Traces of Light in Modernism
Koshiro Onchi, Osamu Shiihara and Ei-Q
Published by The National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo, 1997, 40 pages (b/w ill.), 21 × 29.7 cm, Japanese / English
Price: €55

Various artistic trends originating in Europe after World War 1, such as Russian Constructivism, the Bauhaus in Germany and Surrealism in France, left a strong impression on Japanese art and photography in the Taisho and the early Showa periods. In photography in particular, the Western influence brought a new movement called Shinko Shashin (New Photography) in the early Showa period. This exhibition was an attempt at reexamining the visual expression in the period from the perspective of the photographic work of artists from fields other than photography, focusing on the work of Koshiro Onchi, Osamu Shiihara and Ei-Q.

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

#1997 #abstractphotography #eiq #japaneseavantgarde #japanesephotography #koshiroonchi #osamushiihara #photography
New Photography
Sherrie Levine
Published by FRAC, de Pays de la Loire, 1996, 64 pages (duotone ill.), 17 × 24 cm, French
Price: €15 (Temporarily out of stock)

Sherrie Levine rose to prominence as a member of the Pictures Generation, a group of artists based in New York in the late 1970s and 1980s whose work examined the structures of signification underlying mass-circulated images, and, in many cases, directly appropriated these images in order to imbue them with new, critically inflected meaning. Since then, Levine has created a singular and complex body of work in a variety of media that often explicitly reproduces artworks and motifs from the Western art-historical canon as well as non-Western cultures.

#1996 #photography #picturesgeneration #sherrielevine
What's wrong with redistribution?
Wolfgang Tillmans
Published by Verlag der Buchhandlung Walther König, Köln, 2015, 320 pages w. Fresnel magnifying glass (colour & b/w ill.), 24.8 × 28.5 cm, English
Price: €48

Wolfgang Tillmans’ truth study centre became a fixed part of his exhibitions since he first showed a version of the multi-part tabletop installation in 2005. Often arising from local circumstances and current issues at the time of their creation, the “truth study centre” works mark an endeavour to create a clear view in ever more confusing times.

Far exceeding his original and main medium of photography, he juxtaposes a variety of contrary opinions, statements and comparisons on recurring table formats. The dimensions of the wooden tables, which he designed himself, are not arbitrary: they are built using standard British door panels, 198 cm long, and with one of four different standard widths. This book gives an overview, through lavish reproductions, of this new form of collage, in which picture, text and object “are only kept in place by their own weight.” An essay by Thomas McDonough, Professor for Art History at Birmingham University, New York, places Tillmans’ project within the context of twentieth-century collage, from Hannah Höch to Robert Rauschenberg.

#2015 #photography #verlagderbuchhandlungwaltherkonig #wolfgangtillmans
Marocco 1952/1953
Cy Twombly
Published by Humboldt Books, Milan, 2023, 80 pages (b/w ill.), 17 × 21 cm, Italian / English
Price: €20

Texts by Tina Barouti, Anne-Grit Becker, Natalie Dupêcher. Photographs by Robert Rauschenberg and Cy Twombly.

In the fall of 1952, Cy Twombly receives a traveling scholarship from the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts and leaves New York for his first trip to Europe and North Africa. He meets up with Robert Rauschenberg in Casablanca, and the two of them travel to Marrakech and the Atlas Mountains, and then to Tangier. They pay a visit to Paul Bowles in Tétouan and go on day trips with him to nearby villages and Roman ruins. Twombly conducts his first and last archaeological excavation there. Upon their return to Rome in February 1953, Twombly studies and sketches the ethnographic objects and tribal artifacts he sees on display in the Museo Nazionale Preistorico Etnografico Luigi Pigorini. These sketches survive in the form of the North African Sketchbooks. Much of the surviving work from this trip consists of photographs taken with a Rolleiflex shared by the artists and sketches made by them, preserved in the archives of the Cy Twombly Foundation and Fondazione Nicola Del Roscio; they provide a unique perspective on Twombly’s lesser-known affinity for Africa’s Mediterranean shores.

#2023 #cytwombly #humboldtbooks #photography #robertrauschenberg
1930s Japanese Photography — 日本の写真 1930年代 展 図録
日本の写真 1930年代 展 図録
Published by Kanagawa Prefectural Museum of Modern Art, Kanagawa, 1988, unpaginated (colour & b/w ill.), 25 × 24.3 cm, Japanese
Price: €65 (Out of stock)

A pictorial record of the exhibition Japanese Photography 1930s, at Kanagawa Prefectural Museum of Modern Art, 1988, which collects photographs from the emerging photography of the era. Approximately 340 illustrations of the work of photographers such as Kiyoshi Koishi, Shoji Ueda, Ei-Q, Koshiro Onchi, Nakaji Yasui, Iwata Nakayama, Shinzō Fukuhara, Kineo Kuwabara, Terushichi Hirai amongst others.

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

#abstractphotography #eiq #iwatanakayama #japaneseavantgarde #japanesephotography #kineokuwabara #kiyoshikoishi #koshiroonchi #nakajiyasui #photography #shinzofukuhara #shojiueda #terushichihirai
Häuser und Hallen
Bernd and Hilla Becher
Published by Museum für Moderne Kunst Frankfurt, Frankfurt 1992, 72 pages (b/w ill.), 18.5 × 24 cm, English / German
Price: €25

“The husband and wife team of Bernd and Hilla Becher began photographing together in 1959. For close to fifty years, they documented architectural forms they collectively referred to as “anonymous sculpture.” Their extensive series of water towers, blast furnaces, coal mine tipples, framework houses of mine workers, and other vernacular industrial architecture—often technologies on the verge of obsolescence—comprise an in-depth study of the intricate relationship between form and function.”—Fraenkel Gallery.

#1992 #berndamphillabecher #photography