Dear friend of Beyond Words,

Quite a few of you have commented on the recent article in The Guardian’s Money section on the increasing collectibility of photo books.  For those of you who have not seen it, it is an interesting read which you can still view online on the Guardian's website. While I would always urge people to buy books for love not money, it certainly makes my job easier as a photographic bookseller if people believe that an extravagant purchase may turn out to be not so extravagant after all!  It’s widely believed that Parr & Badger’s two-volume history, The Photobook, has increased the status and value of photographic books, so Martin Parr’s recent listing of the Best Books of the Decade

Is well worth a look.You can view the list here and I shall try and do a detailed response to this for the next newsletter.
 
Book Launch & Signing
 
 

John Blakemore: Photographs 1955-2010

£40 > £36
 
I am very happy to announce that we will be welcoming John Blakemore to Edinburgh to speak about his Retrospective to be published by Dewi Lewis. The event will be held at 6.15 on Monday 24 October at McDonald Road Library, EH7 4LU, ten minutes’ walk from the city centre at the junction of Leith Walk and McDonald Road. If you intend to come, I would be grateful if you could email to let us know. If you cannot come but would like one or more signed copies, please also email. There will also be a similar event at Street Level in Glasgow on the preceding Sunday afternoon.

One of our customers and a friend of John’s, Kyriacos Kalorcoti, has seen the final unbound version of the books and reports:

“John Blakemore has been a photographer for more than 50 years and has occupied a leading position since the 1970s. His work is represented in many collections and is widely admired for its elegance and deep exploration of a variety of themes going beyond subject matter. He is best known for his monochrome work but has also worked in colour, though mostly for private enjoyment. He has held various retrospective exhibitions, but of their nature we have no lasting record of them for continued enjoyment. It is therefore a great pleasure to report that a retrospective book is to be launched. The book consists of carefully constructed sequences covering his long career. Well-known favourites are included as are many previously unpublished pictures. Having looked through the unbound final printed version of the book I know for sure that it will give lasting enjoyment to all readers. The sparse text also repays careful reading as would be expected. A recorded interview about the book can be heard at www.kkpictures.com.”

There will also be an exhibition in London to coincide with the retrospective at Hooper's Gallery.
 
John Blakemore & Kyriacos Kalorcoti visiting our pop-up shop at Stills
 
New Titles
 
Fred Herzog

I want to kick off with the work of a street photographer of whom I had been shamefully ignorant till recently: Fred Herzog, who was born in Stuttgart but has been resident in Vancouver since 1953.

His colour photographs of that city are a revelation. Had he been working in the land of William Eggleston and Stephen Shore rather than the relative backwater of British Columbia, he would surely have garnered far more attention far sooner than he has. Look here for a generous sample of his work.

And, if you like the look of it, choose between a Hatje Cantz collection already in print or the forthcoming Canadian publication from Douglas & McIntyre.
 
Mack Books
Mack Books (closely related – though I’m not sure exactly how - to the ongoing imprint Steidl Mack) have a very promising programme of titles. Early titles include a mammoth new tome from Taryn Simon (best-known for her American Index of the Hidden and Unfamiliar): A Living Man Declared Dead (for images see the photographer's own website). Soon-to-be published Mack titles include Dan Holdsworth’s Blackout (Examples from which can be found here) and Lars Tunbjork’s LA Office (Images on the Amador Gallery website).
 
Max Strom
 

It’s good news that titles from the Swedish publisher, Max Strom, will now have a regular UK distributor.  Perhaps most significantly, it means we should have a regular supply of Anders Petersen & J H Engstrom’s From Back Home (£40 > £36).

Max Strom are about to publish a new collection of beautiful photographs by a younger Swedish photographer, Martin Bogren, who is clearly influenced by Petersen and Engstrom but has perhaps a gentler eye.  In Lowlands (£30 > £27), Bogren returns to the village in southern Skane province where he grew up, to profile its people and places. But behind the documentary narrative is a more personal story of childhood and adolescence, the longing to get away and dream of something that was bigger than the village.  (Lowlands will also be available in a limited edition with print – please get in touch if you would like more information).

Our third Max Strom title is Swedish Wilderness (£50 > £45), the largest photo book ever produced about Sweden’s mountains, combining the images of Claes Grundsten with texts by Dag Hammarskjöld – the UN Secretary General who was also an avid mountain hiker.
 
 
Peter Granser: 2000-2007
Super Labo, Paperback, Our Price £36.50

Superlabo, the Japanese publisher specializing in small books in limited editions of 500, have published a collection of German photographer Peter Granser’s recent work.
 
 
Christophe Agou: The Face of Silence
Dewi Lewis Publishing, Hardback, Publisher's Price £30.00, Our Price £27.00

Christophe Agou won the 2010 European Publishers Award for Photography for In The Face Of Silence, a portrait of the hard lives of French family farmers living and working in the Forez region, on the eastern side of the Massif Central. It has been published in the UK by Dewi Lewis, appropriately accompanied by a story by John Berger.
 
From Polaroid to Impossible - Masterpieces of Instant Photography
Hatje Cantz, Hardback, Publisher's Price £35.00, Our Price £31.50
There is a continuing, and growing, appetite for Polaroid photography which should be satisfied by the new Hatje Cantz publication, From Polaroid to Impossible (£35 > £31.50), based on the photography collection owned by Polaroid’s inventor Edwin Land, recently sold to the Viennese photography museum WestLicht. It includes 230 works by artists as diverse as Ansel Adams, Andy Warhol, Stefanie Schneider and Nobuyoshi Araki. See the Hatje Cantz website for a preview.

Please note also that the beautiful collection of Polaroids by Andre Kertesz has recently been reprinted
 
Josef Sudek: The Unknown - Vintage Prints 1918-1942
Kant Publications, Hardback, Publisher's Price $50.00, Our Price £36.50
 

There has been a welcome increase in the availability of works covering the career of Josef Sudek, principally published by Torst. Now Kant Publications give us The Unknown ($50 > £36.50). Sudek began his career by submitting prints to international salons, competitions in which photographs were assessed by a jury. These early photographs have been overshadowed by his later studio still lifes. The Unknown Josef Sudek retrieves these early works: beautiful still lifes, portraits, street scenes and interiors.
 
Jessica Auer: Unmarked Sites
Hardback, Our Price £27.00
  We have copies of a lovely wee artist’s book of photographs of Newfoundland by Jessica Auer. It is signed and numbered and limited to 500 copies. Unmarked Sites is “an exploration of locations that were once prominent in Viking culture and in some locales, people predating this time period. Looking for clues of this history in the landscape, Auer creates a thoughtful investigation of the traces the past leave on the present.” You can view a preview of this book on the Jessica Auer website.

 
Calendars
 
Some of our best-selling calendars are just being published in their 2012 guise, including Lois Greenfield’s dance photographs in Breaking Bounds (£9.99 > £8.99) and the Sierra Club calendar ($12.95 > £10.95) and diary ($13.95 > £11.95), images can be found on the Sierra Club website. We will also be stocking Josef Hoflehner’s enormous poster-calendar – measuring 70 by 50 cm (£40) - previews of the images can be found on the publisher's website.
 
 
Just in and Recommended
 
Alejandro Chaskielberg: La Creciente
Nazraeli Press, Hardback, Publisher's Price £40.00, Our Price £36.00
 

We wanted to give a special mention to Alejandro Chaskielberg’s La Creciente as it has been so enthusiastically received by many customers, including two photographers who have submitted these reviews:

"I wasn't aware of Chaskielberg's work prior to the Brighton Photo Biennial in 2010. When I heard about the work being produced on (5"x4") - positive film, with 5-10 minute long exposures, mixing fill-in flash with direct moonlight - it understandably caught my attention! When I subsequently learned that Nazraeli were going to produce a book on his 'High Tide' project, I couldn't wait to get my order in. Of course, there are occasions when a book doesn't quite meet your expectations, but thankfully, this was not the case when I started leafing through the pages of 'La Creciente'. The reproduction is astonishing. The quality of the imagery and the richness of the colours are immediately apparent with the viewing/reading of the first plate within the book, 'Mr Ramon'.  Strong narrative is supported by true technical proficiency (rarely has tilt/swing been adapted so successfully). It didn't take long for me to start concluding that this was going to be one of my favourite books of 2011. " (Peter Iain Campbell)

“Since winning the L'Iris D'Or, the photographer of the year, at April's Sony World Photography Awards, Alejandro Chaskielberg has become as hot as the nights and the lives he vividly portrays in the Parana River delta, a world away from the city lights of downriver Buenos Aires.  'La Creciente' takes its title from the waxing moon and the flow of the Parana, South America's second longest river, and Nazraeli is to be congratulated for picking up on Chaskielberg before the award was announced, and for printing this fine volume.   Not for him the complex staging and lighting of Crewdson's tableaux, but the serendipitous concatenation of long-ish exposures, intriguing depth of field decisions, torchlight, lantern, flash, fire and moonlight, to marvellous, otherworldly effect.   Expect a host of imitators - but Chaskielberg is the real deal.” (Michael Peterson)

You can view a Alejandro Chaskielberg's work on his website

 
 
Ralph Eugene Meatyard: Dolls and Masks
Radius Books, Hardback, Publisher's Price $60.00, Our Price £43.35
It has been almost forty years since the untimely death of Ralf Eugene Meatyard and in that time his influence on subsequent generations of photographers has been profound. This new book, published by Radius Books, looks at the work created in the years preceding the publication of Meatyard's seminal book The Family Album of Lucybelle Crater and includes many previously unpublished images. The images contain the familiar Meatyard motifs of abandoned interiors and wooded areas in which figures in grotesque masks, together with dolls and mannequins, form the only inhabitants. In a book published so long after the photographer's death, and claiming to contain unpublished work, you might expect to find images that are not up to the standard of those previously seen in print. This is most certainly not the case with Dolls and Masks. The work here is as beautiful, disturbing and oddly touching as anything in Meatyard's previously published work. When Steidl published their gorgeous Meatyard retrospective (now sadly out of print) I thought we would never see another book to match it. It is a testament to Radius Books that, while not the equal of that book, this volume is a handsome companion.
 
A message from Paul Hill:
Clock Tower Photography Workshop - The Personal Touch

”I'm sure you have heard about this workshop by now but what you don't know is that we are now running a special introductory offer on this course. This is a brand new venue for photography in the Lakes and because we really want to make this weekend a success we are offering this first workshop at a special price of only £195! This is £65 off the full price!” Full details at http://www.mariafalconer.co.uk/workshop.html
 
Finally
 
I was recently interviewed about photo books by Danny Hearn from the estimable Perspectives in Glasgow.  Poor Danny had to edit my ramblings into something moderately coherent.  You can find the interview here.
 

As always if you would like to order any of the titles listed or would like more information concerning anything mentioned in our newsletters please contact us by phone or at the email address at the bottom of this message. You may also order any of these books at www.beyondwords.co.uk.
 

Best Wishes,

Beyond Words

Tel: (01620) 895985

Email: info@beyondwords.co.uk
Web: www.beyondwords.co.uk
 

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