vexations

vexations is a 3,360 page book of photographs that serves as the interpretation of the piece for piano of the same name, composed by erik satie in 1893. it features work by aurelien arbet, jeremie egry, marco barrera and nicholas poillot. see more here.

[all aurelien arbet, jeremie egry, marco barrera, nicholas poillot. vexations. 2009.]

myne søe-pedersen

work by myne søe-pedersen. see more here.

[all myne søe-pedersen. without title. 2000-1.]

wytske van keulen

book project by wytske van keulen. see more here.

[concept and photos by wytske van keulen with text by nickel van duijvenbonden and design by adriaan mellegers. we would come to doubt everything. and almost everyone would come to doubt. 2006-8.]

melanie bonajo this sunday at capricious space

capricious space celebrates the book launch of melanie bonajo's "i have a room with everything" this sunday featuring music, fruit punch, snacks, and sunset. may 10th from 4-7pm at 103 broadway in williamsburg, brooklyn and a pdf with full details is downloadable here. also you can read a previous i.h.p. interview with melanie about her work here and see even more of her stuff here.

[all melanie bonajo. from the book i have a room with everything.]

elisabeth tonnard

work by elisabeth tonnard. see more here.

[all elisabeth tonnard. top to bottom: where is god. oceanus. terra nullius.]

charles gute

artist charles gute has worked for many years as a freelance editor and proof-reader of art books. this detail from his life often informs his own practice including this project, entitled 'parasite: photographs of book displays at major exhibitions in which some of the books have my name in them.' see more of his work here.

[all charles gute. from the work-in-progress parasite. 2007-present.]

trace a face

trace a face is a collaboration between konst & teknik and jonathan puckey. 13 fellow artists and designers were asked to trace a face using the delaunay raster, a custom-written scriptographer image vectorization tool for adobe illustrator by puckey. the tool combines the intuitive and motion based character of a brush or a pencil with the distortive and manipulating characteristics of a filter. the resulting publication aims to encourage and discuss the development and usage of modern tools in contemporary graphic design practice. learn more and buy a copy of the book right here.

[all from the publication trace a face.]

louis porter

books online presents louis porter's 'wires at night.' flip through the entire book here.

cody trepte

cody trepte's 'photo album' project consists of 75 hand made books, each book consisting of a family snapshot translated into binary code with a written description of the photograph on the cover. seen above is "a dark snapshot of me and cami wearing ear muffs and staring directly at the camera on christmas morning. cami is at the left edge of the frame wearing a pink striped shirt. she is looking to the left of the camera. i am standing in the center of the frame, wearing a blue velvet shirt and staring directly at the camera." take a peek at more here.

[all cody trepte. photo album. 2005-7.]

J&L books variety show

if you're in nyc tomorrow night, tuesday 12/2, this is seriously not to be missed!

J&L books variety show
12/2 at 6:30pm
at aperture
547 w 27th street, 4th floor
(btwn 10th + 11th aves)

featuring performances by:

david reinfurt
amy o'neill
andrew lampert
harrell fletcher
corin hewitt
serge onnen
jason fulford
michael schmelling
leanne shapton
david la spina
dave hill
and others...

highlights to include kaleidoscopes, overhead projectors, and blind-folded dancing.
more info here.

archive • the secret museum of mankind

in 1935 there was a mysterious ethnographic book published with no author or credits, no copyright, no date, no page numbers, no index. at the time it was advertised as the "world's greatest collection of strange & secret photographs." today it lives online, scanned in its entirety, as 'the secret museum of mankind'. read about it and browse the photos here. thanks to martin for the link.

[all from the secret museum of mankind.]

archive is a weekly column by asha schechter that appears each wednesday on i heart photograph.

claudia angelmaier

work by claudia angelmaier. see more here.

[all claudia angelmaier. 2004. top to bottom: fichte. kopf eines rehbocks. akelei.]

alana celii

take a peek at the 'etc' section of alana celii's website. she's brilliantly digitized the remnants of her childhood. more here.

[all alana celii. top to bottom: sticker collection. 1992. diary. 1994-5. selected postcards 1990-9.]

coley brown

nicholas from gottlund verlag just sent over a copy of their latest book: jam jelly honey wild rice by photographer coley brown. take a peek at more about the book here.

[all coley brown. from the book jam jelly honey wild rice. 2008]

interview • katja mater

i heart photograph: this image is from your series 'burning with desire'. what is your process in making this body of work? where does the title come from?

katja mater: the series ‘burning with desire’ shows pictures of the complete content of books by shooting all the pages on only one negative. i ‘show’ the entire contents, and by doing so, erase them. the result is a summary, a book shaped blur. the books i used for this project are books that were recently important to me for my thinking about photography.

the title of the project comes from one of the books i used, a book by geoffrey batchen called burning with desire. batchen writes about very early experiments with photography, starting about 45 years before its invention was announced in 1839. he analyzes the emerging desire to photograph which preceded the actual invention. he examines the output of various very early experiments by the ‘first photographers’. he finds they were not, as many historians seem to have thought, devoted to capturing reality, but that their main interest was in deconstruction.

the title further comes from the act of ‘burning’ as used in the darkroom, leading to more image showing up by overexposure, one of my desires using the medium.

i.h.p.: you've said before that your subject matter is the ‘medium-specific characteristics of photography and its framework.’ what are those characteristics? how/why did they begin to interest you?

k.m.: i see the possibilities and impossibilities of the medium as the medium-specific characteristics of photography. its framework, lighting, history, the relationship between photography and its referent, three-dimensional space within the limitations of a flat surface, time that eludes a normal sense of time. conventions such as these and their inherent limitations intrigue me.

most intriguing are the border zones of the medium—i try to find a balance there. analogue photography has clear-cut rules, its standards are not subject to change. many people see photography as a medium with a highly focused function. to me it functions as a sort of grid in which i aim to trick the camera into recording unrealistic scenes. i try to capture phenomena and moments that one would think are impossible. thereby, creating extra space to view the medium and focus on photography more as a creating medium than a recording medium.

i.h.p.: in many ways your photographs work to make transparent what most photography aims to keep well concealed: its process. can you talk about this deconstructive impulse?

k.m.: my work is like an investigation, experimental, but unlike the methodological approach of scientists, i examine the subjects of my investigations with keen interest, almost in a playful way.

mostly, photography is considered to be a very factual medium, devoted to constructing and revealing matter, but it can disturb and deconstruct just as well. i emphasize the deconstructing and concealing qualities. i am interested in and see photography as essentially experimental. i take it apart to see what is inside, what makes it tick. i am intrigued by the technical context of the medium, in contrast to the ‘magic’ of the photographic process. i emphasize and at the same time escape it, break it with itself.

i am intrigued by phenomena such as light, time, and color, and how these aspects change when you photograph them in a certain manner. photographic registration is often compared to the perception of the human eye. by placing the photographic perception of the camera next to the perception of the human eye, i show the extreme differences in outcome. i turn the medium in on itself, and by doing so disturb its status of accuracy. i offer the viewers my look at photography and at the same time make them experience their own perception.

i.h.p.: many photographers make control over the way a subject is framed, lit, composed, etc. an important part of their practice. one thing i've always loved about your pictures is that they feel against this way of working. visual decisions seem to follow from content or subject matter more than rules about what makes a good photograph. how do decisions about what a photograph will look like play out for you?

k.m.: i feel that my subject matter and the visual decisions that i make about the appearance of an image need to be balanced, need to complete each other. i guess i am a purist in that sense. the construction of the images is almost self-reflective in the sense that the process is always present and apparent in the work in such a way that a viewer cannot look at the image without seeing a reflection of the process of its making. in the 'dancers' series, for example, the audio equipment that i used to play the music is visible in (almost) every frame, as a ‘production-still life’. i like that kind of thing and i think it helps to create images that go beyond the flat surface.

it makes little sense to further improve or perfect my technical skills, i don’t consider them very necessary for what i do. it would be more distracting to smoothen all asperity out of the images, making them look like they are in ‘dustless still-life heaven’. i want them to visualize the connections to time and space and sometimes even show the context of the studio.

since i have no formal training in photography i have been free to be inquisitive and to explore it from an informal angle without the limitations of conventions. i work in an investigating and experimental way, so i consider trial and error part of the job. a failed experiment might still become a frame, the subject of a discussion on the parameters of failure and success.

[photo: het fotografish genoegen by katja mater. see more of katja's work here.]

interview by laurel ptak

nina katchadourian

nina katchadourian's 'sorted books' project transforms book titles into something along the lines of visual minimalist poetry. as she explains "the project has taken place in many different places over the years, ranging form private homes to specialized public book collections. the process is the same in every case: culling through a collection of books, pulling particular titles, and eventually grouping the books into clusters so that the titles can be read in sequence, from top to bottom." see more here. and thanks to barry for the link.

[all nina katchadourian. from the series sorted books. top to bottom: akron stacks. 2001. bookpace. 2002. shark journal. 2001.]

marianne viero + laurenz brunner

marianne viero + laurenz brunner's project 'out of order' uses library book as visual medium. see more here.

[all marianne viero + laurenz brunner. from the series out of order. top to bottom: out of order #1 (53 library books mounted on the wall). out of order #4 (list of books never borrowed). out of order #6 (15 library books mounted on the wall).]