David Campany – författare

A major reassessment of Walker Evans that shows him as a photographer both of his time and very much ahead of it. Walker Evans (1903–1975) is one of the great enduring figures of modern photography. His vivid images are inseparable from the history of the medium and the history of the USA. The subject matter was quintessentially American – small-town life, typical buildings, commercial signs and anonymous citizens – but Evans brought to them the curiosity and fascination of an outsider. His exacting eye defined an era while also questioning it. Pop artists and Conceptualists saw Evans as a pioneer and precursor, and his sensibility continues to inspire countless younger image makers. Walker Evans offers a broad overview of his work and its lasting influence on generations of artists. It brings together key photographs and projects spanning his entire career – from self-portraits of the 1920s to his Polaroid experiments in the 1970s – along with books and other publications that reflect his tireless capacity for observation. Together, the works reveal a creator who not only documented the world around him but also invited viewers to question the nature of photography and the perception of reality itself.

Offering a new perspective on Weegee’s oeuvre, Society of the Spectacle presents the photographer’s iconic images alongside lesser-known works. Weegee’s macabre tabloid photographs of murdered gangsters, bodies trapped in crashed cars, slums consumed by fire, and other poignant records of New York’s nocturnal low life in the 1930s and 40s are the stuff of legend. Lesser-known, however, is the work he created in his later years, when he satirized Hollywood, mocking its fleeting glory, jubilant crowds, and social scenes, and created celebrity portraits that he delighted in distorting using a palette of technical tricks. And herein lies the paradox of Weegee: how can two such wildly different bodies of work co-exist? Offering the first evaluation of the famed photographer’s career in its entirety, this book reconciles the two sides of Weegee by showing how the ‘spectacle’ was the unifying theme of his work. Over 130 images, some iconic, some more rarely seen, are accompanied by essays that explore the consistent themes throughout Weegee’s career, his documentary and photojournalism work, and his last great series taken on the set of Stanley Kubrick’s 1964 film Dr. Strangelove.

The first monograph of trailblazing photographer Anastasia Samoylova is a vital – and gently humorous – meditation on environmentalism, consumer culture and our disorientating times. Adaptation is the first career survey on Anastasia Samoylova, one of the most dynamic image makers to have emerged in recent years. Bringing together her six major bodies of work, it reveals the enormous range of artistic influences and ideas that inform her art, as well as the threads of connection that unite them. While each series explores different themes, they share a formal beauty, a masterly use of colour and an original approach to visual culture for which she is rightly celebrated. Russian born and now a native of Florida, Samoylova moves between observational photography and studio practice, often incorporating collage and painting. Her virtuoso compositions are layered meditations on an everyday life made precarious by rising sea levels, image overload, gentrification and corporate culture. This is a provocative vision of the 21st century, at once sublimely beautiful and incisive in its assessment of the challenges we face.

A major new monograph on the American photographer Louis Stettner (1922–2016), published to accompany the largest retrospective on his work to date. Brooklyn-born Louis Stettner (1922–2016) created thousands of images over the course of a career that spanned almost eighty years. Acquiring his first camera as a young teenager, he quickly made a name for himself at New York’s famous Photo League, where he formed friendships with Sid Grossman and Weegee. He served as a combat photographer in World War II, and the experience of fighting fascism left him with a lasting belief in the fundamental humanity of the common man. After the war, Stettner arrived in Paris in 1947, where he stayed for five years. During this time, he forged a lasting relationship with Brassaï, the city and its people. Stettner’s work defies categorization, containing elements of both the New York street photography aesthetic and the lyrical humanism of the French tradition. A lifelong Marxist, Stettner celebrated the working class and was inspired by his reading of Walt Whitman and the inner humanity that constantly drew him to the lives of ordinary men and women. For all its diversity, however, Stettner’s work is thematically consistent: he sought out beauty in common people and their everyday life. Accompanying the largest retrospective on Stettner’s work to date, this substantial monograph at last gives his work the recognition it deserves. Essays by David Campany, James Iffland, Karl Orend and Sally Martin Katz chart Stettner's work chronologically from his early days in New York and Paris, through to his later use of colour photography, to his final meditations on the landscape of Les Alpilles. Showcasing more than 150 photographs spanning his entire career, the book also includes previously unpublished images and some of his hitherto almost unknown colour work, as well as a selection of Stettner’s writings. Accompanies the travelling exhibition of the same name, which showed at MAPFRE Madrid from June to August 2023, and is at MAPFRE Barcelona from June to September 2024.

British Conceptual artist John Stezaker (b. 1949) is known for his distinctive, often deceptively simple, collages. He has been making art since the 1970s, but achieved prominence relatively recently.In 2011, he had a retrospective at the Whitechapel Gallery, London, and, in 2012, he won the Deutsche Börse Photography Foundation Prize, even though he does not take photographs.Stezaker says collage is about ‘stuff that has lost its immediate relationship with the world’ and involves ‘a yearning for a lost world’. A collector, he works from an archive of out-of-date images — mostly old film stills, vintage actor head shots, and antique postcards. These images come in standard sizes and are highly conventionalised — all variations on themes.Art critic David Campany says, Stezaker ‘is drawn to that very slim space between convention and idiosyncrasy.’In addition to collages, Lost World includes poignant found-object-sculptures: a selection of antique mannequin hands, offering a repertoire of gestures. There’s also a film, Crowd, presenting hundreds of film stills of crowd scenes, each for one frame only, in a bewildering blur.

The Swiss company Baloise has a reputation among art experts, but not just as an insurance and financial services company. With its programs that support art, its collaborations with museums, and the renowned Baloise Art Prize for young artists, which is awarded at Art Basel, the company has had a lasting effect on the development of contemporary art. Less well-known up to now is the fact that, parallel to the company’s activities, it has also built a first-class art collection, which dates back to the mid-twentieth century. Since turning to contemporary art in the 1990s, the company has collected the works of notable artists. With a focus on photography and works on paper from the 1960s onward, some of the artists represented in the collection are Miriam Cahn, Simon Denny, Katharina Fritsch, Bruce Nauman, and Jeff Wall. Baloise Art is the first publication to provide a broader audience with an overview of the collection. Informative texts by prestigious authors accompany the artworks.

Haas' most cherished and personal project- originally conceived as an audiovisual slideshow-is recreated here in stunning color that will delight his numerous fans as well as anyone interested in Kodachrome photography.Three decades after its completion, Haas' most personal and least-known project is now available for the first time in this exquisitely produced book. Presented in a clean and spare design, this volume features reproductions of superb quality that allow readers to appreciate his mastery of color, light, and composition, and his ability to capture the mystery of daily life.For this collection Haas drew on images made in all phases of his career from 1952 to 1984, and, despite the title, most of these photographs are not abstract but rather clear, focused, well-exposed images of recognizable surfaces from the observable world around him: crumbling paint, graphic road markings, fabric, liquids, detritus, decay, and torn posters. David Campany's eloquent introductory essay lays the groundwork for a deep appreciation of the slideshow which, in book form, can be savored and understood in an entirely new way.