Photography

Recognising strangeness in familiar objects, the present in the past, the construed in what is authentic – the four masterly photographers show excerpts from our world in which the boundary between reality and imagination becomes blurred. From fleeting everyday scenes to mysterious happenings and historical events, they reveal a complex and multi-layered reality.

Louis Alphonse Poitevin was an outstanding inventor, chemist, engineer, scientist, artist and photographer. This publication provides a unique opportunity to cast a wide-ranging gaze at the life and work of the famous pioneer of photography on the basis of a large number of photographs and the results of the latest research.

What does photography tell us about the lifestyles and mentality in China in the face of the rapid social change? Artists in search of their identity explore the medium of photography experimentally and provide insight into the individual complex worlds of emotions and experiences of their generation.

Starting with Helmar Lerski’s outstanding photo series "Metamorphosis through Light" from 1935/36, the magnificent volume "Faces – The Power of the Human Visage" presents portraits from the era of the Weimar Republic. The photographs taken by the photographers of the 1920s and 1930s achieved a radical renewal of portrait photography.

Diary-like series, landscape photos and situational mood pictures – Elina Brotherus (*1972 in Helsinki) is constantly searching for new possibilities in photography. This lavishly illustrated volume with related essays pursues the latest developments. Here the Finnish photo artist combines a keen intellect with humorous lightness and technical precision with joyous spontaneity.

Ludwig Mies van der Rohe is one of the outstanding representatives of the New Building. He achieved legendary fame as the director of the Bauhaus in Berlin and as a teacher at the IIT in Chicago. The pavilion built at the World Exhibition in Barcelona in 1929 and the Haus Tugendhat in Brno, completed one year later, became incunabula of Modernism.

The private art collection of the Hilti Art Foundation includes over 200 top-quality paintings, sculptures and photographs from Classical Modernism to the present day. Volume 2 of the two-part catalogue of the collection presents 120 selected works from the middle of the twentieth century to the present day, from Josef Albers to Thomas Struth.

The book synthesizes research in history, fashion, art and visual culture to reassess the hair story of peoples of African descent. Long a fraught topic for African Americans and others in the diaspora, Black hair is here addressed by artists, barbers and activists in both its historical perceptions and its ramifications for self and society today.

Charles Bukowski, the "dirty old man" of American literature whose poems and prose are closely interwoven with his life – how does one go about portraying a person like that? In 1985, the young photographer Abe Frajndlich took on this challenge. We can say this much: it was not a job that could be accomplished in one shot. The Shooting presents a photographer’s attempt to zero in on a legend.

The political collages of John Heartfield (1891–1968) have earned him a reputation as one of the most innovative graphic artists of the Weimar Republic. His photomontages and book covers based on collages which had their origins in Berlin’s Dada scene were directed against Fascism and made him internationally famous. Their explosive power has lost none of its impact.