For those in or near Berlin, the work will be exhibited at Potsdam’s Kunsthaus sans titre:
Exhibition: 18 – 30 September 2011
Preview: 15 September 2011, 2.00 pm – 6.30 pm
Kunsthaus sans titre

Französische Straße 18, 14467 Potsdam

(scroll down for English version)

Zwischen Stadt und Land, zwischen Kind und Frau: es sind Mädchen am Übergang, die Ute und Werner Mahler für ihr Projekt „Monalisen der Vorstädte“ fotografiert haben. Dreißig der so entstanden Porträts haben die Mahlers für einen Band ausgewählt, der jetzt erschienen ist – unser zweites Meier und Müller Buch.

Drei Jahre lang sind die Mahlers quer durch Europa gereist. Sie haben ihre „Monalisen“ in Liverpool, Minsk, Florenz, Reykjavik und Berlin gefunden. Dort warteten sie in den Vorstädten, auf Mädchen, die etwas Rätselhaftes, Zeitloses im Gesicht hatten. Diese Mädchen haben sie porträtiert, in ihrer natürlichen Umgebung, zwischen Gebäuden und Wiesen, aber mit einer Ausrüstung wie sie früher in alten Fotoateliers verwendet wurde: eine alte Plattenkamera, ein schwarzes Tuch, ein dreibeiniges Stativ und ein Hocker, ohne Lehnen aber mit anmontierter Kopfstütze. Auf diesem Hocker nahmen die Mädchen Platz und deuteten ein Lächeln an, wie das berühmte Vorbild auf dem Renaissancegemälde.

Die ersten „Monalisen der Vorstädte“ wurden im Rahmen der OSTKREUZ Ausstellung „Die Stadt. Vom Werden und Vergehen“ gezeigt. Für ihre „Monalisen“ erhalten die Mahlers den diesjährigen Kunstpreis Fotografie der Lotto Brandenburg. Ab 16. September wird die Arbeit im Potsdamer Kunsthaus sans titre gezeigt.

Das Buch enthält eine erweiterte und aktuellere Auswahl, begleitet von einem Text des Architekten und Publizisten Wolfgang Kil. Es ist auf 500 Exemplare limitiert. Zusätzlich erscheint eine Printedition von 50 Exemplaren und eine Limited Edition Box von 30 Exemplaren. Ute und Werner Mahler, 60, gehören zu den renommiertesten DDR-Fotografen. Nach der Wende haben sie die Fotografenagentur OSTKREUZ sowie die Ostkreuzschule für Fotografie mitbegründet. Die „Monalisen der Vorstadt“ ist ihre erste gemeinsame Arbeit. Wir freuen uns sehr, der Verlag zu sein, der diese Arbeit veröffentlichen kann.

Monalisen der Vorstädte – 49 EUR
Monalisen der Vorstädte + Print – 98 EUR
Monalisen der Vorstädte Limited Edition Box (30) – 450 EUR

Weitere Details sind auf unserer Webseite zu finden. Dort kann das Buch auch bestellt werden

Herzliche Grüsse,

Andres & Jörg

Ute und Werner Mahler: „Mona Lisas of the Suburbs”

For their project “Mona Lisas of the suburbs” Ute and Werner Mahler photographed young women in transition, who are living between city and countryside, between being a child and being a woman. Thirty of these portraits have been selected for a book that has now been published – our second Meier und Müller book.

To produce the body of work, the Mahlers spent three years traveling across Europe, meeting their “Mona Lisas” in Liverpool, Minsk, Florence, Reykjavik and Berlin. Going to the suburbs, they waited for girls that had something mysterious and timeless in their faces. They portrayed them in their own surroundings, between buildings and meadows, with an equipment used mostly in old photo studios: a plate camera, a black cloth, a tripod and a stool with a head rest. The girls took a seat on this stool and hinted at a smile, just like the model in the famous Renaissance painting.

The first “Mona Lisas of the suburbs” were shown as part of the OSTKREUZ exhibition “The City. Becoming and Decaying”. For this work, Ute and Werner Mahler were awarded this year’s “Kunstpreis Fotografie” by Lotto Brandenburg for “Mona Lisas”. From 16 September, 2011, the work will be shown at Potsdam’s Kunsthaus sans titre.

The book contains a new and expanded selection of photographs and a text by architect and author Wolfgang Kil. Its print run is limited to 500 copies. In addition, there will be an edition of 50 copies with an extra print, and a limited edition box of 30 copies.

Ute and Werner Mahler are amongst the most famous East German photographers. After Germany’s reunification, they co-founded the photography agency OSTKREUZ and the Ostkreuz School of Photography. The Mona Lisas are their first shared body of work. We are delighted to be the publisher of these photographs.

Mona Lisas of the Suburbs – 49 US$
Mona Lisas of the Suburbs + Print – 98 US$
Mona Lisas of the Suburbs Limited Edition Box (30) – 450 US$

Further details are available on our website, the book can be ordered there.

(US copies will be available by the end of September, 2011).

All the best,

Andres & Jörg

Here is how things unfolded. After a day of presentations, out of a group of seven photographers, who had presented their projects, three were picked to have their work converted into a photobook dummy. The decision which one to pick was tricky, but it was ultimately based on the challenge at hand: Use a single day.

The workshop participants were then split into three groups, each of which was working on one of the projects. The participants consisted of photographers and of designers (two each per group), plus one of the fearless leaders. This is what it looked like (click on the images for slightly larger versions):

You sit around a table and talk about ideas etc.

Alternatively, you stand around a table and talk about ideas.

Given there were three groups, each of which had slightly different challenges and thus modi operandi, there is no simple way to explain what went on in each of them. One group was spending a lot of time on a design effort, having to figure out how to present large-scale photographs with lots of details in a – comparably – small book. Another group was spending a lot of time on trying to get to the core of the photography and the project. The last group had a mix of these.

This is what is needed to make a dummy: Reference materials, computers, paper, glue, tape, knives, liquids, helping hands, plus a bunch of brains (not shown here). One of the crucial aspect turned out to be the photographer’s willingness to trust the group with her/his work. Photographers are notorious for being terrible editors, so any photographer thinking about making a photobook (or dummy) better think about bringing in at least one editor and allowing that editor to make some seemingly unpleasant choices (otherwise, things can result in a bad quagmire).

As I said, I can only talk about details of my own group. Here, the whole team was split up at times, doing different tasks in parallel. The design was created by a sub-team comprising of one designer and three photographers (shown above). As it turns out, a lot of people have very cool ideas for designs, but it does take a professional to produce something that looks professional (the devil, of course, always lies in the details).

A day later (cum grano salis) there were three book dummies. Actually, Hans’ group had what felt like an infinity of dummies. Needless to say, they were all very simple, and they all require a lot of extra work to move towards a real book. But the concepts were well established, and there were physical objects that displayed the concepts very well.

The dummies were then presented to the whole group and discussed. No boring gallery shows on paper! Mission accomplished.

What surprised me probably the most was how much can be done in such a short period of time, especially if a team works together and if the photographer is not overly protective of her/his work. This definitely is a workshop that one would want to bring to other places. It’s time to talk about making photobooks in broader terms. Photobook making is not all about “on demand,” about “audiences,” or “marketing.” And a workshop like “Book Case Study” can make this very clear, by having photographers and designers interact and think about photobooks not as cheaply and crappily produced commodities, but, instead, as beautiful objects that add another layer to their photography.

But seriously, this book is one of those numerous grotesque masterpieces that were produced about fifteen, twenty years after the end of World War II in Germany, showcasing the new Germany, or rather, here, the new Hannover (the capitol of the – then West – German state of Lower Saxony). It’s all about celebrating that which wasn’t destroyed during World War II and praising the new stuff, which looks distinctly unpraiseworthy (but better than rubble in any case).

So there’s the old (click on the images for larger versions)

or

and the new, looking like this

or this

Produced by the city of Hannover itself, the book is filled with praise and explanations – it’s basically a glorified PR brochure – but seen today, it’s actually somewhat interesting. Here are some more images:

Various photographers – Hannover, Verlag Die Schönen Bücher, Dr. Wolf Strache, Stuttgart, 1959, 20cm x 26.5cm (7 3/4 in x 10 1/2 in), hardcover, 48 b/w photographs, text and essays by various contributors (some un-credited)

Click here to view the embedded video.

Simon Roberts was picked to be the 2010 British Election Artist. If I understand this correctly, the resulting work was thus commissioned by the British parliament itself, or more accurately, by the Speaker’s Advisory Committee on Works of Art. Details – along with images – can be found on the dedicated website The Election Project. The supreme irony here is that the election resulted in a new government, which just introduced drastic budget cuts, amongst them a 25% cut in funding for the arts (story).

The images from The Election Project were also published in newsprint form, a copy of which Simon was kind enough to send. I’ve long been a fan of using newsprint for photography, and this particular publication yet again showcases the strength of the medium. Here are some of the spreads (click on the images to see larger versions):

On top of that, most categories make sense only to a certain extent, and this is particularly obvious in the case of propaganda. Erna Lendvai-Dircksen’s Nordsee-Menschen (“North Sea People”) is a good example. On the surface, the book simply is a portrait of people living at the edge of the North Sea, with the photographic signature of its time shining through (as always click on the images to see larger versions):

Once you read the text, another image emerges. A lot of people tend to ignore the essays that come with photobooks (who can blame them?). If you don’t do this in the case of Nordsee-Menschen the following is the kind of stuff you’ll find. Writing about the young woman on the right in the following spread

Lendvai-Dircksen writes

Amrumer Friesin. Herb, stolz, mit weissblondem Haar und klugem, kritischen Blick ist die junge Frau der Ausdruck reinsten friesischen Volkstums. Contax, Sonnar 1:2 f=5cm, Juni, Mittag, Sonne, Blende 1:8, 1/200 Sek., Zeiss Ikon Film Panchrom

[Frisean woman from Amrum. Austere, proud, with white-blond hair and a wise, critical glance, the young woman is an expression of the purest Friesean national character. Contax, Sonnar 1:2 f=5cm, June, mid-day, sun, aperture 1:8, 1/200 sec., Zeiss Ikon Panchrom film]

“The purest Friesean national character,” the reference to what the Germans called “Volkstum,” that’s pure Nazi ideology (all English translations in this post by me). The introductory essay is even more explicit and produces this mix of folklore, kitsch and outright fucked-up pseudo-scientific focus on race and blood the Nazis loved so much. There’s talk of “life struggles,” the “harshness of Nature,” the “German North Sea,” “the eternity of space,” the “dark blood’s heritage,” and, of course, the “Volk”.

So superficially, Nordsee-Menschen is a photobook about people living by the North Sea, but right under the surface it’s filled with Nazi ideology. While there are no swastikas or marching Nazi troops in the book, there are ample reasons to consider it a propaganda book. Here are some more spreads:

The book was a lucky Ebay find. Typically, books by Lendvai-Dircksen sell for substantial sums of money (“substantial” here means “more than I’d happily pay for this stuff”). This one didn’t. I think part of the reason why I got interested in it was because I grew up by the North Sea myself, so I was curious. Forget what I paid for it, it wasn’t much, that I remember.

Erna Lendvai-Dircksen – Nordsee-Menschen [North Sea People], Verlag F. Bruckmann KG, München, 1937, 15cm x 21cm (6in x 8.25in), 32 pages, softcover, 23 b/w photographs, essay and photographs by Erna Lendvai-Dircksen

Zinas Kazenas – Palanga; Mintis, Vilnius, 1978, 21cm x 24.5cm (8.75in x 9.5in), 50 pages, hardcover, 40 colour photographs, essay by N. Voveraitienes, photographs by Zinas Kazenas