be- But the word is more than just a geo- Dewi Lewis, 2012. 256 pp. ISBN 978-1907893261 knows what he is talking about – as lieved would last forever. At that ex- graphical term – and that’s what we well as an eloquent writer with great traordinary moment, this book at- feel in the work of Roger Ballen, an insight. In nine chapters, he investi- tacked our “bubble” brain and opened American photographer who has been gates subjects such as “Truth and our eyes: Memento mori, remember you photographing South Africa for more Landscape,” “Beauty in Photography,” must die. The seventy-four color im- than forty years. In this book, Ballen and “Civilizing Criticism” in plain ages in this paperback-sized book has photographed a world that lived words. His humble and humane ap- confront us, with short comments, under the mantle of white supremacy. Roger Ballen: Platteland. Johannesburg: proach continues to be an inspiration with our infinite lies about death – Black-and-white portraits reveal a William Waterman, 1994. 136 pp. to me. This is the book that I read a picture of a stray dog, for example, population strangled by poverty. Plat- ISBN 978-0704370876 again and again. greedily looking for the corpse of a teland shows the inevitable failure of man discarded in a wasteland, accom- a regime that served only the welfare Shin’ya Fujiwara: Mémento– Mori. Tokyo: JCII, 1983. 174 pp. Pentti Sammallahti: Here Far Away panied by his words “We’re so free to of the privileged white minority of (Latest edition Tokyo: Asahi Pentti Sammallahti is a master pho- be bitten by a stray dog.” After the South Africa. Published at the time Shimbun, 2018. ISBN 978- tographer, printer, and bookmaker. I bubble age was over, the book re- of the election of Nelson Mandela and 4022515711) experienced his childlike enthusiasm mained an incredible long-seller with the end of apartheid, this book is one for excellent printing firsthand when hitherto twenty-plus additional edi- of the milestones that made the work he came directly from the printers to tions in Japan. of Roger Ballen famous. a meeting with me. It was contagious, to say the least. Over the years, he has Maija Tammi: White Rabbit Fever Deborah Willis: Reflections in Black. produced many beautiful books – too This book examines the representation A History of Black Photographers Deborah Willis: Reflections in Black. A History of Black many to mention. Each stands out as of disease in art photography and 1840 to the Present Photographers 1840 to the a unique pearl. His images are infused shows new ways of dealing with the The first comprehensive history of Present. New York: W. W. with an understated humor and an phenomenon of illness. Published as a black photographers, a groundbreak- Norton & Company, 2002 innocent wonder of the beautiful world, dissertation, it includes Maija Tammi’s ing pictorial collection of African- 368 pp. ISBN 978- as if seen for the first time. This partic- own works, as well as artistic research American life. If this book is essential, 0393322804 60 – European Photography 105, vol. 40, no. 1, Summer 2019 61 it is because it tells a common heri- attempt to work against these. Ulti- better achieved by Faulkner’s Missis- tage, a collective story. Every US li- mately, it’s about the desperate at- sippi, published a year later, but is brary and family should have it. There tempts of human existence not to perhaps more influential because of are 600 images showing a glimpse of forget. And not to be forgotten. its texture between visual and literal black life, from slavery to large migra- readings, not far away from how a tions, from portraits of several gener- Andrew Phelps: Cubic Feet ⁄Sec. movie feels. ations to middle-class families in the 34 Years in the Grand Canyon Andrew Phelps: Cubic Feet⁄Sec. 34 Years in 1990s. On the surface, Cubic Feet ⁄Sec is a Batia Suter: Parallel Encyclopedia the Grand Canyon. Salzburg: Edition Foto- journey through space. In fact, how- One might claim that this publication hof. 2015. 112 pp. ISBN 978-3902993120 He Yining ever, it is a journey through time, since is not particularly well-liked. But after Writer and curator, Tianjin, China the photos are from nine trips Andrew many years of expanding the world of Victor Burgin (ed.): Thinking Photography Phelps and his father Brent took on the the photobook, with the incredible London: Palgrave Macmillan, 1982. 252 pp. Victor Burgin (ed.): Thinking Colorado River between 1979 and 2013. rise of small, independent and self- ISBN 978-0333271957 Photography When they emerge from the river at the publishers, the Encyclopedia seems to Thinking Photography is a collection end of the book, they are thirty-four me the most necessary book around. of essays by such renowned writers as years older. But it’s also a book about As I open it now, the path leading to Walter Benjamin, Umberto Eco, and failure: “I could never help feeling that clarity through the jungle of images, Burgin himself. The book not only photography was never going to do allusions, and knowledge again ap- affected the theoretical reflection on what I wanted it to do. This failure, of pears cut with a clear eye and stable the history of photography, but also course, is not photography’s, but mine hand, and without diminishing or dam- broadened the reader’s horizon on the and my lack of understanding what it aging the material. There are no aber- research pattern of visual culture. It can never do.” rations, tricks, or jokes that other has exerted a great influence on my compilers and editors of found mate- William Eggleston: The Democratic Forest understanding of the history of photo- Sebastian Arthur Hau rial work with; the images in their Chen Zhe: Bees & The Bearable New York: Doubleday, 1989. 176 pp. ISBN 978- graphic media and its position in visual Book expert for Catawiki and Director overwhelming amount are printed just Ningbo: Jiazazhi Press, 2016 0385266512 (Revised and expanded edition 280 pp. ISBN 978-9881457455 Göttingen: Steidl, 2015. ISBN 978-3869307923) culture. of Polycopies and Cosmos, Paris adequately enough to be seen and understood, and yet the author and Chen Zhe: Bees & The Bearable William Eggleston: The Democratic publishers disappear behind the work, Combining Chen Zhe’s series The Bear- Forest the book does not feel impersonal at able (2007–10) and Bees (2010–12), A sequence of images that is in my all. It appears contemporary in that it this book not only contains images head, just like a movie that I have seen derives knowledge from the compiled that document the artist’s five-year many times. Perhaps this book does material and traditional in its love and history of self-injury and stories of not make the bold statement that respect for that material. This a very others like her, but also includes a Eggleston is a genius as strongly as his enjoyable book to pick up again and collection of quotes, diary entries, Guide, published more than ten years browse and study. online chat histories, and letters ex- earlier, but it is my favorite. First Batia Suter: Parallel Encyclopedia changed over a two-year period. In comes the sensuous experience – of Miwa Susuda Amsterdam: Roma Publications, this book, image, text, and design heat, space, air, wind, movement. Of Photobook consultant and publisher at 2007. 592 pp. ISBN 978- form a perfect unity.