01/11/2012

O Perfume do Boi | André Príncipe

O Perfume do Boi
André Príncipe
48 pages | color
23.5 x 34 cm
Softcover
Pierre von Kleist, 2012

O Perfume do Boi (translated: “the perfume of the bull”) was shot during a three-month anticlockwise journey around Portugal’s borders.

Outside cities, out in the fields and in the woods, in small town circuses, with the lunatics and the acrobats. The very strong narrative feeling comes with an equally strong suspicion that there might be no story. The photos of the animals and people combined with the natural elements, cause a sense of eminent danger and trouble. There is an aura of prophecy and myth, and in the end we are left with the echo of a cry in the night.

“The Japanese five elements are, in ascending order of power – Earth, Water, Fire, Wind, and Void”, says the author.

The first two books of this series are sold out: MASTER AND EVERYONE and I THOUGHT YOU KNEW WHERE ALL OF THE ELEPHANTS LIE DOWN. This trilogy of titles were designed like classical music scores.

http://www.pierrevonkleist.com/product/o-perfume-do-boi-de-andr%C3%A9-pr%C3%ADncipe

01/11/2012

Deutschland | Gerry Johansson

Deutschland
Gerry Johansson
352 pages | 176 duotone plates
17 cm x 24 cm
Cloth cover with two tipped-in prints
MACK, 2012

Following the phenomenal success of Gerry Johansson’s 2011 publication Pontiac, we are pleased to publish the long-awaited Deutschland which completes an eighteen-year series of books for which Johansson travelled through America, Sweden, Germany and Mongolia.

Deutschland is a visual encyclopedia, a catalogue of the rural and urban landscapes of Germany arranged in alphabetical order. In carefully structured greyscale images, Johansson sensitively explores German history through its landscape, picking out the industrial scenes, industrial buildings, residential roads and shop fronts. His quiet photographs are carefully constructed, grid patterns recur constantly and each frame is packed with information.

http://www.mackbooks.co.uk/books/43-Deutschland.html

01/11/2012

Another Language | Mårten Lange

Another Language
Mårten Lange
96 pages | 59 tritone plates
14 cm x 21 cm
Embossed hardcover
MACK, 2012

“A physical delineation of nature terminates at the point where the sphere of intellect begins, and a new world of mind is opened to our view. It marks the limit, but does not pass it.”
Alexander von Humboldt (1845)

The aesthetics of science, nature and the materiality of things are recurring themes in Mårten Lange’s work and in Another Language, his first major publication, Lange delves even deeper with this fascination for the natural world.

Combining images of flora, fauna and natural phenomena in an intimate and beautifully crafted book, Lange teases out a subtle narrative – a meteor crashes, a landmass is visible and a distant planet occupies the final page – but the book is more akin to the workings of a scientist collecting specimens. Together the photographs create a cryptic and heterogeneous index of nature, with recurring shapes, patterns and texture, where the clarity and simplicity of the individual photographs contrasts with the enigmatic whole.

http://www.mackbooks.co.uk/books/41-Another-Language.html

01/11/2012

Let’s sit down before we go | Bertien van Manen

Let’s sit down before we go
Bertien van Manen
104 pages | 96 colour plates
23.8 cm x 20 cm
Colour printed linen hardcover
MACK, 2012

“I have to like the people I photograph. I need to feel an attraction, a fascination.”
Bertien van Manen

Buried deep in Bertien van Manen’s images is an intimacy between photographer and subject. The viewer trespasses on the private moments in the frame, catching a glare over breakfast, unheard words between friends, both party to the action and intruding on it.

Between 1991 and 2009 van Manen travelled across Asia and Eastern Europe with a small, analogue camera, learning the local language and engaging with the people who would become the subject of this collection. Let’s sit down before we go is a portrait of the places van Manen visited and the people she met, stayed with and became friends with during her travels across Russia, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Moldova, Siberia, Tatarstan and Uzbekistan. Across nearly two decades, with the exception of big cities, little about the scenery in van Manen’s photographs has changed. The relative sameness of Russia’s appearance binds the images together, leaving us no indication of the time lapse from one photograph to another.

http://www.mackbooks.co.uk/books/13-Let-s-sit-down-before-we-go.html

01/11/2012

Smell of Tiger Precedes Tiger | André Príncipe

Smell of Tiger Precedes Tiger
André Príncipe
220 pages | color, b&w
20 x 25 cm
Hardcover
Pierre von Kleist, 2012

‘Smell of tiger precedes tiger’ is an existentialist travelogue.

André Príncipe travelled from Lisbon to Tokyo by land and by sea, with a desire to escape, to go places far away. The initial feelings of uneasiness and alienation fade as empty bars and hotel rooms give place to windows of trains and the vastness of the desert, and return as we approach the Asian big cities. The strongly cinematic sequence was designed to be read from right to left as well as from left to right, expressing the circular aspect of the journey.

‘I was already far away, in a city, and wanted to go to the mountains. Asking around, I came up with a phone number. I told him where I wanted to go and where I came from, and in his very poor English, he managed to tell me that he’d never seen a Portuguese, even though his grandfather had been half-Portuguese. He also told me it would be okay to go with him. We were quiet most of the time, walking through the forests. “Eat, sleep now, stop,” he would say, and then he would smile. It was difficult for him to understand my question, but when he finally understood, he said, “Smell of tiger precedes tiger.” I was astounded at his sudden mastery of English. He said nothing more. For the next hours we walked in silence. Our footsteps echoing through the forest.’
André Príncipe, from the Lisbon/Tokyo notebooks

http://www.pierrevonkleist.com/product/smell-of-tiger-precedes-tiger-by-andr%C3%A9-pr%C3%ADncipe

01/11/2012

Vanilla Partner | Torbjørn Rødland

Vanilla Partner
Torbjørn Rødland
158 pages | 67 colour plates | 18 duotone plates
21.5 cm x 25.5 cm
Embossed hardcover
MACK, 2012

Torbjørn Rødland’s photography is direct but idiosyncratic, pushing at the boundaries of aesthetic and social norms. His fifth book, Vanilla Partner, continues in this vein, combining images of fetishized isolation in a layout that rejects the linear structure of thematic photography books.

Rødland’s practice navigates through the problematic and seemingly unchanging heart of popular photography. Accepting neither the humanist realism of most photographic portraiture nor the postmodern role-play, Vanilla Partner explores the cultural complexities and archaic foundation of contemporary image-making. Reconstructed scenes of ultrasoft BDSM read like twisted metaphors for photography’s ability to freeze or capture. The book title, dripping in innuendo, also poses a question about the ambiguity of the relationship between the artist and his medium. Is Rødland acknowledging the medium’s straight foundation or does he see himself dominated by it? Many of the images also have explicit political references, often linked to the 1980 US Presidential election.

http://www.mackbooks.co.uk/books/40-Vanilla-Partner.html

01/11/2012

1981 & 2011 | Paul Graham

1981 & 2011 (The 2012 Hasselblad Award)
Paul Graham
104 pages
20.5 cm x 25.5 cm
Embossed hardcover
MACK, 2012

Paul Graham, winner of the 2012 Hasselblad Foundation International Award in Photography, is a vital figure in contemporary photography, working for over thirty years and continually challenging different genres of photographic practice. His work has been widely embraced, with exhibitions at the Tate and the Museum of Modern Art, and published in more than 12 monographs. The Hasselblad Award is considered photography’s highest prize for lifetime achievement and the list of past winners is a roll call of photography’s greatest masters.

In honour of the 2012 award, the Hasselblad Centre in Gothenburg, Sweden is showing an exhibition, together with this book 1981 & 2011, which unites Graham’s first published work A1 – The Great North Road (1981) and his latest The Present (2011). Edited by Paul Graham in collaboration with Dragana Vujanovic and Louise Wolthers from The Hasselblad Foundation, the book links this thirty-year span, together with an essay written by David Campany, author, curator and artist.

http://www.mackbooks.co.uk/books/42-1981-2011.html

01/11/2012

Rien | André Cepeda

Rien
André Cepeda
56 pages | b&w
24 x 37 cm
Softcover
Pierre von Kleist, 2012

Dark alleys, blocks of cement, tired naked bodies, strings that lead to nowhere, abandoned tubes.
Rien, the new André Cepeda book, is an immersive experience. Page after page we are led into a void where all things seem to have lost their name, creating a restless and suspended time. More than looking at physical spaces, we feel as if in an endless present tense. There is Emptiness, but a desired one.

Cepeda makes the beautiful more white than black large format photographs look spontaneous and free.

A book about the process of photographing, about film.
A desire to touch and enlighten all things around us.

http://www.pierrevonkleist.com/product/rien-by-andr%C3%A9-cepeda

01/11/2012

I Fear Nothing | Patrícia Almeida & David-Alexandre Guéniot

I Fear Nothing
Patrícia Almeida & David-Alexandre Guéniot
24 pp | colour photocopy
19 x 26 cm
Ghost, 2012

‘I Fear Nothing‘ is a collection of photographs of posters from the demonstration held on October 15 2011, which led to the occupation of the Parliament staircase in Lisbon.

On October 15, the Spanish indignados movement called for a day of global protest. The movement had got its second wind in September, with the “Occupy Wall Street” mass demonstrations in New York. In Lisbon, the protest named “October 15, Democracy goes out!” began with a march across the city. But at 6.30 pm, the protesters invaded the staircase of the Parliament and used it as an amphitheatre to organize a general assembly, the speakers mounted atop a truck addressing the protesters and citizens sitting on the staircase, with the Parliament as their setting. A few hours later, as only a few protesters were still camping in front of the stairs meanwhile recaptured by the police, the empty streets were full of posters that had been held during the demonstration.

http://www.ghost.pt/crbst_4.html

01/10/2012

Le Luxe (Second edition) | Roe Ethridge

Le Luxe (Second edition)
Roe Ethridge
206 pages | 200 colour plates
25 cm x 28.5 cm
Embossed hardcover
MACK, 2012

American artist Roe Ethridge’s latest book takes its title from the French “C’est pas du luxe”, an ironic phrase which alludes to the superfluous nature of luxury whilst proclaiming how essential it is to existence. Such paradoxes are fluently woven through Ethridge’s oeuvre and Le Luxe encompasses his practice from the past decade, without ever slipping into the moribund gravitas of a retrospective.

Plumbing his diverse image inventories, from personal images and magazine commissions to an archive of online screen shots, the book continues his exploration of picture-making that disavows the potential for creating a finished work. Ethridge para-phrases Eggleston when he states that he is “at war with the finished” in an era of digital photography straining towards idealisation. The pristine conditions of photography are undermined in the book’s design and riff on Henri Matisse’s apposite aphorism “exactitude is not truth” (Matisse titled two of his paintings Le Luxe).

http://www.mackbooks.co.uk/books/38-Le-Luxe-2nd-Edition.html