Natural Sources
Jochen Lempert
Published by Verlag der Buchhandlung Walther König, Köln, 2024, 272 pp. with 32 pp. insert (b/w ill.), 20 × 27.5 cm, English
Price: €48

“For more than 35 years, Jochen Lempert’s photographs have stood out as a singular oeuvre within contemporary art. The trained biologist’s gaze is marked by constant wonder. At first, and not without irony, at the history and forms (and warps) of our cultural fascination for the inexhaustible potential of plants and animals. He is increasingly interested in the phenomena of perception and how they are translated into images, in the life forms of flora and fauna and their analogies to his own creative process… Following the publication of Phenotype in 2013 by Verlag der Buchhandlung Walther König, Natural Sources is Jochen Lempert’s second major artist’s book.”—Florian Ebner

#2024 #jochenlempert #photography #verlagderbuchhandlungwaltherkonig
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Jochen Lempert, Jürgen Stollhans
Published by Kunstverein Ulm, Ulm, 2007, 40 pp. (b/w ill.), 23 × 17.5 cm, German
Price: €44

A collaboration between Jochen Lempert and Jürgen Stollhans on the occasion of both artists’ duo show at the Kunstverein Ulm in July–August 2007.

#2007 #jochenlempert #jurgenstollhans #photography
Ellipsis
Chantal Akerman, Lili Dujourie, Francesca Woodman
Published by Konsthall Lund, Sweden; Museo Tamayo Arte Contemporáneo, Mexico & Dundee Contemporary Arts, UK; 2007, 132 pp. (b/w ill.), 15 × 21 cm, English
Price: €20

Produced on the occasion of the exhibition Ellipsis, featuring Chantal Akerman, Lili Dujourie and Francesca Woodman, curated by Lynne Cooke, at Konsthall Lund, Sweden; Museo Tamayo Arte Contemporáneo, Mexico & Dundee Contemporary Arts, UK, between 2007–08.

“Although born ten years apart and in very different circumstances, the three artists featured in this exhibition each profited from the turn to still photography, and other lens-based technologies—film, slide projection and the newer medium of video that dominated vanguard art practice in the late 1960s. Taking themselves, their bodies and their immediate circumstances as their point of departure, during the 1970s all three made performative work for the camera. Tellingly, the sites they favoured were mostly their own studios or domestic interiors.”—Lynne Cooke

More information on the exhibition can be found here.

#2007 #chantalakerman #francescawoodman #lilidujourie #photography
Photography Against the Grain:
Essays and Photo Works 1973–1983
Allan Sekula
Published by Mack Books, London, 2016, 250 pp. (colour & b/w ill.), 21.5 × 27.7 cm, English
Price: €35

Long out of print, this seminal collection of essays and photographs are by artist, theorist and filmmaker, Allan Sekula. Originally published by the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design in 1984, in these essays and images Sekula sought to portray the inextricable bond between labour and material culture, drawing deeply on Marxist theory to argue passionately for a collective model of progress.

Sekula taught at California Institute of Arts (CalArts) from 1985 until his death in 2013, and from that insider’s position he critiqued photography and the circumstances of its production and consumption, exposing what the medium failed to represent—women, labourers, minorities and the institutional structures that reinforce cultural biases.

#2016 #allansekula #mackbooks
being alone
Dean Sameshima
Published by Soft Opening, London, 2024, 88 pp. (colour & b/w ill.), 30 × 21.6 cm, English
Price: €35

Published on the occasion of Dean Sameshima’s recent solo exhibition at Soft Opening, being alone is edited by Antonia Marsh, designed by Robert Milne, and features a newly commissioned essay from American writer, critic and poet Bruce Hainley.

In each of the twenty-five black and white photographs that comprise Dean Sameshima’s recent series being alone, the outline of a solitary viewer sits bathed in light emitting from the glowing screen of a Berlin porn theatre. These cinemas offer the kind of encounter that has been described as an “anonymous being-together”, a space wherein an individual can project not only his own desire and sexual fantasy onto the screen but disidentify with the confining projections of the external world.

Designed to protect its occupants from judgement and persecution, the artist enshrines these private rooms, continuing his documentation of the architecture and physical characteristics of queer spaces. While Sameshima atypically retains the presence of bodies in these images, with no identifying features revealed, his focus locates more deliberately on the anonymity of these individuals alongside the emptiness that surrounds them.

#2024 #brucehainley #deansameshima #photography #robertmilne #softopening
De la nature des genres
Ger van Elk
Published by Magasin, Centre National D'art Contemporain De Grenoble, 1988, unpaginated (colour & b/w ill.), 26.9 × 21 cm, French
Price: €26

Produced on the occasion of Ger van Elk’s exhibition De la nature des genres at Magasin – Centre National D’art Contemporain De Grenoble, 30 April – 26 June, 1988.

*Please note this publication is secondhand and has some traces of previous ownership.

#1988 #gervanelk