Stockmans NV – förlag

What Denis Rouvre admires about Sâdhus is the way they are in the world, the way they respond to the world, and the way they carry the burden of parallel paths. In non-identity toward extinction, they resist the necessity of their birth. They are born to die, to no longer exist. Every day, individuals defy their common destiny. Among the people whose portraits are exhibited by photographers, we are referring to those who, by their own will and courage, place themselves among the gods.

Paul Ibou designed during his career more than 350 logos & symbols and is one of the important pioneers in modern graphic design. Next to his design activities he published numerous books on symbols and logo's. In 1991 he built the foundations of the book Letters As Symbols: the concept, the cover and the basic layout. The book was never released and remained untouched for decades until young graphic designer Christophe De Pelsemaker and Paul Ibou established a collaboration in 2017. Paul Ibou acquired an enormous amount of logos through submission forms that were sent to him by the leading logo and brand identity designers of that time like Saul Bass, Burton Kramer, Anton Stankowski, Yasaburo Kuwayama, Ken Cato, Wim Crouwel and many more. Letters As Symbols, contains logos from these submissions and was completed with contemporary work. Each logo is based on a letter of the Latin alphabet (A-Z) and forms an excellent source of inspiration for designers, artists, agencies, teachers, typographers, students, and many others.

This publication appears on the occasion of Luc Tuymans' retrospective exhibition in Hungary. With innumerable analyses by art historians, we thought the most fitting and exciting accompaniment to this display would be a collection of writers' reflections on Tuymans' work. Since one of the things to make this retrospective display special is its being the artist's debut in Central-Europe, Hungary and Poland, we made a point of inviting authors from the region to comment on his art. We gave complete liberty to our authors to decide what to reflect on: a picture, Tuymans' activity as a painter, or some other aspect of his personality.

Baracoa, cradle of Cuban cocoa, is a necessary book. After all, cocoa is an indigenous product whose importance is not yet sufficiently emphasised. The book explores the characteristics that distinguish Baracoa as the Cuban and perhaps even Latin American and Caribbean city where cocoa has left its strongest traces and where, compared to other producing countries, long-gone traditions have been preserved. Baracoa, capital of Cuban cocoa, is a complex and rich cultural space where a centuries-old agricultural activity has specific cultural characteristics that determine the identity of that place. Baracoa, cradle of Cuban cocoa is made in collaboration with chocolatiers Pierre Marcolini and Jitsk Heyninck, Cuban visual artist Maria Cienfuegos and Chocolate World.Text in English and Spanish.

Scent in Context is a unique document that witnesses the olfactory artist Peter de Cupere’s research, the origins and context of his work and practice, and that offers a view and presentation of more than 500 artworks. 7 authors, 472 pages, more than 1500 illustrations and images, 22 images with 11 different scratch and sniff hidden smells, all make this 3kg book a complete guide to discover the world of olfactory art. The publication will surprise and interact with the reader with soft and beautiful smells but in contrast might also shock while presenting intense or mind-teasing smells. Refine your nostrils when reading this book.By exploiting the subjective, associative impact of smells, in combination with visual images, Peter de Cupere generates a kind of meta-sensory experience that goes beyond purely seeing or smelling. Plastic artist De Cupere paints with scents, produces olfactory objects, soap paintings and sculptures, creates video and live performances, makes three-dimensional drawings and builds poetic smell installations.Text in English and Dutch.

Antwerp-based and internationally lauded hairdresser Pascal van Loenhout is back with a second monograph: UN/CUT. For this 185-plus-pager brimming with arresting images, Pascal van Loenhout created dozens of lobs, bobs, bangs and blunt cuts, leaving it all out there for everyone to see and draw inspiration from. Photographed by acclaimed fashion and music photographer Charlie De Keersmaecker, UN/CUT packs a punch as it seamlessly combines a distinctly recalcitrant mood with timeless but off-kilter beauty. Though capturing a specific moment in time, it’s set to continue to enthrall both hair aficionados as well as anyone with a penchant for art, fashion, minimalism or beauty in general for a long time to come. The book design as done by internationally revered graphic designer Paul Boudens. UN/CUT begins with an uncensored version of Pascal’s life story.

Sergio De Beukelaer has been working on a self-confident and uncompromising oeuvre of paintings for over 20 years. The work of Sergio De Beukelaer appears simple and colourful but unites all kinds of apparent contradictions. Although his painting looks sleek, formal, geometric and abstract, it always starts out from a strong desire for reality. It is not the reality itself that interests him. He is concerned with a translation thereof. Through visual thinking and acting, he always achieves a certain form of abstraction within the formal framework of painting. Seemingly effortlessly, his art navigates between surface and space, text and image, intellectual seriousness and playful irony, painting and sculpture. Via the original and inimitable concept of the fat canvas, a three-dimensional painting, the artist breaks down the boundaries of classical painting. His paintings appropriate the space and generate a powerful visual impact on their environment. (cat.) is a bold and beautiful monograph of paintings and installations that look simple but combines a variety of paradoxes.Text in English and Dutch.

Introducing Karel Fonteyne, one of Belgium’s foremost contemporary and fashion photographers. Since 1968 the artist has created an extensive oeuvre that has its place in the history of photography. His timeless visual storytelling relates to nature, darkness and loneliness, the inner world, and esotericism, while touching uncovered dimensions. For more than 15 years Fonteyne was active as a fashion photographer, breaking boundaries by introducing his narrative approach as a contemporary artist in the traditional fashion world. He had early collaborations with Martin Margiela, Dries Van Noten, Walter Van Beirendonck and Dirk Bikkembergs, and internationally he collaborated with Vogue, Interview, Bazaar, Marie-Claire and Brutus Magazine in Japan.Text in English and French.

"Sarajevo to Paris, fashion or reportage, deciding on the title of a book is mind-boggling. I call myself a documentary photographer that accidentally ended up doing fashion. The end of the 80s was an interesting and intense time in world history, and a particularly creative time in the world of fashion. As a young female photographer I was interested in both worlds. Thirty years later, when looking back, those two worlds — documentary and fashion — still define my work. Both are equally represented in my archives. This book, of my fashion work, is the first to be published. I called it Sarajevo to Paris because sometimes I would travel directly from one to the other. These two cities had a big impact on my life.”Sarajevo to Paris by Marleen Daniëls captures the set before the fashion show. This robust encyclopaedia is an A-Z of designers preparing for the big moment. Over the course of 30 years she photographed backstage in Paris, London, New York and Milan.

With Borderline, the Belgian photographer Paul D’Haese explores the coastal strip from Bray-Dunes to Le Havre. His photographs of the chaotic built-up landscape with its blind walls, parapets and fences ironically depict this coastline as a new “Atlantic wall”. In this, they form a masterful visual fable about the desert that can become a country that closes itself off. The images question the forms of a heterogeneous building, the sediment of human activity. In particular it offers a beautiful metaphor for an approach that invites in-depth reading rather than surface contemplation. The project obtained ‘Le Prix de la Ministre de la Culture’ - May 2021 - Musée de la Photographie, Charleroi.Text in English and French.

This book is not about Iran. This book is a photographic perception of Iran. A book about Iran would imply the conveyance of ideas and notions about it. Yet within these pages, you will find nothing of the historic, linguistic, political, cultural, or any of the broader context necessary to obtain substantial and deeper insight into a place as rich, as diverse, and as old as Iran. There are many different perceptions of Iran and, depending upon the reader of this book, the photographic representations of people and places in the following three chapters can be interpreted as adhering to any one of these. Yet unless you have spent time in Iran yourself you have only ever been exposed to others’ perceptions of it. These generally offer little understanding of what Iran is, as a culture in its own right, because they tend to narrow it down into single defining elements through a distinct visual language of symbols. Text in English and Farsi.