Nadine Barth - Böcker

A bold and dynamic survey of contemporary street photography from across Africa, featuring leading image makers shaping a vibrant and exciting genre. Energetic, colourful, experimental: street photography across Africa has a well-established and complex history, and its own unique dynamic. From classic compositions of architecture, people and movement, to street-style portraits and photographs of youth culture, music and dance – the street becomes a stage. It’s about identity, personality and storytelling: friends skateboarding, a chance encounter, the hustle and bustle of megacities. Selected and introduced by acclaimed curators of photography, Street Photography Africa presents the work of over thirty of the continent’s most exciting practitioners, interleaved with discussions of the locations, themes and communities that underpin Africa’s contemporary photography scene.

A city lives through the people who reside in it, work there, and party there. The well-known photographer Kristian Schuller and his wife Peggy have lived in Paris and New York for the past decade. In Berlin he went off on an expedition to capture life in this city. Schuller is on the lookout for the characters who inhabit Berlin’s nightlife—a night-life that stands for Berlin worldwide, one influenced by artists, actors, musicians, and all of the city’s wonderful eccentrics. The result is an album of portraits that draws its own map of the pulsating capital. Whether in modest black-and-white or exploding color, each portrait has its own individual expression, personal touch, and peculiarities. Schuller’s very own picture of Berlin is created from one photo to the next. It is multifaceted and glittering—a Berlin that reinvents itself every night. As always, the artistic concept and photographs were created through Kristian and Peggy Schuller’s close collaboration.

Night time has always captivated those who see the world differently. When everything has come to rest, lights go out, phones have gone silent and doors have been locked, the nocturnal quiet is embraced to transcend the beauty of the world to its own. This fascination with the way things appear at night is deeply embedded in Daniel Freeman's photography, and finds its way into Midnight on Main together with strong influences of American popular culture. Away from the frantic pace of large sleepless cities, Daniel Freeman explores the quieter side of the American night as a nocturnal flâneur, portraying the charm of small towns across the United States and of a lessershown America. Complemented by stars and moonlight, he follows what is still left of the American Dream and traces the special kind of American culture, that since its invention has not failed to amaze. Midnight on Main documents the silent grace and illuminated beauty amplified through the prolonged and peaceful interludes of calm that stretch between dusk and dawn. Urban landscape at its best.Daniel Freeman (1984) lives in Buckinghamshire, England and has specialized in night photography for over a decade. He was awarded a ‘Fellowship’ by the British Institute of Professional Photography, and ‘Qualified European Photographer’ by the Federation of European Professional Photographers for his nocturnal image capture. He currently lectures in Photography and holds night photography seminars and workshops on behalf of photographic institutes.

A journey into the mystical Berlin night

What happens when street photography, conceptual art, and documentation are combined? The result is a unique panorama of images, whose versatility allows it to capture the sometimes abysmal, sometimes dazzling multiple facets of Bangkok. The photographer Peter Nitsch has captured the streets, people, and life in the Thai capital with his sensitive feel for the right moment and the special detail. This illustrated book turns readers into companions on his visual tour of discovery. Nitsch’s camera makes us see the city’s rhythm as a tango, which owes its idiosyncratic movement to the interaction of different cultures. A comparison that not only rhymes with “mango” (Bangkok’s nickname) but also translates the sweet and sour taste of the fruit into visual intoxication.

A close look transforms even the most ordinary things into fascinating objects full of idiosyncracies and magic. With charming tongue-in-cheek, the photographer Pascale Weber shows this through a very special object: the cat tree. Photographed as a still life against a colored background, we see the multifaceted and sometimes frivolous architectural capers of this extraordinary type of structure. Weber depicts them with their four-legged owners proudly presenting their homes. A particularly subtle humor characterizes these aesthetic studio images. Readers may suddenly wonder how this unique variety of forms could have been overlooked until now. And everyone may smile and ask themselves where they themselves would prefer to live.Languages: German and English

Abu Dhabi, Doha, Dubai, Kuwait City, Manama, and Riyadh—as metropolises of the Arabian Peninsula, all of these cities are connected by more than just geography. They also stand for a booming economy and rapid urban development with avant-garde architecture set amid breathtaking landscapes. And last, but not least, these cities boast a bustling everyday life defined by immigrants from all over the world. Traditions meets western modernity. What is home to one person is a stopover for another. Busy working life collides with a partying mentality. As gigantic places of transit, these metropolises represent transience, but also opportunity and dazzling encounters. Michele Nastasi has captured them all with a distinctive sense of presence, shaping an engaging journey through the cultural diversity and pulsating life of these cities.

The photo book Like Birds by photographer Sven Jacobsen takes us back to a carefree time of youthful self-awareness, to a summer full of adventure. In their immediacy, a timeless dimension develops in his photographs of youngsters experimenting; exuberantly jumping into the water; clambering around on fences, poles, and dunes; being silly; kissing; skateboarding; or simply lying in the tall grass. In this way, the lakes, dunes, or apartments depicted become places in a collective memory. The spherical landscapes captured in this way—the snapshots of free youth with its beauty, its chaos, its silence, and its loudness—quickly develop a narrative pull. What looks like a light-hearted summer snapshot on the surface may suddenly touch deeper layers of the subconscious.

Not only do we live in a period of rapid, exciting change, but we are also in the midst of the Anthropocene age. The environment and climate are changing in the wake of human-driven turbo-capitalism. Benedikt Partenheimer’s works make it possible to imagine—sensorily as well as contextually—the close connection and increasing imbalance between humans and the earth. Photographs of fascinating, impressive elegance reveal processes of ecological and cultural transformation. What makes these pictures so irresistible is the human influence factor: the painterly mist of air pollution floating above urban panoramas, the ambivalence of mountain reflections in melted glacier water. The price of beauty is inscribed into each image. It makes Partenheimer’s work aesthetically intriguing—but above all, existentially important and politically controversial.

When the talk is about photographing celebrities, most inevitably think about the person in front of the camera. Actually, though, the one behind it is of much greater importance. Because it’s the photographer who sets the stage, chooses the lighting, and selects the lens. The photographer’s work turns the person in the picture into an icon, or the photos into the witnesses of a personality. Today, hardly anyone makes this kind of art as imaginatively as the Leica-wielding photographer Manfred Baumann does. Instead of guiding the stars through the same setting over and over, he goes to them. Long before he presses the shutter release, he develops refined concepts for the pictures that will congenially express the individuality of the other person. Caught on film, the faces also always tell a story. It can be read in the eyes, features, and stances in which readers might be all too happy to lose themselves.

The Day May Break, photographed in Zimbabwe and Kenya in late 2020, is the first part of a global series portraying people and animals that have been impacted by environmental degradation and destruction. The people in the photos were all affected by climate change, displaced by cyclones and years-long droughts. Photographed at five sanctuaries, the animals were rescues that can never be re-wilded. As a result, it was safe for human strangers to be close to them, photographed so close to them, within the same frame. The fog on location is the unifying visual, as we increasingly find ourselves in a kind of limbo, a once-recognizable world now fading from view. However, in spite of their loss, these people and animals are the survivors. And therein lies possibility and hope.

Ruth Orkin is a legend of street photography – her atmospheric pictures taken in cities such as Florence, New York and London still shape the image of these metropolises today. But Orkin’s specialty not only encompassed the urban but also the personal. This is evident in her unique eye that enabled her street scenes to consistently offer penetrating insights into the time and personality of her subjects. And it likewise shows in her fantastic portraits of celebrities such as Albert Einstein, Woody Allen, and Lauren Bacall. These inimitable images seemingly combine snapshot and pose to present the star in his or her role and at the same time as an autonomous individual. Published on the occasion of the photographer’s 100th birthday, this illustrated book celebrates Orkin’s life and work with an equally extensive and fascinating overview of this exceptional artist’s oeuvre.

Highways are more than mere traffic routes – they are symbols of speed and mobility; in 1930s Germany, they served propaganda purposes. Today they are central infrastructures. In this volume, photographer Michael Tewes devotes himself to the roads that have relentlessly carved paths across our country and through its nature, as well as to their special architectures. Otherwise more of an entertaining staging post for people on their way to a destination, Tewes brings the highway into our conscious perception and shows it as an architectural building form in its own right. This monograph is the result of a six-year project and is published in parallel with the exhibition at the Deutsches Museum in Munich.

The series Mi Sangre by Roj Rodriguez started as a photo documentation of a personal journey to retrace his Mexican heritage and has evolved into a fine art project aimed at highlighting Mexican culture on both sides of the US/Mexico border. It documents everyday aspects of Mexican life, the culture and popular iconography, both as they exist in México and as reimagined by Mexican Americans in the US. With each of the subjects portrayed, Roj Rodriguez engaged in sometimes casual, sometimes insightful conversations. Mi Sangre includes proud and elegant charros, beautiful and skilled escaramuzas, joyful and coy children, wise and innocent elders, vibrant and talented mariachi musicians, loving and welcoming families, and even fine art re-interpretations of Loteria iconography.

Porodina’s early years were impacted by the brutalist buildings in Moscow and her mother who introduced art to Porodina’s mind. Stored in her subconscious, art is what became the extension and expression of "her self", implying that every single one of her photographs is a self-portrait. Art became—and still is—an inevitable, and inseparable, part of her. Porodina’s academic upbringing in post-Soviet Russia and her interest in emotional behavior led her to study clinical psychology.This background and her striving towards greater understanding of herself, her environment and others, informed her move to photography. It became a frame by which she is not limited—photography is just another medium to her that allows to stimulate the mind by showing, rather than by speaking, since the subconscious is not verbal either.

Inspired by dioramas of wild flora and fauna found in natural history museums, Jim Naughten’s digital reimaginations of a familiar yet alien world, explore the idea of wildlife becoming a lost fantasy. From orangutans swinging through psychedelic forests, to deer roaming pastel-hued canyons—Naughten’s depictions of nature in an artificial color palette convey a distinct sense of dislocation and growing estrangement. His fantastical tableaus question our rose tinted image of the natural world that is largely fictional. In fact we are entering the Eremozoic—a term coined by biologist and writer E. O. Wilson to describe the current era of mass extinction triggered by human activity. Also referred to as The Age of Loneliness, the term alludes to the isolation that will follow the destruction of our deeply rooted relationships with other species.

Salt’s ionic lattices are one of the central elements of organic life. But even though the extraction of sea salt is one of the oldest forms of human landscaping, we rarely ask where salt comes from and how it is produced. Sea salt production sites are found all over the world, usually located around shallow shorelines. Tom Hegen has explored these magical landscapes from the air and obtained spectacular images in the process. This gorgeously illustrated book shows how the landscape has been shaped by salt mining and how the mining process has created structures that take on an almost painterly, abstract quality in Hegen's photographs. Salt Works is a study of color and geometry, an ode to beauty of the everyday.

A Candid Portrait of the 1990s New Wave of Queer Culture 'I carried my camera everywhere at the time. Photography was a casual, spontaneous, integrated part of my communication with somebody – it was built into the fabric of my life.' - Chloe Sherman, The Guardian 'For the queer community pictured in Chloe Sherman’s new photo book, Renegades, self-presentation is a kind of sacred tongue.' - The New Yorker In the 1990s, queer youth, outcasts and artists, flocked to San Francisco to find one another and to experiment with art, self-expression, style, and gender. Rent was affordable, paving the way for queer bars, clubs, tattoo shops, galleries, cafes, bookstores, and women-owned businesses to emerge. A new wave of feminism embraced gender bending, and butch/femme culture flourished. The Mission District was the center of this queer cultural renaissance, and the feeling of community was palpable. Chloe Sherman was both a member of this community and an ardent visual chronicler. Her documentary photographic work on 35mm film stems from a commitment to capturing the vibrancy, tenderness, individuality, resilience, and joy within this subculture that was derided by mainstream society. Distilling the spirit of the time, her debut monograph is a candid portrait of a vibrant era that connects current and future generations to the pulse of San Francisco at a pivotal chapter in queer history.

The beauty and tenderness of withering and decay In this gorgeous book, Brigitte Lustenberger explores the passing of time, memory and the fragility of life. She transforms flowers dried on glass used for photographic slides into delicate photographs. Celebrating the beauty of decay, Lustenberger leads us into a fascinating world of withered flowers. Her images reveal the incredible details of nature’s ingenious constructions. The artist manages to combine both the fleetingness of a drawing made with light and the preservation of a photograph. Four essays by renowned curators provide insight into the artist’s process-oriented working method, the interweaving of analogue and digital technology in her practice, and contextualize An Apparition of Memory within Western and Japanese photographic and art history.

As Time Passes and Details Fade, Photographs Turn into Memories “As time passes and details fade, the photographs that we choose to hold onto become our memories. As a result when an image is made, explicitly or subconsciously, decisions are being made about how things will be remembered.” These images are Australian photographer’s Mark Forbes Collected Memories. His debut monograph presents a cohesive blend of carefully composed scenes, from faded interiors and common, relatable spaces, to the romance of our environment being reclaimed by nature. Turning the pages there is a stirring sense of both subtle ordinary beauty and inherent personality sprinkled across each of the large plates. Forbes’ photographic preference, using medium format film, is slow and methodical–and this approach can be felt throughout the quiet pages.

Otherworldly Portraits in an Age of Rising Sea Levels SINK / RISE is the third chapter of The Day May Break, Nick Brandt’s ongoing global series portraying people and animals that have been impacted by environmental degradation and destruction. This third chapter focuses on South Pacific Islanders impacted by climate change and serves as a stark reminder of the looming reality many island nations face. The local people in these photos, photographed underwater in the ocean off the coast of the Fijian islands, symbolize the many people who stand to lose their homes, land and livelihoods in the coming decades as the water rises.The images—all shot in-camera underwater—are hauntingly beautiful. But beyond the immediate visual impact, Brandt’s work delves deeper, asking: how did we get here? What does the future hold for these communities? And how can we mitigate, if not reverse, the damage? Brandt’s emphatic portraits bridge the often abstract concept of climate change and are a reminder that behind every statistic about rising sea levels, there’s a tangible human story.

Capturing grace Her American Girl in Italy–the street scene with the whistling Italians–is an icon. Now sensational negatives and slides have surfaced from the archive that reveal a little-known side of Ruth Orkin: that of the sensitive, interested, witty chronicler of the women’s world of the 1940s and 1950s. Orkin thought up editorials like the tongue-in-cheek reportage Who works harder? comparing the lives of a career woman and a housewife. She documented the hustle and bustle in beauty salons and at cocktail parties, at dog shows and on Hollywood film sets. We meet Lauren Bacall, Jane Russell, Joan Taylor or Doris Day, but also waitresses, stewardesses and female soldiers, as wall as groups of female friends. What emerges is the image of women on the move, women who are beginning to cast off the conventions imposed on them, going their own way: self-confident, stylish, smart.

New York through the eyes of a designerArnell’s take on the world has had a significant impact on the history of design. As a branding expert, as a creative mind, as a source of ideas in the fields of fashion, beauty, lifestyle, and architecture. He has directed global campaigns, designed iconic products, and advised well-known personalities. Often his photographs not only provide the blueprint for entire marketing strategies, but also create their own trends, such as the Brooklyn Bridge , which became the signature image for the then newly founded DKNY label. Peter Arnell is a master of images and a designer of his environment, both aesthetically and conceptually. City Visions focuses on Peter Arnell’s urban photographs. Although most were taken in NYC, they are more about the idea of the city: light and shadow, about shapes and contrasts—a poetic-abstract visual flux of images that is a pleasure to the eye.

Fascinating interpretation of the topic "family"This book combines photography and literature in a unique project. Over a period of fifteen years, photographer Alexander von Reiswitz captured randomly selected people, who happened to be in the same place at the same time, as fictional families in staged family portraits. These encounters, photographed across various countries and cultures on four continents, inspired new fictional narratives. Renowned authors were invited to create stories based on the photographs, inventing imaginary familial relationships and destinies for the portrayed individuals. At the heart of the project is the role of coincidence, which determines so much, after all—not least what we call the right moment, the instant that in photography produces remarkable snapshots, and in life brings people together or causes them to just miss each other.