On 7 January 2019, Mendia Echeverria entered the Bois de Vincennes in ...

Who owns the land, by whose authority, and with what rights? These ...

Between 1978 and 1989, Mitch Epstein made eight trips to India and ...

The publication of William Eggleston’s Chromes by Steidl in 2011 ...

Durant cinq années, le journaliste Arnaud Robert et le photographe ...

Bougeant au milieu des acteurs, sur le plateau, j’étais capable de ...

The San Quentin Project collects a largely unseen visual record of ...

I’m Looking Through You is an expansive visual poem celebrating the ...

A Pound of Pictures is a stream-of-consciousness celebration of the ...

A Pound of Pictures is a stream-of-consciousness celebration of the ...

This story is pieced together from a mysterious sequence of photos ...

The Strike book by Rafał Milach is the result of the artist’s ...

The first full presentation of Bourouissa’s important series revisits ...

"Surrender, which puts an end to my relationship with photography. ...

From Berlin to Saint Petersburg, via Odessa or Italy, the place of ...

Care is everywhere and at the same time society faces a ‘care ...

Tuindorp Oostzaan was the first real garden village in Amsterdam, ...

“Todd Hido finds the poetry in that strangeness, which consists of ...

"Although it only appears explicitly in some of the photographs in this book, one senses in almost all of them the presence of that sign that one has been finding everywhere for years when travelling through the villages of the so-called empty Spain and which sums up the message of this work by José Manuel Navia: SE VENDE (FOR SALE). Everything is for sale: houses, land, horizons, even the soul of villages whose inhabitants have abandoned them in search of a better life, or at least one that is not so lonely. While urban and peripheral Spain is growing at an exorbitant rate, inland and rural Spain is in agony to such an extent that Spaniards themselves would be surprised if, in addition to talking about depopulation and abandonment as they often do lately, they dared to see for themselves the seriousness and extent of these two phenomena".

Julio Llamazares, from the text of the book

This new edition of Alma tierra has been made possible thanks to the collaboration of the Diputación de Palencia in the framework of the exhibition organised for the 'Piedad Isla' National Photography Prize.

Navia (Madrid, 1957). Photographer and graduate in Philosophy. His work as a reporter is giving way to a more personal and delayed photography, always in colour and in the documentary sphere. His images, with profoundly Iberian roots, explore territories and people linked in one way or another to their origins and culture. He is obsessed with the power of signification of photography and its relationship with literature. He has been a member of the Vu agency (Paris) since 1992.

Alma Tierra . Navia

 2nd edition
Co-publication: Acción Cultural Española (AC/E)
Text by Julio Llamazares
Design: underbau
24 x 21 cm. 220 p. Hardcover
isbn: 978-84-09-35692-8

On 7 January 2019, Mendia Echeverria entered the Bois de Vincennes in Paris for the first time, accompanied by a map, a camera and a plan. Her goal, to unravel the mysteries surrounding Le Grand Rocher, a 65-metre high hollow artificial rock built in 1934 in the middle of the park. Four months later, Mendia came out with this collection of images, a cartography of that time and place.

 

This book is the result of a theoretical and visual reflection on the photographic construction of memory; an artistic investigation that allows us to obtain a trace, both past and present, of the place photographed. The author introduces us to a world where the natural and the artificial coexist in a paradoxical way, proposing a journey through space and time, and generating a real map in which the real - the forest - and the simulacrum - the rock - form an inseparable whole, a reflection of the contemporary world.

Cartographie Éphémère . by Mendia Echeverria
 
First edition: 300 copies
Photographs: Mendia Echeverria
Texts: Esteban Andueza, Juan Jesús Torres and Mendia Echeverria (all in Spanish, Basque, English and French)
Design: underbau
Editing: Alex Llovet and Josep Maria de Llobet
Retouching and Prepress: Eduardo Nave
22 x 26,5 cm
Printing: Agpograf
Hardcover with three-tiered blind embossing
164 pages
59 duotone photographs
Publication date: September 2021

Who owns the land, by whose authority, and with what rights? These questions led Mitch Epstein to make Property Rights, a collection of photographs and short texts examining the American government’s ongoing legacy of property confiscation, and how communities gather to resist. Epstein began this series in 2017 at Standing Rock, where thousands protested the installation of the Dakota Access Pipeline on Sioux land. Over four years, he charted other contested lands from Pennsylvania and Hawaii to the Mexican border, as well as land loss through wildfires and flooding due to egregious environmental negligence.

In keeping with Epstein’s 50-year exploration of American life, Property Rights questions the relationship between institutions, civil rights and the rights of nature itself. Acknowledging our bodies and lives as our most fundamental property, the book examines other forms of trespass and destruction in an elegy to the Tree of Life Synagogue massacre, and in photographs of Black Lives Matter protests during Covid-19. Property Rights includes the voices of activists Epstein interviewed while making this deeply personal and political work. In a time of alarming division, the book describes diverse communities in a common fight against politicians and plutocrats willing to sacrifice the people’s well-being.

Mitch Epstein . Property Rights

Text by Mitch Epstein and Susan Bell
Edited by Susan Bell

288 pages, 197 images

Hardback / Clothbound
28 x 31.5 cm

English

ISBN 978-3-95829-901-6
1. Edition 07/2021

Between 1978 and 1989, Mitch Epstein made eight trips to India and shot tens of thousands of photographs. He also made three films there with his Indian wife, director Mira Nair. The photographs in this book are the result of Epstein’s unusual dual vantage in an extraordinarily complicated culture: through his Indian family life and work, he was both an insider and outsider. Epstein was able to enter a wide swath of subcultures that included a striptease cabaret, the Royal Bombay Yacht Club, Bollywood movie sets, an old-time Punjabi wedding band, and religious pilgrims both Muslim and Hindu. In India is the fruit of Epstein’s deep and extended experience of India, where separate worlds converged.

Mitch Epstein . In India

Edited by Susan Bell and Ryan Spencer

144 pages, 64 images

Hardback / Clothbound
28 x 31.5 cm

English

ISBN 978-3-95829-967-2
1. Edition 07/2021

The publication of William Eggleston’s Chromes by Steidl in 2011 marked the beginning of the examination of the entire prolific output of this extraordinary artist in a range of books including Los Alamos Revisited (2012) and the ten-volume The Democratic Forest (2015). The three volumes of The Outlands are drawn from the same source, the photographs Eggleston made on color transparency film from 1969 to 1974 that formed the basis for the Chromes volumes and for John Szarkowski’s seminal exhibition of Eggleston’s work at the Museum of Modern Art in New York in 1976 with the accompanying book William Eggleston’s Guide. However, with the exception of a couple of alternate versions, none of the photographs in The Outlands has been published previously.

The result is revelatory. Starting at almost the exact point on the same street in suburban Memphis where Eggleston famously photographed the tricycle, the work follows a route through the back roads to old Mississippi where he was raised. What is disclosed is a sublime use of pure color hovering in semi-detachment from the forms he records. At the time, Eggleston was photographing a world that was already vanishing. Today, this final installment of his color work offers a view of a great American artist discovering the range of his visual language and an unforgettable document of the Deep South in transition.

William Eggleston . The Outlands

Edited by Mark Holborn, William Eggleston III and Winston Eggleston

652 pages, 405 images

Clothbound in slipcase
31.5 x 32 cm
Number of items: 3

English

ISBN 978-3-95829-265-9
1. Edition 07/2021

Durant cinq années, le journaliste Arnaud Robert et le photographe Paolo Woods ont parcouru le monde à la recherche des happy pills, ces médicaments qui, chacun, réparent une blessure humaine, ces molécules qui font bander, travailler, agir, ces formules qui permettent aux dépressifs de ne pas totalement sombrer, ces antidouleurs que les travailleurs pauvres avalent pour avoir la force de nourrir leur famille.

Du Niger aux États-Unis, de la Suisse à l’Inde, d’Israël à l’Amazonie, Big Pharma déploie aujourd’hui les outils de la science, du marché et de la communication pour offrir à certains une réponse standardisée à la quête du bonheur, longtemps apanage des religions, des philosophies ou même du politique.

Le motif de la pilule – qui court dans l’inconscient collectif et la pop culture (d’Alice au pays des merveilles à Matrix) – exprime une réponse quasi-magique aux faiblesses, aux mélancolies, aux inacceptables limitations de la condition humaine. La promesse de transformation et de guérison par la chimie offre la métaphore la plus parfaite d’une société prométhéenne qui ne croit qu’en l’efficacité, la puissance, la jeunesse et la performance. Une société où l’apparence du bonheur vaut presque mieux que le bonheur lui-même, où la représentation s’impose au réel.

À travers ce périple de consommateur en consommateur, de pilule en pilule et de pays en pays, ce sont les obsessions les plus contemporaines qui surgissent. C’est autant un voyage philosophique qu’une investigation dans l’univers de la chimie.

Le livre est composé en dix chapitres qui abordent autant de thèmes généraux incarnés dans des histoires personnelles, comme par exemple :
– un jeune gay de Tel Aviv qui prend des pilules prophylactiques contre le VIH ;
– un Valaisan dépressif qui enchaîne les séjours en institution psychiatrique et consomme antidépresseurs et anxiolytiques ;
– un paysan du Niger qui consomme des antidouleurs puissants pour ne pas connaître la fatigue ;
– une adolescente du Massachussetts qui prend de l’Adderall pour traiter ses troubles de l’attention ;
– une jeune femme amérindienne, d’Amazonie péruvienne, qui se fait injecter un contraceptif pour ne pas subir une nouvelle grossesse non désirée ;
– un intellectuel français, atteint d’un cancer du pancréas, qui décide de recourir à un suicide assisté en Suisse ;
– la série Home Pharma où, dans une trentaine de pays, il est demandé à des familles de présenter tous les médicaments qu’elles gardent à domicile.

En introduction de chaque chapitre, une double-page d’infographies présente les enjeux de la thématique : le poids de l’industrie pharmaceutique, la douleur physique comme universel anthropologique, la puissance évocatrice du Viagra…
Les textes, tantôt journalistiques, tantôt poétiques, s’articulent comme un journal de bord où les auteurs cernent peu à peu leur objet et partent en quête de la pilule ultime, celle qui apporterait une réponse à l’éternelle question du sens de la vie.
Les images usent de toutes les formes de la photographie : portrait d’auteur à la chambre, photographie indicielle au téléphone portable, carte postale, album de famille, selfies postés en ligne, etc.


Happy Pills . Le bonheur en pilules

Arnaud Robert / Paolo Woods

delpire & co

Date de parution : 30/09/2021
Poids 720 g / Dimensions 17 x 24 cm / 264 pages / en français
Reliure cousue-collée, couverture souple
Graphisme : Catherine Barluet
Recherches statistiques par We do Data
ISBN 9791095821366

Bougeant au milieu des acteurs, sur le plateau, j’étais capable de prendre la même scène, à de multiples reprises, mais différemment. Cela m’a appris à tirer le meilleur parti d’une situation donnée, et j’ai continué à appliquer cette méthode à mon travail.
Josef Koudelka*

delpire & co est heureux de publier Koudelka Theatre, une présentation de 58 photographies nouvellement éditées, accompagnée d’un texte de l’historien de la photographie Tomáš Pospěch.

Selon ses propres dires, Josef Koudelka était peu attiré par le théâtre dans sa jeunesse. Lorsqu’il arrive à Prague de son village de Moravie à la fin des années 1950, il se consacre avant tout à ses études. Il s’intéresse alors aux avions, à la musique folklorique et à la photographie, qu’il pratique en amateur. Un camarade de classe lui recommande de rencontrer son oncle, qui travaille à la rédaction de la revue Divadlo (Théâtre), alors à la recherche d’un photographe. C’est dans ce contexte que Josef Koudelka, bientôt ingénieur aéronautique de métier, devient photographe de plateau.

Dans les années 1960, les théâtres praguois font partie des rares lieux de la Tchécoslovaquie soviétique où perdure une relative liberté d’expression. Le dramaturge et essayiste Vaclav Havel, futur président de la République fédérale tchèque et slovaque (1989-1992) y est particulièrement actif, notamment au Théâtre sur la Balustrade (Divadlo na zábradlí). Cette scène est alors un haut lieu du théâtre de l’absurde, où des metteurs en scène tels que Jan Grossman interprètent Ubu Roi, d’Alfred Jarry (1964), En attendant Godot, de Samuel Beckett, ou Intermezzo de Jean Giraudoux… À la suite du Printemps de Prague (1968), ces scènes sont contraintes de fermer, et leurs animateurs entrent en dissidence ou quittent le pays.

Il existe une corrélation riche entre la photographie de théâtre de Koudelka et sa façon ultérieure de concevoir ses images comme une réflexion sur le théâtre du monde.

Tout ce que nous connaissons de sa pratique de l’image se retrouve dès ses débuts dans le travail qu’il réalise à Prague dans les années 1960 : son attention à la composition graphique, sa facilité à travailler dans des espaces restreints parmi des personnes en mouvement et dans des situations d’éclairage difficiles, son obsession à revenir encore et encore sur le même motif, les mêmes gestes et rituels. C’est au cours des années 1960 qu’il documente également la vie des gitans. Ces deux séries, créées en parallèle et sur le temps long, entretiennent de nombreux liens.

« Les Gitans, c’était aussi du théâtre. À cette différence près que la pièce n’était pas écrite d’avance et qu’il n’y avait pas de metteur en scène. Il n’y avait là que des acteurs. C’était le réel, la réalité, la vie. Il y avait tout. C’était un autre type de théâtre, c’était le théâtre de la vie. Sans rien à y arranger. La seule chose qu’il fallait savoir, c’était comment réagir. Il ne dépendait que de moi ce que j’allais en faire. »
Josef Koudelka
Propos recueillis par Otomar Krejča, ‘Divadlo, Zkušenost z představení’, in Josef Koudelka, Prague: Torst, 2006

Koudelka Theatre comprend des photographies de productions importantes dans deux grands théâtres, le Théâtre sur la Balustrade et le Théâtre Derrière la Porte, ainsi que des images réalisées pour les couvertures de Divadlo.

La maquette du livre est inspirée de l’œuvre du principal graphiste et scénographe de l’époque dans le milieu du théâtre à Prague, Libor Fára (1925-1988), mari d’Anna Fárová, conservatrice et historienne de la photographie qui a aidé Koudelka au début de sa carrière.
La typographie utilisée a été créée par le Studio Najbrt en 2020, à partir d’une ancienne machine à écrire de l’époque évoquant les Samizdats, ouvrages clandestins interdits par la censure soviétique.

*Interview donnée Bryn Cambell, World Photography, Londres, 1981.
Citation extraite de Josef Koudelka, l’Épreuve Totalitaire, de Jean-Pierre Montier, Delpire Éditeur, Paris,
2004.

Photographies : © 2021 Josef Koudelka / Magnum Photos
De haut en bas : Ubu Roi (Král Ubu), d’Alfred Jarry, mise en scène de Jan Grossman, Divadlo Na zábradlí (Theâtre de la Balustrade), Prague, 1964.
Intermezzo, de Jean Giraudoux, mise en scène de Otomar Krejča, Divadlo za branou (Theâtre Derrière la Porte), Prague, 1967
En attendant Godot (Čekání na Godota), de Samuel Beckett, mise en scène de Václav Hudeček, Divadlo Na zábradlí (Théâtre de la Balustrade), Prague, 1964.
Masques ostendais (Maškary z Ostende), de Michel de Ghelderode, mise en scène by Otomar Krejča, Divadlo za branou (Theâtre Derrière la Porte), Prague, 1965.
An Hour of Love (Hodina lásky), de Josef Topol. mise en scène Otomar Krejča, Divadlo za branou (Theâtre Derrière la Porte), Prague, 1968.


Koudelka Theatre

Josef Koudelka

delpire & co

Date de parution : 25/11/2021
96 pages, 210 x 250 mm
58 photographies en noir et blanc
Couverture souple, Broché avec rabats
Texte de Tomáš Pospěch
Conception graphique par Aleš Najbrt et Josef Koudelka
Graphisme : Studio Najbrt, Prague
Langue : français et anglais
ISBN 9791095821403

"Ravens is one of the defining bodies of work in the history of photography and a high point in the photo book genre. This accumulation of accolades, and the passing of time, have obscured much of the fascinating detail which explains the artist’s pre-occupation with this motif throughout his work. It was not simply a reflection of the existential angst and anhedonia he suffered throughout his life but manifested in artistic self-identification with the raven and ultimately spiralled into a solitary existence and artistic practice on the edge of madness. And all this before an untimely accident in 1992, a fall down the stairs of his favourite bar, resulted in him spending the final twenty years before his death with his consciousness suspended and in medical isolation. Fukase became the singular raven frozen by his camera and immortalized on the cover of his most famous book." 

Tomo Kosuga from his essay Cries of Solitude [2017]

Consistently proclaimed as one of the most important photobooks in the history of the medium, Ravens by Japanese photographer Masahisa Fukase was first published in 1986 and the two subsequent editions were both short print runs that sold out immediately. This bilingual facsimile of the first edition contains a new text by founder of the Masahisa Fukase Archives, Tomo Kosuga. His essay locates Ravens in Fukase’s wider work and life, and is illustrated with numerous recently discovered photographs and drawings.

Fukase’s haunting series of work was made between 1975 and 1986 in the aftermath of a divorce and was apparently triggered by a mournful train journey to his hometown. The coastal landscapes of Hokkaido serve as the backdrop for his profoundly dark and impressionistic photographs of ominous flocks of crows. The work has been interpreted as an ominous allegory for postwar Japan.

Masahisa Fukase (b. 1934, Hokkaido; d. 2012) graduated from the Nihon University College of Art’s Photography Department in 1956. He became a freelance photographer in 1968 after working at the Nippon Design Center and Kawade Shobo Publishers. His major books include Yugi [Homo Ludence] (Chuokoron-sha, 1971); Yohko (Asahi Sonorama, 1978), and Karasu [Ravens] (Sokyu-sha, 1986). Countless solo exhibitions have been dedicated to Fukase’s work, and his photographs have been included in group exhibitions at the MoMA, NY; Oxford Museum of Art; Fondation Cartier pour l’Art Contemporain, Paris; V&A, London. Fukase also won numerous prizes, including the 2nd Ina Nobuo Award in 1976 for his exhibition “Karasu” and the Special Award at the 8th Higashikawa Photography Awards in 1992. Fukase tragically fell down a set of stairs in 1992 and suffered a traumatic brain injury from which he never recovered. He passed away in 2012.

Masahisa Fukase . Ravens

Second  Edition

Blind embossed clothbound hardback in a silkscreen printed carton slipcase

Original afterword by Akira Hasegawa [1986] and a new text by Tomo Kosuga [both bilingual]

148 pages

80 tritone plates

20 b/w and colour illustrations

26.3 cm x 26.3 cm

Publication date: May 2017

ISBN 978-1-910164-83-9

The San Quentin Project collects a largely unseen visual record of daily life inside one of America’s oldest and largest prisons, demonstrating how this archive of the state is now being used to teach visual literacy and process the experience of incarceration.

In 2011, Nigel Poor—artist, educator, and cocreator of the acclaimed podcast Ear Hustle—began teaching a history of photography class through the Prison University Project at San Quentin State Prison. Neither books nor cameras were allowed into the facility, so an unorthodox course with a range of inventivemapping exercises ensued: students crafted “verbal photographs” of memories for which they had no visual documentation, and annotated iconic images from different artists. After the first semester, Poor says, “one student told me he could now see fascination everywhere in San Quentin.”

When Poor received access to thousands of negatives in the prison’s archive, made by corrections officers of a former era, these images of San Quentin’s everyday occurrences soon became launchpads for her students’ keen observations. From the banal to the brutal, to distinct moments of respite, the pictures in this archive gave those who were involved in the project the opportunity to share their stories and reflections on incarceration.



The San Quentin Project

Authored by Nigel Poor. Contributions by Reginald Dwayne Betts, George Mesro Coles-El, Rachel Kushner, Michael Nelson, Ruben Ramir...



Format: Hardback
Number of pages: 168
Number of images: 97
Publication date: 2021-06-01
Measurements: 8.5 x 11 x 0.9 inches
ISBN: 9781597114929

I’m Looking Through You is an expansive visual poem celebrating the glamorous surface of Los Angeles and its reach. Animating Tim Davis's wry observations and the mesmerizing, color-pop geometry of his images is the photographer and writer’s decades long, gimlet-eyed meditation on making pictures. As Davis states, “The camera is a machine that sees only surfaces. The world casts its spell, and the camera gobbles up its glamour, uncritically, with pure certainty, assuming there is nothing underneath.” Davis’s keenly observational images, interspersed with a selection of his writings on the medium—the joys and pitfalls of camera seeing—solidify I’m Looking Through You as an unabashed celebration of photography.


Tim Davis . I’m Looking Through You

Photographs by Tim Davis. Text by Tim Davis.


Format: Hardback
Number of pages: 256
Number of images: 159
Publication date: 2021-06-01
Measurements: 6.5 x 9.2 x 1 inches
ISBN: 9781597114981

A Pound of Pictures is a stream-of-consciousness celebration of the photographic medium, bringing together an entirely new collection of work by Alec Soth made between 2018 and 2021. Depicting a sprawling array of subjects — from Buddhist statues and birdwatchers to sun-seekers and busts of Abe Lincoln — this book reflects on the photographic desire to pin down and crystallise experience, especially as it is represented and recollected by printed images. Throughout this eclectic sequence are the recurring presences of iconography, of souvenirs and mementos, and of the image-makers that surround us day to day. Forming a winding, ruminative road trip, Soth’s photographs are followed by his own notes and reflections in an extended afterword. ‘If the pictures in this book are about anything other than their shimmering surfaces,’ he writes, ‘they are about the process of their own making. They are about going into the ecstatically specific world and creating a connection between the ephemeral (light, time) and the physical (eyeballs, film).’

Each book contains five randomised replica vernacular photographs loosely inserted within the pages.

A Pound of Pictures . Alec Soth

Coincides with solo exhibitions at Sean Kelly Gallery, New York (opening 13 January), Weinstein Hammons Gallery, Minneapolis (28 January), and Fraenkel Gallery, San Francisco (3 February).
 

Embossed linen hardcover with front and back tip-in
Three different papers, including a marbled Japanese stock and five randomised replica vernacular photographs
25.3 x 31 cm, 156 pages

ISBN 978-1-913620-11-0
January 2022

A Pound of Pictures is a stream-of-consciousness celebration of the photographic medium, bringing together an entirely new collection of work by Alec Soth made between 2018 and 2021. Depicting a sprawling array of subjects — from Buddhist statues and birdwatchers to sun-seekers and busts of Abe Lincoln — this book reflects on the photographic desire to pin down and crystallise experience, especially as it is represented and recollected by printed images. Throughout this eclectic sequence are the recurring presences of iconography, of souvenirs and mementos, and of the image-makers that surround us day to day. Forming a winding, ruminative road trip, Soth’s photographs are followed by his own notes and reflections in an extended afterword. ‘If the pictures in this book are about anything other than their shimmering surfaces,’ he writes, ‘they are about the process of their own making. They are about going into the ecstatically specific world and creating a connection between the ephemeral (light, time) and the physical (eyeballs, film).’

Each book contains five randomised replica vernacular photographs loosely inserted within the pages.

A Pound of Pictures . Alec Soth

Coincides with solo exhibitions at Sean Kelly Gallery, New York (opening 13 January), Weinstein Hammons Gallery, Minneapolis (28 January), and Fraenkel Gallery, San Francisco (3 February).
 

Embossed linen hardcover with front and back tip-in
Three different papers, including a marbled Japanese stock and five randomised replica vernacular photographs
25.3 x 31 cm, 156 pages

ISBN 978-1-913620-11-0
January 2022