Bibliographic by Jason Godfrey

In the scholarly world of books about books, graphic designers and architects need love too. Just published by Laurence King, Jason Godfrey's Bibliographic is a must for the design conscious.

Bibliographic is not a comprehensive collection but a selection of 100 important books of fine graphic design. This cross-section includes many obviously influential works (Tschichold, Tolmer, Kepes, Moholy-Nagy) but also obscure titles such as two books from early type foundaries and Ben Shahn's Love and Joy about Letters. (The later I have owned for years and despite the title, I am embarrassed to have not spent more time to consider how great Shahn was as a designer and typographer.)

Bibliographic is organized into chapters of ; Typography, Sourcebooks, Instructional, Histories, Anthologies, and Monographs. Each double page spread is dedicated to the examination of one book at a time through short descriptions and many illustrations. Mouthwatering examples of typography in Manuale Typographicum (1954) from Hermann Zapf and Aaron Burns' Typography (1961) put their craft into practice with brilliance.

Like photobooks, several of these examples are so scarce that they are beyond the reach of most readers, Alfred Tolmer's Mise en Page from 1931 would be a welcome volume for a reprint with its impressive production techniques as would Gyorgy Kepes' influential Language of Vision from 1944. The designer's library, perhaps even more than a photographer's, is a working collection where education and influence should be importantly within arm's reach.

In his introduction, the most prolific of writers on design Steven Heller, makes mention of the now common feeling of "book envy" and the desire to own these books perhaps much like the Parr/ Badger series has done for hundreds of photobooks. Thankfully, Godfrey's gives us a guide through these examples along with an extensive bibliography supplied by today's leading designers. Bibliographic will certainly inspire many new book searches and additions to our already sagging bookshelves.



In Victor Hug's novel Notre Dame de Paris the archdeacon Claude Frollo warns of the danger that books could kill architecture. For hundreds of years repeated attempts to hammer out and interpret basic formal rules has inspired discussion and rebellion found in the most contemporary of design. The book Modern: Architecture Books from the Marzona Collection published in 2003 as a companion to a traveling exhibition (How to Build? The Modernist Book) features a couple hundred examples that have shaped this discussion.

Egidio Marzona is an art collector who's interest in Minimal Art, Atre Provera, Conceptual Art and Earthworks has amassed over 1000 works and thousands of books on various subjects. His interest in architecture and design led to this book and exhibition. This small format book is interesting for sure but its design and generally conservative use of illustrations (only two - three per book) will make readers wish for a deeper look into these amazing titles. The exhibition included several hundred examples where this catalog only includes a fraction.

Dan Graham's For Publication fits well within the Marzona collection's normal association with Concept or Minimal Art as will Gordon Matta-Clark's Wallspaper. Paola Navone and Bruno Orlandoni's Architettura "Radicale" (1974) looks to be a fascinating but difficult to find item which I wish was illustrated by more than one internal spread.

Three essays, one a discussion between Marzona and Elizabetta Bresciani (the show's curator), provide a good tour through the history of these books and the shifts in architectural approach and attitude. For me these essays were indispensable as there are no individual descriptions of each book. This void makes Modern mostly a volume of visual candy that will fascinate and frustrate fans of design, architecture and bookcraft. Perhaps a gifted author like a Jason Godfrey from the architecture world could be capable of compiling a great book on this worthy subject.

5B4 Fund Raiser and Print Offer

Since my main part time employer from the past eleven years has decided that I can survive yet another month of having absolutely no work, I am forced to hang out my tin cup and ask for help.

As I tend to do, I am offering a nice incentive for donations on my Print Offer page by way of one set of large 24 X 36 inch prints of my photographs from the former Yugoslavia. These are final prints, signed and numbered in an edition of only 2.

They were printed by Darin Mickey in 2003 and retouched by the late Tracy Baron (1975-2008). These prints were created for a traveling exhibition of mine at the Soros Foundation's Open Society Institute in New York in 2003 and Washington DC in 2004.

As I mentioned these are 24 X 36 inch color coupler prints, signed and numbered on the back. These are not flawed and have no surface problems. These are perfect gallery prints in an edition of only two. The second print in the edition was framed and hung in the show. Those are not currently for sale.



So...I have one print each of these images in this size and I would ask donations of a $1000.00 for a print. They would be mailed loosely rolled and carefully protected. Postage is included for shipping worldwide. Please email me to assure availability. jeffladd99(at)hotmail(dot)com

Also over the next few days I will be listing more books and other items including very rare posters and unique ephemera on the Photobook Exchange.

I sincerely thank you for any help. If you like what I do with 5B4 and can afford an item or two from any of my offers on the Print Offer page or 5B4 Photobook Exchange it would help a great deal in keeping my head above water. Thank you.

The 3rd Person Archive by John Stezaker

"He walked down Broadway to 72nd street, turned east to Central Park West, and followed it to 59th street and the statue of Columbus. There he turned east once again, moving along Central Park South until Madison Avenue, and then cut right, walking a few blocks, he continued south for a mile, came to the juncture of Broadway and Fifth Avenue at 23rd street, paused to look at the Flatiron Building, and then shifted course, taking a westward turn until he reached Seventh Avenue, at which point he veered left and progressed further downtown. At Sheridan Square he turned east again, ambling down Waverly Place, crossing Sixth Avenue, and continuing on to Washington Square. He walked through the arch and made his way among the crowds..." -Paul Auster City of Glass

Looking through John Stezaker's latest book The 3rd Person Archive just published by Walther Konig, one is faced with postage stamp sized images of walking human figures cut from a copy of John Hammerton's 1920 encyclopedia Countries of the World. These tiny figures, like the ever-present flaneurs who occupy the backgrounds of paintings and photographs, are clipped from their role as extras and thrust into the position of main character.

I was reminded of Auster's protagonist Daniel Quinn from City of Glass as he surveils a man over several days and records his seemingly aimless wanderings through Manhattan. Here, Stezaker uses images that are in actuality many different people (all men) but in the way he has sequenced his "archive" one gets the feeling that perhaps we are also surreptitiously trailing these figures, but because of the severe croppings, our sightline is limited and similar to looking through a long lens or telescope.

The structure of The 3rd Person Archive is broken into three parts. The first limits the clippings to include a single figure within various urban spaces on sidewalks, street corners and in city parks. The second section includes two figures within each frame, and in the third section - three figures or more.

For those heady enough to tackle Michel de Certeau's theorization of the walker in the city (The Practice of Everyday Life), you may find relevance in Stezaker's archive. His subjects compose a story out of fragments and alterations of spaces, preventing the ability to see the whole much like an aimless walker puts up resistance to a mapped and ordered space by utilizing shortcuts and momentary diversions. If one agrees with de Certeau that "to walk is to lack a place" then Stezaker's flanuers, like Auster's protagonist, may represent the "indefinite process of being absent."

Stezaker plays with scale on the printed page by reproducing the clippings at their largest a couple inches square, to tiny pictures where the reader strains to make sense of the image. The effect is zooming in and out on our subjects emphasizing the thought of surveillance where "he" cannot escape our panoptic eye.

The 3rd Person Archive is the size of a hardcover novel with a rounded spine and elegant presentation. Though it might look printed in a straight forward process common to books of text, this book utilizes a six color stochastic printing with beautiful results. No texts accompany the images which are only divided into their sections by the change in the numbering system that appears at the bottom of the facing page.

Stezaker is a brilliant artist who through appropriation and little alteration continues to shift our perceptions. This archive, which was started in 1976, looks much different from his collage work with film stills or postcards, but within its seeming simplicity he has created a small book of wanderers which is anything but pedestrian.

Japanese Photobooks of the 60s and 70s

I have had the pleasure of standing in front of a friend's bookcase of some 600+ photobooks - all from Japan - and not knowing where to start. It was a great experience but one in which I was in frustrating need of a guide. Finally, the long awaited survey of the most experimental period of photobooks from Japan is out - Ivan Vartanian and Ryuichi Kaneko's Japanese Photobooks of the 60s and 70s, just released by Aperture.

Up through the mid-50s Japanese photography seems to have followed aspects of the traditional picture arts with subject matter that was describing the lyricism of urban and pastoral life. The book which starts off this volume is Hiroshi Hamaya's Snow Land from 1956 which contains photographs made in small villages in Japan's Niigata Prefecture. This extended essay concerns itself with a New Year festival during which the villagers pray for a bountiful crops. The approach can reflect influence of straight documentary photographers world-wide and the sense of war and the rapid change Japan was experiencing is kept at a distance. Oddly, it has the feel at times of being an essay made through Western eyes with its philosophically acceptable and psychologically safe stance. Its purity at odds with reality.

The explosion of radical description, perhaps fueled by William Klein's Life is Good & Good for You in New York - a book most often cited as an influence to many photographers everywhere - brought younger generations of photographers willing to tackle the harsher realities of country, describing them with immediate, instinctive flair which embraced flaw in process as a new metaphor. Following Ken Domon's series of Hiroshima survivors in 1958, Shomei Tomatsu's Nagasaki 11.02 drew from traditional documentary traditions and pushed the descriptive values to abstraction and an uncomfortable psychological environ. Neither of these books are featured here but have been cited at length elsewhere - an omission which I will address later.

Current fanatics of Japanese books will cite the Provoke collective of Yutaka Takanashi, Daido Moriyama, Koji Taki, and Takuma Nakahira as the high point of driving photographic descriptions to the limits - its name was Provoke after all. These stream of consciousness and ambiguous statements of emotion and reaction were an attempt at "grasping with our own eyes those fragments of reality that cannot possibly be captured with existing language, actively putting forth materials against language and against thought." During this period the now most famous (or at the time infamous) books appeared with Bye Bye Photography, For a language to Come and Takanashi's Towards the City.

It would be a mistake and inaccurate to homogenize all of the provocative Japanese works into one mold of blur, contrast and grain and this volume does its best to present a wider understanding of period and attitudes relating to approach and that is its strength. This is not a comprehensive cataloging of every book from this period or even the most important - like I mentioned, Tomatsu and Domon's masterworks are not represented here (perhaps for the sake of escaping redundancies since they have been covered elsewhere). It does however limit its scope to only 41 books and I do wish, even at the risk of being redundant, that the authors extended their survey to either a larger choice or along a more extended timeline. It does after all actually include a couple books from the mid-50s and a couple from the 1980s.

One difficulty of assembling such a survey is the inclusion of women artists. Perhaps not the fault of the authors but of the period of productivity, there is only one book by a woman represented - Miyako Ishiuchio's Apartment from 1978. Granted I do not have a deep enough knowledge of books made from women at the time and books worthy of note to cite specific examples but my desire for a study of books along a wider timeline would have seen the inclusion of female voices. This is one aspect of male to female ratio that has plagued photography in general but here I feel a gap which would be interesting to explore.



Ivan Vartanian, who has immersed himself physically and as a scholar into Japanese culture, proves to be a fine guide for us less informed as he provides a lengthy introduction covering the period and individual essays for each book. This collection comes from the library of Ryuchi Kaneko and the extensive illustrations and attention to longer examination of individual books (each is given 4-6 pages) is an important contribution into books which most of us will never experience first-hand. Japanese Photobooks of the 60s and 70s is nicely printed with a design sensitive to its function.

In an interview which is included in this volume, Daido Moriyama - perhaps the most prolific of book-makers aside from Nobuyoshi Araki - mentions his desire to create objects which preserve a feeling or impulse. This volume displays some of the best (yet still unfamiliar), playful and imaginative books which have driven photography outside the literal boundaries of country and stale traditions and into new and uncharted territory that still, forty years later, has the ability to shock and surprise even the initiated.

Voyeur by Hans-Peter Feldmann

In response to the recent dust-up over Joachim Schmid's book When Boredom Strikes I thought I'd mention Hans-Peter Feldmann's book Voyeur which has been released in a fourth edition by Walther Konig in Cologne.

Voyeur is approximately 250 pages of appropriated photos, some famous and some unknown, presented as a mass of images - a chaotic view of history and human existence. Each page, which may be illustrated with half a dozen images or more is a tangle of context. The blurring of history creates a surreal vision of society and the world that is both familiar and strange.

Movie stills, porn mags, photojournalism, advertising, amateur photos, art, and scientific images are recontextualized apart from their authors (no individual credit is given) and organized onto the page where hierarchy is left only to their sizing.

I have seen a third edition of this same book but the double page spreads are in a different order. The same photographs are presented but the sequence is different leading me to conclude that the content is dealt with by the author as a never-ending stream that can shift and change without altering the overall effect.

I find this book interesting for another reason - information overload. Partly due to its intentional small size and with the reproductions in all black and white the individual power of each image gives way to a general tenor of complacency. Photos of vast suffering sitting next to bright smiles somehow find a common denominator in this "world of paper."

In relation to Schmid, this work is a conceptual reordering of representation and authorship. Those whose knees were jerking to hang Schmid from his thumbs over copyright might find another artist to tar and feather here. Or maybe they would be satisfied by the fact that on the colophon page, Feldmann thanks "all the photographers whose pictures have been used for this work."

Clinic by Remy Faucheux (ed.)

Last year when I had knee surgery for a torn ACL I had the odd experience of walking into the operating room and being instructed to jump up onto the table myself. In TV shows and movies, the patient is always wheeled in on a gurney and lifted onto the table so I had never imagined having to go in on my own two feet - maybe ligament surgery is not dramatic enough for television. I also hadn't imagined the table to be the same as they use to administer a lethal injection, with its thin arm extensions angled off to the sides. As they velcro-ed my arms and spiked my IV I asked the doctor what his favorite color was - I fell off the planet before I heard his answer.

The book Clinic organized by Remy Faucheux steps into the sanitized world of hospitals and medical care with the work of 11 photographers (Olivier Amsellem, Constant Anee, Eric Baudelaire, Geoffroy de Boismenu, Christophe Bourguedieu, Jacqueline Hassink, Albrecht Kunkel, Ville Lenkkeri, Matthew Monteith, Mario Palmieri, and Stephan Ruiz) and a supplement by the Useful Photography group (Kessels, van der Meer, Germain, Cleen and Aarsman).

Most of us imagine what our hospital experience will be, like I mention above, we enter with anxiety, hope, and fear and the cold mix of science and technology accentuating these emotions. We would prefer to be elsewhere than among the ergonomically designed machines that peek into our bodies seeking flaw and disease. Like the old Woody Allen joke, "I'm not afraid to die, I just don't want to be there when it happens," being inside a hospital makes it hard to put your head in the sand, everything around you reminds you of your physical body and its vulnerability.

Clinic presents each photographer with their own section of 10 to 15 images along with a short statement. Albrecht Kunkel starts the book appropriately with portraits of women during their first pregnancies. Less fear inducing than many of the other projects, Kunkels straight forward portraits exude a calm and grace from the subjects which sit staring back at us with a mix of knowledge and anticipation.

Matthew Monteith's contribution follows comprising a group of portraits and still-lifes of machines and hospital staff. His large format camera orders the twists of tubes and cables with a concentration on colors that stand apart from the rest of the scene. A bright red Mickey Mouse tapestry hangs behind the arm of an x-ray machine and red electrical sockets betray the calculated whiteness of a room. The best image is of a baby in an incubator bathed in a blue ultra-violet light, its tiny form encased like a lab specimen.

My favorite two projects are from Geoffroy de Boismenu and Christophe Bourguedieu. De Boismenu photographs within the operating room and choses to describe his subjects just before or just after the procedure. In preperation, the patient is draped in blue-green cloth and only the abstract form of flesh shows through. Beautifully lit, the hues of the dark palette conceal more than they reveal. The subject, which seems life-less most of the time, is surrounded by large expanses of darkness. This are the most disconcerting of all of the projects for me as it is even more fear-inducing than another artist's included in this book, Mario Palmieri's which concerns itself with a hospital morgue. These invasive surgeries with flesh which resembles wax and roughly sewn suchers grotesquely holding the body together are not for the faint of heart.

The other favorite is Christophe Bourguedieu who followed emergency crews as they make home visits to people in distress. I like this work for its escape from the extremely rigid formalism which most of the artists use as a descriptive device. Perhaps medium format or even 35mm digital, the human element of health care is more evident in these photos. These crews are the link between the outside world and the internal hospital world where moments of professionalism and genuine signs of emotion can be sensed. A group of men stand over a sheet-covered body in a park, their body language conveying defeat. In another, a man casually stands watching a colleague administer an injection into the blueish form of a man - his look a mix of ambiguity and interest.

The last section on a different Matte paper is a supplement by the Useful Photography group. Its concern is not with common ideas of beauty but with how an image over time may shift from pure disgust to something of fascination. The choice of vintage images shows antiquated machines with hard edges and threatening appearances along with tumors, and organs plainly presented for investigation. The oddness of the medical world is apparent as patients seem to be swallowed up by the machines they are hooked to with comic effect. That is until one gets to the last page which is a grid of tongue cancers. Where as the other projects find a comfort level with their subjects, this set will surely unnerve the viewer into aligning with their real or imagined fears.

The approach of the other photographers, although the images are well made, are formally alike which is my only criticism of the selection. Like the environs they describe, Clinic is clean and sterile in its design from its sans-serif fonts to the openness of the page layouts. Essays by Michal Poivert and Stephane Velut open the book. Clinic was published in 2008 by Images En Manoeuvres Editions.

New York City: Museum of Complaint

How major cities exist at all seems nearly miraculous. Millions of people living in close quarters, all of free will and with separate interests makes for a potentially unharmonious place. The logistics of infrastructure alone are overwhelming - providing water, ridding the place of waste, keeping people from constant murder and mayhem, transportation, health concerns. A new book from Steidl, New York City: Museum of Complaint gives insight into many of the individual concerns of the citizens of one such metropolis, Manhattan.

Culled by Matthew Bakkom from the municipal archives, the Museum of Complaint is a collection of 122 letters to the various mayors of New York from Edward Holland in the 1750s to John Lindsay in the late 60s. The nature of our governance is to at least let someone be heard and this collection covers the bases from the humorous to the heartbreaking. One is a woman's desperate plea to Mayor Laguardia to help her find a husband. Another is from a young man who's baseball was stolen by a policeman (who plays baseball on his off hours) and the boy demands his $1.25 to buy a new one. One woman can't stand seeing the newest bathing suits made of mesh material. Others complain of communists, swarms of children, pawnshops, spitters, dogs, organ grinders, prostitutes - their creativity and insight into what disturbs the everyday citizen is fascinating. We all have pet peeves and small disturbances which we can't shake, conflating them into a larger part of our lives, more than rationality can suppress.

The first letters in this volume are noteworthy for the flowing script and idiom of the day - several of the writers end with "and your petitioners shall ever pray." The language is beautiful and parsing these letters for their meaning is a joy. One wants to pave over a street leading to houses and an inaccessible boat slip which has become ruddy. "Humbly showeth that the said street / or the greater part thereof, is not without great difficulty passable for carts or other carriages by reason of its declivity and the pavements thereof being very much broken and out of repair... and your petitioners shall ever pray" (signed) John Thurman and David Abeely.

The respect shown towards officials varies as society progresses. Some letters during the Second World War have illustrative sketches comparing the Mayor to Hitler. Other writers reprimand Fiorello Laguardia for denouncing The Feuhrer. "Sir, I am sorry I voted for you. Your deliberate insult of Feuhrer Hitler was planned Jewish propaganda and you were its mouthpiece. You are unfit for office and a disgrace to New York. You are a consummate American politician - the curse of our country. I am sorry I voted for you." (signed) I Siegel.

New York City: Museum of Complaint is a large format book which reproduces the original letters and they are beautiful objects on their own. Of the fine production values, I have no complaints, only a compulsion to write to Matthew Bakkom, to thank him for this wonderful project.

Capitolio by Christopher Anderson

Early into Christopher Anderson's Capitolio we are faced with a horned demon exorcised by a cross held aloft over its head. It is this one image which metaphorically sums up the presidency of Hugo Chavez and the polarized nation of Venezuela. The poor tend to see Chavez as a saint while the wealthy few - the four hundred year old elite - paint him as the anti-Christ.

Caracas has become the murder capital of the world and Anderson ushers us into this violent street life filling the journey with a tension that lingers through the book. Guns are drawn and a sidewalk becomes a smear of blood, hoods are lined against a wall arms spread - the dark shadows impenetrable and threatening.

Anderson allows some breathing room with a short parade of architecture and the general populace, less threatening and full of life - sexuality and sensuality perhaps providing the relief from the day to day pressures. Industry is nationalized and the petro dollars that used to flow freely become the source of Chavez's New Deal, Bolivarian Revolution but portrayed by Anderson, the industries seem run by incompetents. It all has the tenor of waste and unprofessionalism. One sleeps on some torn cardboard while the machines sit idle; another man seemingly gets swallowed by the truck he repairs.

Anderson tends to portray Chavez as some type of creeping, dictator-in-waiting who has two faces - one a populist president, the other a demon in sheep's clothing. One spread compares a portrait of Simon Bolivar opposite a stencil of Chavez's face over which someone has written 'capo' - meaning mafia leader. The politicians presumably in his cabinet fair no better as one tugs at his pants wearing a suit which seems to be far too constricting. By book's end Chavez is shown with the same horrific relish as a monster in a B movie - a Tor Johnson of Latin America whose base instincts of greed and gluttony cause his eyes to roll into the back of his head.

Anderson owes much to predecessors like Klein and Alvermann for the way he has constructed his journey book-wise. The photos bleed across double page spreads and are chopped and diced to make graphic layouts with dynamic results but for all of the visual excitement I feel the content relies too much on their trickery. Anderson tries his hand at using the same image in cinematic ways by blowing it up in stages to create a zoom effect. One spread that does work wonderfully of a streetcar and its chanting passengers is a visual delight.



Capitolio's political editorializing seems unexpectedly right-wing and at worst, propagandistic. Is this simply representing the opposing views? If so, why does the last "chapter" before villainizing Chavez describe hoards of soldiers in the streets resembling a scene from Pinochet's playbook. This closely followed by a stencil saying: "Men are like stars, some generate their own light while others reflect the brilliance they receive." The pages that follow are of Chavez enjoying mass public adoration.

Capitolio's bright communist red cloth covers are certain to get attention, as is the elegant presentation and printing which is finely accomplished with a great looking matte lustre. Capitolio was published by Editorial RM out of Mexico City.

Anderson has said "I sometimes imagine Caracas as a living breathing animal. Obscured by the darkness it appears both violent and sensual, but perhaps it's true nature will only be revealed at the moment it devours me." Those contradiction abound in Latin America but it seems to me that what has devoured Anderson is his own bias, which seems evident throughout most of this book.

When Boredom Strikes by Joachim Schmid

When I first wrote about Joachim Schmid I asked several questions about the current state of mass image making; with all of the images that exist, is their continued proliferation necessary especially in a time now where cell phones now have cameras? We are producing more images than ever, could the reliance on images and visual material alter our vocabularies and the evolution of our ways of communication? Is this all just one more metaphoric example of how we do things impulsively and fill our lives with objects that we tend to store away and ignore until we decide to clean house? So the next time you aim the cell phone camera or put the Leica to your eye, consider what it is that you are bringing into this world. Is it necessary? Will you love it and take care of it? Or will they fall into the hands of others to see what we can no longer see?

Schmid has continued his investigation into the habits of amateur photography with a series of Blurb produced "Black" books. The project "Other People's Photographs" came about by trolling the internet for material on image sharing sites like Flickr and using keywords to find patterns of photographic behavior "focusing on the repetition of word, rather than the repetition of image. These are books about photography but from a more “light-hearted” perspective."

The first in this "Black Book" series is called When Boredom Strikes and it holds 156 photos and captions made when the "photographer" was bored. Boredom causes people to point the camera where ever and however the impulse directs - at shoes, at pets, at the ceiling, at the fabric patters of their pants. In some ways these pictures are experiments on the part of the taker and in other ways they are disposable images made just to fill time. Often full of humor and "light-hearted" as Schmid describes but, as a whole, the book is loaded with sadness. The subtext of the amount of boredom at work, at play, in everyday life can't be ignored. One image even is of a man's penis while he is masturbating. We have become a society that is even bored while masturbating.

On a positive level one could say that when we are bored is when we actually start to really examine our environments. This book proves that we are at least inquisitive to "see" through photography what those surroundings look like in photos but I doubt that most of these images would be considered a second time by the taker at later dates. Whether or not this is true, they are here for us to consider.

When Boredom Strikes is the size of a hardcover novel, vertical in format and printed in text quality black and white. By reducing all of the images to black and white, Schmid levels the field of good to bad photos. The captions reveal various attitudes and oddly, many seem to be apologetic in referring to their "creations" made while boredom struck. In combination with these apologies and the fact that these were posted to image sharing websites is a curious means of admittance.

Behavior and photography is endlessly fascinating now that everything has a camera attached to it. The images may not be often worthy of serious consideration for many viewers (although Schmid would argue the exact opposite I am sure) but when collected and presented as a common impulse, we see where we connect and what that connection says about us. It is a group portrait of sorts, for better or for worse.

Note: For other series, check out Schmid's "White" books and the limited "Grey" versions as well. http://schmid.wordpress.com/

Born of Fire: Steel by C.A. Stachelscheid

A couple weeks ago I wrote about the new book of photographs made by Ulrich Mack in the Ruhr region of the industrial landscape from the late 1950s. One of the industries occupying that land was steel smelting plants and a recent book discovery called Born of Fire: Steel offers an inside tour to some of those same plants that Mack photographed from the exterior. These two books sitting side by side offer very different approaches and tenor to the industry of the region.

Born of Fire: Steel could be just another 1950s era book championing an industry through mediocre photography and an overinflated sense of the public interest in such subjects, except the photography is actually the strong point. Yes there is the ubiquitous sentimentality and romanticism of the workers. All seem to be approaching a day in the smelting plant as an adventure instead of the grueling, sweat box that it probably was, and whatever exhaustion may have been present in such factories has been replaced by faces full of fascination or steady concentration.

The photos were made by C. A. Stachelscheid and the book was designed by Dr Wolf Strache. He opens his essay with a picture of a "Modern industrial man" in profile presumably stoking a furnace. Lit by an amber light offset by the bluish hues of the background he is a portrait of knowledge and professionalism - a perfect companion to the machines and infrastructure of the plant. Stachelscheid adds captions which appear in-between groupings of photographs and their content reads with the same fervor as a propaganda booklet.

"Even the most advanced technology cannot do without him. He is one of many; his name not recorded. But the camera reveals his qualities, his bearing, his being. Here is strength; but it is not to be wasted. Here is courage; but governed by caution. Here is also, plainly apparent, a sense of responsibility for complicated and costly processes."

Stachelscheid works all steps of the steel-making process from mining to the final products with a strong concentration on smelting steps which offers some of the more visually dynamic photos. Sparks flying and yellow streams of molten steel flowing from blast furnaces into ingot molds are favorite moments of photographers but
Stachelscheid's photos also reveal a concern for making complete photographs. This mediation is addressed in the captions as well; "Has the photographer assembled an effective composition just for the sake of the shot? A natural suspicion, but an unjustified one. This is how bent sheets are nested for better transportation."



The printing of Born of Fire is the third character of the book beyond the photographs and captions. The four-color offset renders colors in aged and unrealistic hues which enter in an element of fantasy to the "reality" of the work floor. Looking at times like hand-tinted photos, they are impressionistic and idealized. The close-up still-lifes overemphasize the clash of color and a few seem to follow in the steps of Keld-Helmer Petersen. One downright surreal image of a man measuring the precision form of a steel tube has the man's head, shoulders and arms seemingly trapped inside the ring of steel offset by a disturbing paint can of red gore entering into the right of the frame - quite a photographic magic act.

Some of the pairings of photos across page spreads is the other element that lifts Born of Fire above the expected. Certainly not all, but several are amazing compliments which reveal fine instincts on the part of the publisher Strache in understanding the difference between a book and individual photos.

Is Born of Fire: Steel a great book? Not by a long shot but it surely has its moments of surprise that extend beyond the quirks of printing and spectacular subject. I was certainly pleasantly surprised enough to pick it up several times so for 10-15 dollars you might take a chance. Published in 1956 by Verlag DBS Dr. Wolf Strache, Stuttgart.

Errata Editions Books on Books #5-8

I've had some trouble finding the time to write lately because it is crunch time for the next titles in the Errata Editions Books on Books series. I am trying to keep all of our contributors on the deadline for printing in October and, well, it is a bit like herding cats. Make that, herding cats that are really good photographers and writers.

The response to the first four titles in the series has been great even with the severe downturn in the economy, so much so we are ready to publish the next four books. People have understood our project and approach and we thank everyone for the feedback and support. Especially thank you to the artists who are turning out to be the biggest supporters of all. Out of over a dozen that we have approached in just the last few months, only one decided not to participate (and even they did so throwing high compliments towards our books and mission). That, and our being named 'Publishing House of the Year' at PhotoEspana assures us that we are on the right track.

The next four, Books on Books #5-8, share the connection with a photographer working a specific place at a specific time but each with very different results. And they are...



Books on Books #5: William Klein’s Life is Good & Good for You in New York - Trance Witness Revels is regarded as one of the most influential and groundbreaking photo books created in the last half-century. Published in 1956, its visual energy captured the rough and tumble streets of New York like no artbook had before or has done since. Books on Books 5 reproduces in its entirety Klein’s brilliantly photographed and designed magnum opus. The American Art historian, Max Kozloff, contributes an essay called William Klein and the Radioactive Fifties. ISBN: 978-1-935004-08-0, Hardcover, 160 pages, 9.5 x 7, $39.95. Release date Trade Edition: February 2010



Books on Books #6: Yutaka Takanashi’s Toshi-e (Towards the City) is a landmark two-volume set of books from one one of the founders of the avant-garde Japanese magazine Provoke. Published in 1974 and considered the most luxurious of all of the Provoke era publications, its brooding, pessimistic tone describes the state of contemporary life in an unnamed city in Japan undergoing economic and industrial change. Books on Books 6 reproduces all one hundred sixteen black and white photographs that make up the two volumes. Photographer, writer and book historian Gerry Badger, contributes an essay called Image of the City - Yutaka Takanashi's Toshi-e. ISBN: 978-1-935004-10-3, Hardcover, 176 pages, 9.5 x 7, $39.95. Release date Trade Edition: February

Where the first two in this set address politics and class with a more metaphoric approach, the next two do so in more overt ways.



Books on Books #7: David Goldblatt’s In Boksburg stands as one of the most important observations of a middle-class white community in South Africa during the apartheid years. Published in 1980, it presents an accumulation of everyday details from the community of Boksburg through which a larger portrait is revealed of white societal values within a racially divided state. Books on Books 7 reproduces all seventy-one black and white photographs as well as Goldblatt’s eloquent introduction to the work. The noted writer and editor, Joanna Lehan, contributes a contemporary essay written for this volume. ISBN: 978-1-935004-12-7, Hardcover, 112 pages, 9.5 x 7, $39.95. Release date Trade Edition: February



Books on Books #8: Koen Wessing's Chili, September 1973 is a shocking document from a socially concerned and politically engaged Dutch photojournalist. Published in 1973, just months after the fall of Salvador Allende to Augusto Pinochet’s coup d’etat, it describes the tense days of the military attempt to root out public opposition in the streets of Santiago. Books on Books 8 reproduces every page spread from Wessing’s gritty documentation of Chile’s darkest historical moment. The art historian and film theorist, Pauline Tereehorst, contributes a contemporary essay called The Man in the Grey Suit. ISBN: 978-1-935004-14-1, Hardcover, 64 pages, 9.5 x 7, $39.95. Release date Trade Edition: February

As before each of our studies also includes Book Production notes, Biographies and Bibliographies of each artist. As the start of any series is really an experiment, we have made some improvements based on the feedback from the first four titles. We have increased the page lengths so as to allow larger illustrations and many more double page spreads. We are continuing to approach a variety of writers and matching them with books so there we can offer a chance to hear many voices in the series.

The limited edition of sets of all four will be available for pre-order starting now. These are special copies with a tip-on image debossed into the book cloth. Shipping for the limited editions is planned for Mid-December with the trade edition hitting stores and other venues in the Spring so please SPREAD THE WORD. To purchase a set of the limited editions please use the paypal button on the shop page of the Errata Editions website.

Also for the regular readers of 5B4 I will be doing blog posts from on-press in China during the book production so you can follow the daily progress of printing. If you like what we are doing, write about us. This series depends on you. Please help in any way you can.

Thank you for your support from the Errata team - Valerie, Jeff and Ed.

Handbuch der Wildwachsenden Großstadtpflanzen by Helmut Volter

Staying in the realm of plant life for another few moments I want to mention a great book from a graduate of the Institute for Book Arts in Leipzig, Handbuch der Wildwachsenden Großstadtpflanzen (A Handbook of Wild Plants in our Cities) by Helmut Volter.

This was a thesis work of design and book craft which takes its starting point as a field guide to wild plants in German cities. Part science and nature and part intoxicating design, Volker presents a herbarium of specimens which fight to grow between cracks in concrete and modern architecture. In a wider field of view, these plants seem no more than untamed weeds but upon close inspection they have the natural art of form that Blossfeldt celebrated in his own studies.

Volter taped his unmanicured specimen clippings down with all of their imperfections in entangled roots and insect chewed leaves and photographed them against a plain white background. Bisecting half-pages of light-weight paper give brief descriptions of each plant species. The book is divided into various spaces where different plant life can be found including; backyards, sport fields, ports and canals, on building rooftops, in rail yards and literally sprouting on the streets and sidewalks.

Unfortunately for me all of the texts are in German so the finer points of description and perhaps deeper examination are beyond my grasp. Still, Handbuch der wildwachsenden Großstadtpflanzen is a visual feast which can stand on its own and apart from the texts.

Karl Blossfeldt: Working Collages

From a printer's standpoint one of the more interesting aspects is the ability to pry into another's contact sheets. They have their way of leveling the playing field. Even the greatest of practitioners fail over 95 percent of the time but even so, the near misses can be sobering - just check out the 80 some of Robert Frank's contacts reproduced in the Looking In tome from the National Gallery.

I have students who, after developing film the first few times on their own, jump straight to prints without making a contact - editing from the negatives. In my experience, the worst photographs look the best as negatives and vice versa so the contact is always a necessity and not only as a record of images. Gilles Peress used to say that they allow the ability to "recreate the walk;" a way of following process and perhaps understanding instincts, allowing potential insight for honing. I like that idea that contacts represent not only a chain of images but the ebb and flow of instinct. Even some things can be gleaned from bad photographs. Some, like myself however, guard their contacts as if secreting away a stash of porn - as if chance viewing by another would amount to being exposed, risk embarrassment, or discovered to be a fraud.

There are many uses for contact prints and a book I recently picked up examines a mysterious set of 61 "working collages" - essentially reconfigured contact sheets from the grandfather of German New Objectivity, Karl Blossfeldt. Karl Blossfeldt: Working Collages published by MIT in 2001 presents all of these sheets offering a new way of perceiving his life's work.

These sheets are mysterious because Blossfeldt during his lifetime apparently never mentioned their existence to anyone let alone explain his method or intended use. They are not typical contact sheets on the whole but cut up and reorganized groupings of his now famous plant studies. From a historical standpoint, many questions arise; were these used to categorize various species or types (not always)? Were they used to coordinate negatives and prints (the numeric notations belie this)? Were they used to create a working model for planning books (could be)? Or, as the essayist Ulrike Meyer Stump asks, "could they be showing us a forerunner of conceptual art?"

Created between 1926 and 1928, the "collages" contain all of the images that later appeared in Art Forms in Nature, his book from 1928. The numeric systems and notes often contradict the various theories as to their intended use. The thought that these represent types is sketchy since Blossfeldt often dissected his specimens into unnatural shape and form, he didn't seem as interested in finding archetypal plant life. From this we may presume compared to the final images that these sheets reveal groupings which might be reducing the objects down to their most basic decorative design.

Seeing these apart from guessing Blossfeldt's intentions, the sheets, like in other grid systems, force the individual images to give way to formal arrangement and more sculptural dimensions. We are much less interested in the subjects but with the new order and effect of the system that has taken over. The visual experience taken as a whole brings to mind scrapbooks and other imperfect orderings or material where there is both elements of the personal mixed with the public. They tease our desire to make sense of method - why some are cyanotype and others are in sepia - and at the same time we accept the whole as a beautiful and unique unified work of light and shade, form and content set upon a cardboard backdrop.

Richter had his Atlas and Lewitt his photogrids. Divorced from their practicalities, sketchbooks, guides for process, source material reveal undeniable works of art. This book begs the question of where that "art" first appeared.

Ruhrgebiet by Ulrich Mack

Photographic reproduction in books has vastly improved since the early letterpress or offset printing. Gravure had its richness and as duotone improved, the scale of grays has been increasing steadily leading into tritone plates and ever finer screening technologies. The gold standard of 600 line screen and quadtone printing in the Lodima Press books was the farthest I have seen the process achieve to mimic even the large format plates from Nicholas Nixon's 8X10. Oddly, as photographic reproductions have improved to this point there is another movement which is leading in the opposite direction with more work simply existing on-line at a screen resolution of 72 dpi or in poorly printed Blurb books and the like.

The idiosyncrasies of cheaper printing can be a joy. The uneven and dusty callotype plates of Atget's first book Photographe de Paris has its charm for me because they feel touched by the pair of hands that made them and since Atget considered himself to be a craftsman rather than an artist. so for me it is a more fitting match more than the beautifully done recent books of his work. Not every book needs a 600 line screen or a quadtone plate to be felt by the viewer but undoubtedly those improvements seduce with their clarity and exquisite tonal range.

A new printing system developed by Dieter Kirchner, High Definition Skia Photography, is a process which has gone even further to define a longer visible range of tone and deeper black range in ink on paper to create the most natural three dimensionality to date. The German publisher Moser Verlag in Munich has just released Ruhrgebiet from the photographer Ulrich Mack which was one of the titles that came home with me from the Arles festival last month.

In the autumn of 1959, Ulrich Mack left Hamburg with two Leicas and films and stayed in the region between the rivers Ruhr and Emscher for a couple weeks and was drawn to describing the industrial architecture which dominated the landscape.

Making images just for himself and without plans for publication, he explored the hard edges of factories and coal mining plants as their structures contrasted with the oft heavy gray sky. The division between sky and ground is disrupted by these beautiful monstrosities which seem to be absorbing the light and gathering it like dust on every surface - the dampness from rain providing some necessary highlights.

Mack's vision attempts an objectivity which would later be played to the umteenth degree by the Becher's and their students but Mack's photographs hold a balance between a metaphoric hellish cast and underlying joy in his depiction of this wasteland of productivity. Often climbing among the structures, he looks out from elevated vantage points and fills his frames making complicated compositions full tension between bending forms and hard right angles. Highways split the frame and although a human forms are not prevalent, their cars break the stillness and announce their presence. If it weren't for their inclusion, the smoke stacks and gigantic spinning wheels of the mining operations would seem to be performing under their own will.



The plates in Ruhrgebiet were created through the aformentioned Skia High definition printing and being this is 35 millimeter negatives and not large format, one could question the match of such a high quality process used for the presentation of a somewhat rough medium. In my mind, the match is necessary as the results show what is little respected from contemporary photographers of what that tiny format can achieve. His working with small format emphasizes the atmosphere of the subject as the sense of grain and grit, although very fine, is so pleasing to survey.

The plates in this large format book are almost 16 x 20 in size and the paper has the same feel as double-weight fiber printing paper. This choice suits the work wonderfully. With vellum interleaving paper between each print, it feels more like a portfolio of bound prints than a traditional photographic book. The ability to become engulfed by the images set apart from the book's wide margins deepens the sense of richness and tone.

All plates are oriented to the vertical so manipulation of Ruhrgebiet is a bit cumbersome but with it lying flat there are few books which I have that seduce my attention on such a grand scale. One minor but important criticism is that this book, partly due to its scale, is a delicate object. The binding is sound but the slipcase due to its surprisingly weak design is too fragile to sustain the weight and size of the book. The contemporary approach of the title design to the cover and binding construction - albeit delicate - keeps this work from the ghetto of boring and uninspired presentation of which this work could have easily been subjected.

With its beauty comes a price - a very high price of 500 euros. The printing, although an achievement, may make a book like this impractical. It is certainly work that merits such a treatment but being that the process is 4 or 5 times as expensive to produce as a regular book will certainly limit its access to many wanting to see a copy. This is a collector's item of a very limited quantity, 400 copies, each is signed and numbered by the photographer.