PARIS PHOTO - 2014 photobook awards short-lists

 

New York and Paris, September 26, 2014. Todd Hido, photographer and photobook maker greeted an eager crowd at the New York Art Book Fair to announce the thirty-five outstanding photobooks short listed for the 2014 Paris Photo–Aperture Foundation PhotoBook Awards.
 
THE TEN SHORT LISTED FOR PHOTOBOOK OF THE YEAR ARE:
The Big Book
Photographer: W. Eugene Smith
Publisher: University of Texas Press
Rich and Poor
Photographer: Jim Goldberg
Publisher: Steidl
Disco Night Sept. 11
Photographer: Peter van Agtmael
Publisher: Red Hook Editions
Marrakech
Photographer: Daido Moriyama
Publisher: SUPER LABO
Photographs for Documents
Photographer(s): Vytautas V. Stanionis
Publisher: Kaunas Photography Gallery
Ponte City
Photographers: Mikhael Subotzky and Patrick Waterhouse
Publisher: Steidl
Vertigo
Photographer(s): Daisuke Yokota
Publisher: Newfave
Imaginary Club
Photographer(s): Oliver Sieber
Publisher: Editions GwinZegal/BöhmKobayashi
The Winners
Photographer(s): Rafal Milach
Publisher: GOST
The Arrangement
Photographer(s): Ruth van Beek
Publisher: RVB Books

You can see the full list including the 20 shortlisted titles for first photobook on the PARIS PHOTO website HERE.

Paul Graham's book of Yellow is loaded with possibilities

 

Paul Graham’s new book – Does Yellow Run Forever? - arrived in my mail box today. It’s a small and perfectly formed edition, with the tactile feel almost of a hymn book or a volume of sacred texts. The book contains pictures of rainbows, Paul’s partner Senami asleep and sad gold / pawn shops in New York City. Graham describes the book as his little book of rainbows a diversion about love, illusion, wealth, dreams and finding happiness. This is a quiet and deceptively simple work, yet it’s loaded with metaphoric possibilities.The book is not so much about the photographs (Graham has the ability to take a cliché and give it meaning and resonance) but more about what they represent. Love is certainly central to the work, as is the truth of impermanence and the idea that the most unlikely of things coexist. 

The book is a testament to equanimity which surely is the ground for wisdom, freedom, compassion and love. 
There are many mysteries to unravel in this little book which makes it a pleasure to keep coming back to.

Paul Graham will be signing copies of Does Yellow Run Forever? at the New York Art Book Fair at 4pm this Saturday September 27. There will also be a signing at Paris Photo, November 13 - 16.

Paul Graham, Does Yellow Run Forever? Published by MACK, 2014

ARAM TANIS, master of the typological and more...

 

Aram TanIs - Binding Image

Aram TanIs - Binding Image, Oscar Pistorius

Dutch interdisciplinary artist Aram TanIs started his blog Binding Image in 2007. He has created a platform for a fascinating typological assembly of images from current events to everyday trends. TanIs finds images from facebook, newspapers, television, books and even advertisements. This is a crash course in looking at the everyday, the ignored and the obvious. It's both serious, funny and sometimes violent. TanIs's practice is a study of isolation, standardization and mass production and via Binding Image a strategy to confront readers with subjects they often pass by. 

Apart from Binding Image, Aram TanIs's art output is well worth a look.
His website HERE presents a series of his projects and bookworks. And you can go to Binding Image HERE.

Aram TanIs - Almost Blue

Aram TanIs - Publications

PARIS PHOTO - 2014

 

With 143 galleries and 26 publishers / art book dealers Paris Photo 2014 promises, again, to live up to its reputation as the preeminent photography art fair.

Paris Photo this year will honor one single institution for its pioneering force for the promotion of the language of photography: The Museum of Modern Art, New York (MoMA). An exhibition of nearly 100 works by leading practioners of American photography including artists Walker Evans, Edward Weston, László Moholy-Nagy, William Klein, Geraldo de Barros, Susan Meiselas, Regina Silveira, Liliana Porter, Sarah Charlesworth, Lyle Ashton Harris, Mark Morrisroe, Oscar Munoz, Collier Schorr, and Lisa Oppenheim will be presented in the Salon d'Honneur, curated by Quentin Bajac and Sarah Meister. MoMA began collecting photography in 1930 and founded the first Department of Photography in 1940. Today it is one of most impressive and historic photographic collections in the world.

The Alkazi Collection of Photography, New Dehli, will present a selection of meticulously staged portraits, studio studies, painted portraits and other iconic samples from South Asia representing a meld of realistic documentation and artistic manipulation characteristic of popular Indian culture in visual practice at the turn of the 19th century. Over the past 30 years, Ebrahim Alkazi, one of India's most influential theatre directors and a prominent figure in the arts, has amassed a private collection of 19th- and 20th-century photographic prints amounting to over 90,000 images, housed today at the Alkazi Foundation for the Arts.

Continuing the narrative of the photobook, this year's Open Book exhibition is dedicated to artists books published between the 1960s and today with singular works by many of photography's most innovative protagonists, including Andy Warhol, Christian Boltanski, John Baldessari, Gilbert & George, and Hans-Peter Feldmann. This tradition is carried through the 1980s by contemporary artists and photographers such as Richard Prince, Sophie Calle, and Wolfgang Tillmans.

Paris Photo 2014 / 13–16 November 2014 / Private preview: November 12 / Grand Palais, Avenue Winston-Churchill, 75008 Paris

The NY Art Book Fair - MoMA PS1 9/26-28

 

Printed Matter presents the ninth annual NY Art Book Fair, from September 26 to 28, 2014, at MoMA PS1, Long Island City, Queens.

Free and open to the public, the NY Art Book Fair is the world’s premier event for artists’ books, catalogs, monographs, periodicals, and zines. This year, the fair features over 350 booksellers, antiquarians, artists, institutions and independent publishers from twenty-eight countries. Last year’s fair was attended by more than 27,000 people.
This year’s NY Art Book Fair includes an ever-growing variety of exhibitors – from the zinesters in (XE)ROX & PAPER + SCISSORS and the Small Press Dome representing publishing at its most innovative and affordable, to rare and antiquarian dealers offering out-of-print books and ephemera from art and artist book history. NYABF-classic Friendly Fire focuses on the intersections of art and activism, and with the support of the Norwegian Consulate General in New York, the NYABF and Printed Matter presents NORWAY FOCUS: KUNSTNERBØKER, a curated selection of 23 Norwegian booksellers, institutions, artists and independent publishers.

NYABF14 is also host to an array of programming and special events: now in its sixth year, The Classroom is a curated engagement of informal conversations, workshops, readings, and other artist-led interventions. The Contemporary Artists’ Book Conference (CABC), now in its seventh year, features two full days on emerging practices and issues within art-book culture.

The list of exhibitors is overwhelming. A who's who of art book publishing. Check out SUPER LABO from Japan. Horses Think Press from New York. Elisabeth Tonnard from Netherlands. Joachim Schmid from Germany. Morten Andersen from Norway.

THE NY ART BOOK FAIR September 26–28, 2014 Preview: Thursday, September 25, 6-9pm MoMA PS1

UNSEEN PHOTO FAIR 18-21/9 Amsterdam

 

After two successful editions, Amsterdam’s international photography fair and festival returns with a packed festival programme that celebrates photography in all its forms. Unseen is the international photography fair focused on undiscovered photography talent and unseen work by established photographers. The fair will take place from 18 to 21 September 2014 at Amsterdam's Westergasfabriek.

You can check out the programme HERE.

JH Engström at FOAM Amsterdam

 

Open now and running until December 10, FOAM museum Amsterdam presents the work of the Swedish photographer JH Engström in an exhibition titled Close Surrounding. Engström lives and works between Paris, France and his birthplace in Värmland, Sweden. The dynamic between the leisurely pace of country life and the high octane energy of the city is essential in Engström's life. This is reflected in the   authenticity of his photographs and in the exhibition at Foam. The books Engström has published are important element of the exhibition. JH Engström's photographs - which always reflect his engagement with his surroundings - reveal the loneliness and absurdity of the human condition. Engström uses his camera and its artistic possibilities to communicate in a meaningful and direct way with the viewer. He also shares his doubts about whether it is possible to truly understand what life is about. He explores various photographic genres such as the self-portrait, landscape, the snapshot and aerial photography. JH Engström's oeuvre is multi-faceted. He documents the ambience of the places he photographs, but at the same time his work can also be interpreted as a personal, visual 'stream of consciousness', a continuous flow of images that portray feelings, observations and memories of the photographer. Furthermore he 'plays' with one of the traditional characteristic of photography: depicting reality. In his photographs he emphasizes the fact that they are visual interpretations of that reality, by experimenting with technical imperfections such as overexposure, motion and dust. The edges of the negatives are sometimes visible in the printed photograph. The results vary from raw images to appealing photographs in pastel tints. Above all, the work of JH Engstrom can be interpreted as a restless and never-ending quest for answers to the question of what it is to be human. JH Engström was born in Karlstad, Värmland, in Sweden. When he was ten years old, he moved with his family to Paris - an immeasurably large city in comparison to his birthplace. When he was thirteen years old, the family moved back to the country, but since then he has constantly returned to Paris, the city to which he is devoted. He worked as an assistant to fashion photographer Mario Testino and the documentary photographer Anders Petersen. In 1997 he graduated from the Photography and Film Department of Gothenburg University. He developed his own unique style, which is characterised by a combination of raw and highly aesthetic images. Engström likes to present his work in books. To date, he has published twelve. He has received many prizes and nominations, including a shortlist nomination for the Deutsche Börse Photography Prize (2005) and the Best Photobook of the Year Award (Arles, 2009).

You can see more on JH Engström's website HERE.

Paul Graham, Does Yellow Run Forever? TIME LightBox talks to Mack about the project

 
LightBox: Your working relationship with Paul Graham dates back seven books and more than a decade to American Night. What draws you to his work?

Michael Mack: Paul’s practice involves a compelling use of straight photography documenting everyday moments to invoke significant notions. He uses the blank observational capacity of the medium to transform the banal and the mundane into work which is engaged with very human issues. I think that this is incredibly tough to do, especially with his lightness of touch which avoids the mawkish grandiloquence endemic to such concerns. And he constantly challenges us to explore what is possible in that process of translating his work and ideas into a book. If you look back, his career has involved an extraordinary collection of books. And this new book is once again wonderfully original – it is a tiny, gem-like object, intimate and personal, like a hand-made diary.

You can read the full interview, LightBox talks to Michael Mack,  HERE.

Paul Graham, Does Yellow Run Forever?
Currently showing at PACE Gallery New York, finishing October 4. You can see more of the show HERE.

Photobooks - a guide to the best new books from TIME's LightBox

TIMES's LightBox presents a special preview of the season’s best photography books, featuring new titles from photographers Stephen Shore and Bruce Davidson, Paul Graham, as well as inspired work by contemporary photographers Michael Light, Julie Blackmon and LaToya Ruby Frazier.
These photo books, lovingly designed and meticulously edited, are a rare treat in a time when photography is all-too-often relegated to selfies and snapshots, and offer an opportunity to truly indulge in the unfettered beauty of a well-made book.

 

You can see all the recommendations HERE.

William Eggleston at Fondation Henri Cartier-Bresson

William Eggleston, 1970 untitled

William Eggleston: From Black and White to Color which opened at Fondation Henri Cartier-Bresson September 9 and runs until December 21st includes some exceptional and as yet unpublished photographs borrowed from the artist collection and various lenders. There is an opportunity to discover the evolution, the ruptures and above all the radicalness of Eggleston’s work when he began photographing in color at the end of the 1960s. There are similar obsessions and recurrent themes present in Eggleston's early black-and-white work including ceilings, food, and scenes of waiting, as well as unconventional croppings, all definitive traits of the photographer well known for his statement, I am at war with the obvious.

The exhibition is accompanied by a catalogue, published by Steidl with text by Thomas Weski and an introduction by Agnès Sire. The exhibition will be held at musée de l’Elysée, Lausanne from January 30th to May 3rd 2015.

Fondation Henri Cartier-Bresson, 2 Impasse Lebouis, 75014 Paris, France

THE PhotoBookMuseum Cologne...

Markus Schaden reports...
Exiting first half performance for #The_PBM CarlswerkEdition : 6300 Visitors - 24 Guided -80 min long-Tours - 21 Artist Talks and screenings - 4 overcrowded PhotoBookKids Workshop - 1 great PhotoBook MasterClass - a new Cabanon-Style French Bistro - 8000 distributed programs - 7 published books at the KonicaMinolta press - 78 VW shuttle tours - 2 unexpected POP UP exhibitions at The_PBM - 4 TV Features and 43 Press Reviews - 6000 new Likes on Facebook - 219.000 people reached - 8 DJ-Sets - 15 new books poped into the ReadingRoom- 13 Darkroom Performances - 260 CatalogueBoxes by Kettler Verlag distributed - 1 unfinished show .... and one blog post from me.

You can see more HERE.