Always Starts with an Encounter
Wols & Eileen Quinlan
Published by Radio Athènes, Athens and Sequence Press, New York, 2019, 220 pages (colour & b/w ill.), 18.2 × 22.7 cm, English
Price: €30

Wols (1913–1951) was celebrated posthumously as one of the pioneering artists of the Art Informel movement. His distinctive early photographic work of the 1930s is however very little known. In an unusual travel across time and space his work is discussed in connection to that of contemporary American artist Eileen Quinlan (b. 1972). This book, a companion to the eponymous exhibition Always Starts with an Encounter, Wols-Eileen Quinlan, curated by Helena Papadopoulos and organized by Radio Athènes at the Museum of Cycladic Art, Athens in 2016, further explores the relationship between the work of the two artists through an indexical structure, various textual forms and inflections, different registers of images and close-up textures that act like another text. Spectral and suggestive, but also precise and factual it reflects on a circular idea of time as it wanders in the abstruse physicality of the photographic.

Texts by Quinn Latimer, Laura Preston, Helena Papadopoulos, Oliver Berggruen. Designed by O-R-G Inc., David Reinfurt.

#2019 #abstractphotography #davidreinfurt #eileenquinlan #helenapapadopoulos #josephinepryde #laurapreston #photography #quinnlatimer #radioathenes #sequencepress #wols
Photo Album
Man Ray
Published by Asahi Shimbun Publishing, Japan, 1981, hardcover (clothbound in foil-printed cardboard sleeve), unpaginated (b/w ill.), 22.5 × 31 cm, Japanese
Price: €80

Japanese monograph dedicated to the photographic works of Man Ray.

#1981 #abstractphotography #manray #photography
(1890–1976) CENTENNIAL EXHIBITION
Man Ray
Published by Sezon Museum of Art, 1990, 2 softcover volumes in slipcase, 196 & 64 pages (colour & b/w ill.), 23 × 30.2 cm, Japanese
Price: €80

Publication produced on the occasion of the exhibtion Man Ray, to commemorate the centenary of the artist’s birth. Travelling to the following locations; Sezon Museum, 29 September–4 November, 1990; Tenjin Daimaru, Fukuoka 14 March–26 March, 1991; Yokohama Museum of Art, 6 April–8 May, 1991; Kyoto Daimaru Museum, Kyoto 15 August– 20 August, 1991.

2 softcover volumes, dedicated to the sculptural practice and photographic practice separately.

#1990 #abstractphotography #manray #photography
Serena
Josephine Pryde
Published by Walther König, Köln, 2001, 72 pages (colour & b/w ill.), 21.5 × 27 cm, English
Price: €20 (Temporarily out of stock)

Produced on the occasion of Josephine Pryde’s exhibition Serena at Kunstverein Braunschweig, 28 April–10 June, 2001.

Pryde’s work attacks stock photographic aesthetic by technically reworking and reconfiguring images and by addressing the conditions of their display. The surfaces of glossy fashion photographs are disrupted by the insertion of aluminium tubes, which emphasise their ‘objectness’ and their status as artworks. Colourful photoshop juxtapositions of MRI scans of the human foetus and macro-lens desertscapes are unnervingly loaded. They refer to the history of darkroom experimentation and to contemporary medical-imaging techniques. Pryde doesn’t reject the language of photographic imagery, rather she adopts it and layers it up. Her guinea pig portraits are inspired by ‘cute pet photography’ but her choice of subject conjures associations with laboratory research.

Texts by Pamela M. Lee, Pauline van Mourik Broekman and Josef Strau.

#2001 #abstractphotography #josefstrau #josephinepryde #photography
ABSTRACT PAINTINGS IN JAPAN 1910–1945
Published by The Japan Association of Art Museums, Tokyo, 1992, 225 pages (colour & b/w ill.), 25 × 24 cm, Japanese
Price: €35 (Out of stock)

Comprehensive survey of early Japanese abstract painting (and photography). Including Koshiro Onchi, Iwata Nakayama, Saburo Hasegawa, Kiyoshi Koishi, Ryuichi Amano, Ei-Q and many more.

#abstractphotography #eiq #iwatanakayama #japaneseavantgarde #japanesephotography #kiyoshikoishi #koshiroonchi #ryuichiamano #saburohasegawa
Ei-Q
Published by Fuji Television Gallery, 1974, 48 pages (b/w ill.), 12.5 × 24 cm, Japanese
Price: €18 (Out of stock)

Ei-Q (28 April, 1911–10 March, 1960) was a Japanese artist who worked in a variety of media, including photography and engraving.

He was influenced by the Surrealist aesthetic and also published essays promoting photography as an art form independent of painting. This did not imply a rejection of painting, and he worked toward what in 1935 he termed photo-dessins, a fusion of photograms and paintings.

#1974 #abstractphotography #eiq #japaneseavantgarde #japanesephotography