Posts Tagged ‘photography’
The End of the World
“A child without mother or father, with no brothers or sisters, who belonged to no one and had no home anywhere, came to the idea of running off, all the way until the end of the world.” Robert Walser, from ‘The End of the World’
My “Robert Walser book” (as some of you may have come to know it) has finally been finished and copies are now ready to be shipped. Both conceptually and practically it was a book journey full of detours and stops and restarts. Starting with an observation at the site of Robert Walser’s grave, after retracing his last walk – or perhaps already with a Robert Walser storybook I received as a child – it did take a while to get to the end of the world (not to worry: things are simpler there).
The End of the World is an artist book in literary format about Robert Walser’s final walks and silences. The book transports the reader to the last 23 years of Walser’s life, which were spent at a psychiatric clinic in Herisau, Switzerland. From his arrival there in 1933 to his death in the snow on Christmas Day 1956, Walser ceased writing. On Sundays he would take long walks, a contrast to the weekdays filled with sorting tin foil at the institution’s workshop and making crossword puzzles in the common room.
The book draws on excerpts from Walser’s asylum file and on photographs that I took at the graveyard in Herisau where Walser is buried. The photographs show scenes depicted on the gravestones surrounding Walser’s grave. The dreamy landscapes and paths encountered there seemed like a continuance of Robert Walser’s walk to me. The layout of the book mirrors the repetitive nature of Walser’s days, weeks, years at the clinic – and blank space is treated as a meaningful element.
The book concludes with an afterword, overview of sources and biographical sketch.
The initial research was made possible by a residency at the Jan Michalski Foundation, in Montricher, Switzerland. The book production was made possible in part by grants from the Jaap Harten Fund and from the Mondriaan Fund, both in Amsterdam.
The book is self-published in an edition of 350 copies. It is printed in duotone offset and has a cold-glue binding. Printing and binding were done at Wilco Art Books in The Netherlands. 208 pages, size 11,5 x 18 cm, 23 photographs. ISBN: 9789080788435.
Priced at € 37,50. Shipping is € 5,- in The Netherlands, € 8,50 elsewhere. Order here or by contacting me, also of course with your questions and comments.
Further info on this page.
Exhibition at Tartu Art Museum
While I’m traveling through my garden and through books, sitting with birds looking at a glorious sky of fewer airplanes, my work somehow travels out, which at the moment feels quite miraculous. I hope you who read this are also doing well. This is a small update concerning the exhibition ‘Silver Girls. Retouched History of Photography’, in which my print series and artist book The Library will be on view. Curators Šelda Puķīte and Indrek Grigor have managed to put this exhibition about lost, damaged, neglected photographs/visual heritage on with only the slightest of delays. The focus is on a selection of works by ten early women photographers from Estonia and Latvia. These vernacular works are contrasted with the works of three contemporary European artists who contemplate the lost and the neglected in our visual history. More information about the show can be found here.
Works by early women photographers from Latvia and Estonia: Antonija Heniņa, Minna Kaktiņa, Lūcija Alutis-Kreicberga, Emīlija Mergupe, Marta Pļaviņa, Olga Dietze, Helene Fendt, Anna Kukk, Hilja Riet, Lydia Tarem.
Contemporary works by: Nanna Debois Buhl, Sami van Ingen, Elisabeth Tonnard.
Tartu Art Museum
Raekoja plats 18,
Tartu, 51004
Estonia
The exhibition runs from June 12 to September 27.
Unknown Photographer. A group of women from the Women Member’s Committee of the Latvian Photographic Society during the observation of the solar eclipse, 1914. From the collection of the Latvian Museum of Photography.
The Plan
I’m happy to announce my new book titled The Plan.
My interest in white space in texts and fascination for printed materials and propaganda books from East Germany brought me to discover the Plan. The Plan is the chameleonic directive to every situation of societal life – whether it is playing sports, writing a book, or practicing for war. Always think of the Plan. Better yet: always have it in your hand.
The Plan consists of a book and a folder, together forming one object. The book contains 26 pictures reproduced from miniature books published in the German Democratic Republic during the 1980s. Each book is accompanied by an original, pre-owned GDR folder, each different and individually obtained from households in the former state. The folder comes with a foldout sheet of the Plan.
Edition of 150 copies, numbered.
Digital print, full color paperback, A5 size, 48 pages. Plus original GDR folder, A4 size, with a folded and stamped A2 sheet.
See more images of the book here.
Priced at € 45,- plus shipping. Order through the webshop or by email. The book will also be available at my table at the upcoming NY Art Book Fair.
If you really want to understand what the GDR was about, you need to look at The Plan.
Joachim Schmid
Exhibition in Bologna
Two of my works will be on view in the exhibition Il Libro d’Artista Come Mappa, curated by Jan van der Donk at Spazio Labo in Bologna.
The exhibition draws attention to the way artists use and challenge photography as a medium, with a focus on how ‘the grid’ was used as a favorite form of representation to create ‘inventories’, ‘collections’, ‘albums’, and ‘atlases’. Artists include John Baldessari, Bernhard and Hilla Becher, Christian Boltanski, Marcel Broodthaers, Jan Dibbets, Sol LeWitt, Sigmar Polke, Gerhard Richter, Michael Snow, Larry Sultan + Mike Mandel, and Franco Vaccari. My works Interior Monologue and The Kingdom will be on view.
The show runs from January 23 to February 5. For more information click here.
Exhibition at the Nederlands Fotomuseum
Two of my works will be on view at the Nederlands Fotomuseum in the exhibition Quickscan NL #2 which traces recent developments in Dutch photography.
The Library consists of a series of eight pigment ink prints that zoom in on books in reproductions of paintings that were dramatically lost in the final days of WW2. Song of Myself is a series of 56 prints anachronistically showing Facebook updates by poets from the American Renaissance.
The exhibition is curated by Frits Gierstberg and showcases works by Laurence Aëgerter, Gwenneth Boelens, Jan Dirk van der Burg, Anne Geene, Jan Hoek, Stephan Keppel, Kasia Klimpel, Sjoerd Knibbeler, Ola Lanko, Willem Popelier, Jannemarein Renout, Jan Rosseel, Collectief Salvo, Marleen Sleeuwits, Batia Suter, Elisabeth Tonnard and Mariken Wessels.
Quickscan NL #2 runs from January 24 to May 8. The opening is on January 23, from 5-7 PM.
Nederlands Fotomuseum
Wilhelminakade 332
3072 AR Rotterdam
Exhibition ‘The Library’ in Groningen
On January 16 my exhibition ‘The Library’ opens at Galerie Block C in Groningen. The opening is at 4 PM and the show will run until February 27.
The Library consists of a series of eight archival pigment ink prints and a small bookwork in an edition of 150 copies.
The images in it are tiny selections from pictures in a catalogue documenting the losses of the Gemäldegalerie at the Kaiser Friedrich Museum, the present-day Bode Museum, in Berlin during and after World War II. The Gemäldegalerie lost over four hundred paintings, the sculpture collection at the museum lost about a third of its holdings. Photographic documentation and plaster casts remain as ghostly echoes of what was once there. The majority of losses occurred in the days just before and after the end of the war in May 1945 when two devastating fires in the Friedrichshain flak tower destroyed most of the major works of art that had been stored there for safekeeping. The cause of the fires was never explained and has become the subject of legend. Trapped in there were the paintings these images refer to. Out of the smoke we think up this library of unknown books.
In the exhibition at Galerie Block C there will also be a selection of my artist’s books that appropriate literary works on view, as well as the first trials of a new project titled The Death of the Poet.
In this Dark Wood on the Photocaptionist
In this Dark Wood is featured on the Photocaptionist blog. Photobook experts were asked to indicate a favorite book that combines images and texts. Curator Hester Keijser’s post can be read here.
Fotografie Magazine
Fotografie Magazine, 6, November/December 2014, contains an interview about my work by Ton van Vroonhoven as well as a 6 page portfolio. The magazine is in Dutch. If you should come across it, note that the layout of the images on page 21, photos from my book Two of Us, is not correct. There shouldn’t be any black around the images.
Wiederholungszwang
My new limited edition bookwork Wiederholungszwang will be launched later this week at Offprint Paris. Wiederholungszwang, or repetition compulsion, is a term used for repetitive behavior in which a person repeats certain traumatic events. The book is made up out of a single image, a found lantern slide, that becomes a scene of repetition when it is fragmented, folded, repeated and mirrored.
The edition is limited to 28 numbered copies that are inkjet printed in b&w, and handbound in a stab binding with folds on the foredge.
Read more here. See some images here.
The book will be launched at Offprint Paris, November 14-16 (École des Beaux-Arts, 14 Rue Bonaparte, Paris). You’ll find me and my books at the table I’m sharing with Joachim Schmid.
The Photographer’s Playbook
The Photographer’s Playbook came out, published by Aperture. It is a very enjoyable and well executed collection of photography assignments, ideas, projects and anecdotes from a huge variety of artists, edited by Jason Fulford and Gregory Halpern. I contributed a conceptual piece cloaked as an assignment. It is titled ‘The Death of the Photographer’.
Elisabeth Tonnard 