Happy New Year

Happy New Year!

Thanks for the support and interest in 2010.

All the best for 2011,

The Fotohof team.

Haubitz + Zoche: Kunstmuseum Heidenheim

Haubitz + Zoche, from Ski Dubai

Haubitz + Zoche, from Tropical Island

Haubitz + Zoche, the duo behind our successful publication Sinai Hotels are showing at the Kunstmuseum Heidenhausen until February 6, 2011.

The exhibition, entitled Alice und Aladin, oder die Logistik der Attraktion, addresses the phenomenon of the "fake" vacation destinations. "Tropical Island" in Brandenburg, "Ski Dubai" and "Sinai Hotels" make up the 3 series' featured in the show.

kozek hoerlonski + Sir Meisi: Medicine Mountain, Learn to Love in Seven Days

Thomas Hörl, Ruby Sircar, Peter Kozek and Wolfgang Meisinger, aka kozek hoerlonski + Sir Meisi are performing in and around Salzburg until December 12. You can catch the artist group at 7 different places around the province of Salzburg preforming what they call "...a traditional alpine folklore event, with a concentration on the role of masks and costumes..."

You can find all of the dates, times and locations here.

Inge Morath, FIRST COLOR. Clair, Munich.

Inge Morath / First Color

Opening on December 7, running until January 22, 2011

Following Inge Morath’s death in 2002, nearly 10.000 hitherto unknown color originals were recovered from storage in Paris and New York. This body of images, together with Morath’s known archive of color material, reveals the development of a distinct sensibility. Inge Morath was undoubtedly influenced by the legendary hostility of her colleague, Henri Cartier-Bresson, to color photography. Morath’s own ambivalence is reflected in the contradiction between the sheer volume of color film that she exposed and its absence from her exhibited and published works. Her color vision, already strong in her photographs of gypsy encampments in Ireland in 1954, matured in the late 1950s, during her documentation of the Middle East, in 1956, and Romania, where she worked in 1958. From the ‘60s on, Morath employed color as a central element within her documentary narratives. Filling in a significant lacuna in her previously published work, First Color is an examination of Morath’s first decade of work in color, and is drawn largely from the trove of posthumously recovered material.

(Steidl)

°CLAIR

Franz-Joseph-Str. 10
D-80801 München
Tel.+49.(0)89.386 67 442

Mob.+49.(0)151.252 617 20 (Anna-Patricia Kahn) oder
+49.(0)172.838 27 77 (Markus Penth)

info@clair.me

New Release: BRUT, Paul Kranzler

Paul Kranzler

Brut

Authors: Franzobel, Paul Kranzler
Language: Deutsch / Englisch
Format: 24 x 30 cm
ISBN: 978-3-902675-34-7
Price: 39.00 €

FOTOHOF edition 2010, Vol. 134

Brut is the third title from Paul Kranzler in the Fotohof edition. Following his Land of Milk and Honey, and Tom, this book is Paul's look at his own extended family. By traveling through Austria, searching for what it means to be part of a "clan" Paul delivers us not only an extended self-portrait but a glimpse of the middle-working-class Austrian life.

“These are images of places and people I have known for a long time, whether related by blood or otherwise. And places and people who know those I know, and also people who I don’t know in places I have known for a long time. You become the way you are in your own environment. Relatives are an integral part of the genetic environment, and people, to whom you are not related and who become your relatives are always your closest environment.

Indeed the people, places and landscapes of your own environment are always the most photographed motif in the world. Once you have been in a particular environment for a long time, it becomes your “home”, your “relationship”, your “family”, your “homeland”, your “cemetery”, your “prison”, etc. Perhaps one’s personal environment is four-dimensional: the three dimensions of space plus the fourth dimension, i.e. the emotion inherent to that (living/human) space.”

Book Presentation Dec. 13th: Leo Kandl, "Free Portraits. Kunsthalle Wien.

Book Presentation

LEO KANDL "Free Portraits"

Monday, 13th Dec. 2010

KUNSTHALLE wien / project space Karlsplatz

FOTOHOF edition 2010, Band 109:

Leo Kandl

Free Portraits

texts by Gerald Matt,

Jurko Prochasko (dt. / engl. / russian)

2010, Hardcover with dust jacket

30 x 24 cm, 105 pages

82 color plates

edition: 800

ISBN 978-3-902675-09-5

€ 33

Book Presentation Dec. 8: POESIE, Susanne Huth in the Galerie Loris, Berlin.

On December 8th, the Gallery Loris in Berlin will be presenting the book POESIE from Susanne Huth. The text author Annett Groeschner will be there as well. the evening will be moderated by Elke Tesch.

Loris

Galerie für Zeitgenössische Kunst

Gartenstrasse 114

D-10115 Berlin

mail@lorisberlin.de

An entire generation has now passed since Germany’s reunification, and Susanne Huth has gone in search of the East Germany of her childhood; a search reflected in the artist’s architecture photographs, but also in the sweet reproductions of the poetry album of her childhood, which in a subtly poetic way already hinted at political resistance. Recollections of an age where a verse by Goethe or a glittering sticker could represent a form of passive resistance.

Susanne Huth has worked with the art book medium on several occasions already, but mostly only in the form of unique copies or entirely hand-made editions. Poesie [Poetry] is her first book publication. In her essay Poesiealbum Magdeburg-Nord, Berlin author Annett Gröschner explores the relationship between public and private, again from an historical-autobiographical perspective.

FOTOHOF edition 2010, Band 143:

Susanne Huth

Poesie

Text von / text by Annett Gröschner (dt. / engl.)

2010, Hardcover, Leinen / linen

19 x 14 cm, 64 Seiten / pages

48 Farbabbildungen / color plates

edition: 500

ISBN 978-3-902675-43-9

€ 25

Our report from OFFPRINT Paris: A big success!

The first OFFPRINT artist book fair in Paris dedicated to photography publications from November 18 – November 21, was a big success – not only for Fotohof edition. On all four days there were enourmous crowds in the Espace Kiron flipping through book projects of about 40 exhibitors. Focusing on independent publishing companies, OFFPRINT aspires to be a meeting place for Artists, Photographers, Graphic designers, Curators, Artistic directors, Journalists, Collectors… who deal with "printed" photography: books, magazines, zines, prints.

We met a lot of friends and artists like Lewis Baltz, Valerie Belin, Jeffrey Ladd, Alix Delmas, Eva Maria Ocherbauer, Haubitz +Zoche, Rob Hornstra, Martin Parr, Nina Korhonnen, Daniel Blaufuks, Lillian Birnbaum, Oliver Sieber, Veronique Bourgoin, Jörg Koopmann, Antje Hanenbeck, Jutta Benzenberg, Miklos Boros, Philipp Gerlach, Marion Kalter, Johannes Steidl, Paula Muhr, Stefane Couturier, JH Engström, Andrew Miksys and many more.

Parallel to the book presentations there were enriched meetings and portfolio reviews with young artists from all over the world including a nice lecture of young dutch book designers.

Yannick Bouilly, organisator and creator of OFFPRINT seemed also surprised by the enormous interest and announced a second edition next year.

OFFPRINT Paris - Espace Kiron

New Release: AHEAD WITH THE PAST, Jutta Benzenberg

Albania’s Journey of Transition and the Photographs of

Jutta Benzenberg

Jutta Benzenberg

Ahead with the Past / Me të shkuarën, përpara

Autoren: Adrian Klosi, Ingo Schulze
Sprache: Englisch / Albanisch
Format: 28 x 24 cm
ISBN: 978-3-902675-45-3
Preis: 36.00 €

FOTOHOF edition 2010, Vol. 145

Excerpts from the text by Ardian Klosi, July 2010.

Jutta Benzenberg photographed this extraordinary unfinished vessel in its Roskovec shipyard in June 2010. It is planned to have many cabins in the shape of cafés and restaurants, billiard halls and slot-machine casinos, and it will welcome not government delegations and presidents with their pretty aides at their elbows, but representatives of the working and non-working people of the entire country. There will be no need for hundreds and thousands of people to drag it across the mountains, as the poor Peruvians of long ago dragged their ship under the orders of the mad rubber-baron Fitzcarraldo in Werner Herzog’s film. No. Powered by 550 years of resentment stored in Albanian hearts since the wars of Skenderbeg, when we were brutally snatched from Europe, it will proceed under its own steam, making up for lost time, and when the peoples and states of united Europe see this Albanian concrete ship, this industrial dream of the 1960s which has become a reality in the 21^st century, they will welcome it with respect.

An old lady smiles at the photographer with this ship in the background. It is hers: her son is turning into reality an idea that has been so many centuries in gestation and now finds expression in this country in so many ways. The projected journey is sometimes a hesitant one, and we are unsure of the itinerary and means of travel. For instance, in the town of Kavaja, about thirty kilometres to the north, the chimney of the old nail and screw factory has been turned into a minaret, with a balcony and the muezzin’s loudspeaker facing east.

I suggested to the photographer the caption “Ahead with the past” because I noticed that in most of her pictures, especially those taken in the last two years, after two decades in which she has handled Albanian themes, the past is constantly present. The country is progressing, of course, and in people’s external appearance you no longer see the same tension and barely suppressed violence as in 1991. That period of chaos and destruction has passed, and it is not common to find the people reduced to skin and bone that Jutta captured in “Albanian Survival” (1993). But the past somehow still grips all the people in this book. Who knows, this may be one of the country’s inherent traits. Most albums of Albanian photos show superb landscapes, or people in clean, colourful, bland and up-to-date environments. But Jutta has caught people in the struggles of their everyday lives, in scenes which bear the marks either of the socialist past or of Albania’s age-old poverty. Some illustrate unsuccessful endeavours to overcome both, in the shape of a newly-acquired kitsch prosperity, with shimmering satin and floating tulle curtains. Sometimes the subjects of these photographs, still in thrall to the past, are not people, but buildings, rooms, railway stations, mining towns, dogs and horses, forests and lakes. Unlike tourist photographers who attempt to exclude every blemish and stain, and all the rubble and debris of the past, Jutta consistently includes these things in her vision, or rather finds them wherever she goes. Are these the struggles of Albania, her fractures and rents, or are they the photographer’s? I cannot tell, and I need not decide this question as long as the photographs speak for themselves.

Several albums of photographs of Albania have been published in recent years. Those produced by Albanians are aimed at tourists, and seem to display the country as if in a shop window, while those by foreigners are generally the result of short visits they have paid to Albania. But Jutta’s work extends across an entire twenty-year period. In October 1991, she took black-and-white photographs in the internees’ villages of Lushnjë, in the former prison of Spaç, and on the roads as the migrants poured toward the Greek border at Kakavija and Kapshtica. Now in 2010 she has compiled this book, which contains mostly photographs from the last two or three years, but which are nevertheless connected to her earlier work. In between, she accomplished work of extraordinary value, with characters, situations, and landscapes that charted the country’s destiny year by year. Tragically, her collection was entirely destroyed by fire in 2007, but she started again, determined to make up what she had lost. The public can see at least a selection of the results in this book.

more on the main Fotohof page.

New Release: SUBRAUM from Johannes Naumann / Gregor Sailer / Stefan Tuschy.

SUBRAUM

Johannes Naumann

Gregor Sailer

Stefan Tuschy

The spaces documented here in Germany’s Ruhr area by Johannes Naumann, Gregor Sailer and Stefan Tuschy are normally not freely accessible. It is the hermetically sealed world of archives, underground bunkers, storage facilities and tunnel systems which, as hidden lifelines, keep the pulse of our modern lives alive. With the camera’s inquisitive gaze and a compositional intent they explore this hidden world and uncover a certain functional aesthetic: monolithic shapes, endless corridors lined with shelves, the perspective of vanishing points, and the highly specific colour palette of items of everyday use. These literally underground locations are usually omitted in the presentation of architecture. In their coolly neutral images Sailer / Naumann / Tuschy cast light on these suppressed - as it were - sites of storage, protection and technology.

Authors: Gerald Matt
Language: Deutsch
Format: 24,5 x 30 cm
ISBN: 978-3-902675-40-8
Price: 29.00 €

OPENING - Susi Krautgartner / Leo Kandl. Thursday 18. Nov. 7 pm

Susi Krautgartner, from Uncanny Valley

Leo Kandl. from Free Portraits

Leo Kandl – Free Portraits

Susi Krautgartner – Uncanny Valley

Opening: Thrusday, 18. Nov. 7 pm

Words: Stefanie Hoch, Curater, Landesgalerie, Linz

Leo Kandl has immersed himself in the genre of portrait photography for several decades, whereby he unites the conceptual documentary process with the subjectivity and individuality of the object. In „Free Portraits“ Kandl made contact with his models through newspaper advertisements. Cities such as Vienna, London, New York, Tehran, Moscow and Havana became the public backdrop for works that at times give the impression of being snapshots from the streets, or private photographs. Kandl’s style allows the observer to engage with the subject emotionally as the potentially tense meeting of two strangers in role play, the subject and photographer, produces images characterized by curiosity and an occasionally subtle, erotically charged atmosphere.

“Uncanny Valley” is named after a well-known hypothesis of roboticist Masahiro Mori. Mori’s theory describes the empirically measureable effect of an emotional response to non-human entities. Essentially, human-likeness triggers empathy. However, when an almost perfect human-likeness is achieved, strong negative emotions can be detected. Susi Krautgartner invokes this effect through the medium of self-portrait which express familiar role models and stereo types.

Guest speaker at the exhibition is Stefanie Hoch, Curator of the LANDESGALERIE LINZ.

Artist biographies are available at www.fotohof.at

This evening we will also present our latest publication:

Leo Kandl, Free Portraits

Hardcover, 105 pages, 82 color photos

with a text from Jurko Prochasko

Fotohof edition 2010, Vol. 109

ISBN: 978-3-902675-09-5

€ 33,-

Fotohof edition at OFF-PRINT PARIS

Offprint Paris, starting this year for the first time, is an artist book fair dedicated to photography publications.

Focusing on independant publishing companies, Offprint aspires to be a meeting place for Artists, Photographers, Graphic designers, Curators, Artist directors, Journalists, Collectors … who deal with "printed" photography books magazines, zines, prints.

Entrance is free.

http://www.offprintparis.com

Espace Kiron

10 rue de la Vaquerie

75011 Paris, France

from 3 pm - 9 pm (sunday from 11 am - 5 pm)