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Europas Auffassung von Japan ist von Klischees bestimmt, dem Japan der Tempel, der Kirschblüten, der Samurai und Geisha, des Zen. Das verklärende Bild hat mit dem gegenwärtigen Japan weniger zu tun als mit der Vorstellung des Westens von dieser scheinbar so ganz anderen Kultur. Der Fotograf Andri Pol hat die Inselkette über Jahre bereist und Bilder gesammelt, die den bekannten Japan-Ansichten die mildernden Umstände entziehen. Fasziniert und irritiert sucht Pol mit skeptisch scharfem Blick die japanische Realität hinter der westlichen Projektion. Und natürlich stößt auch er auf Kirschblüten und Teezeremonien, doch vor allem entdeckt er Menschen, die gelernt haben, mit Ambivalenzen zu leben, und Meister sind in der nüchternen Profanierung. Pol fotografiert ein Land in der Zerrissenheit zwischen Gestern und Morgen auf der Suche nach dem Heute. Das Buch ist ein unbestechliches Dokument japanischer Alltagsästhetik und ein leise ironisches Glanzstück der Reportagefotografie. Andri Pol, 1961 in der Schweiz geboren, arbeitet als Fotojournalist für ''Geo'', ''Stern'', das ''Time Magazine'', ''National Geographic'' und weitere internationale Magazine; er veröffentlichte zahlreiche Bücher, u.a. Grüezi.

Rosalind Solomon gehört zu den Letzten einer verschwindenden Gattung von Photographen, die man als bedrohte Art beschreiben könnte. Während der vergangenen drei Jahrzehnte photographierte sie aus einem inneren Bedürfnis und Drang heraus, nicht für äußeren Lohn wie Geld oder Ruhm. Ihre Bilder entstanden, weil Solomon einfach spürte, daß sie sie aufnehmen mußte, ohne Auftrag und nicht für Ausstellungen. Meist ohne Vereinbarungen mit Zeitschriften oder Galerien, die ihre Arbeit ausgestellt hätten, nahm Solomon ihre Photographien häufig an unvertrauten, entlegenen Orten auf, ohne zu wissen, was mit ihnen geschehen und ob sie überhaupt jemand je sehen würde. Sie photographierte wie unter Zwang, geradezu besessen.Aus der von Rosalind Solomon so beziehungsreich angelegten Gesamtkomposition bildet sich ein glanzvoll irisierendes Mosaik heraus, dessen Entstehung ganz und gar im Realen fußt. Seit dem Beginn ihrer photographischen Karriere nimmt sie die Bilder entweder in der Nähe ihres Lebens- und Arbeitsumfeldes auf, das seit ihrer Heirat zunächst in Chattanooga, Tennessee, dann zwischen 1977 und 1979 in Washinton D.C. lag und seither in New York ist, oder sie bringt ihre Motive von Auslandsaufenthalten mit, die ihr Leben seit 1951 mitbestimmen. Der Umfang von Rosalind Solomons Reisetätigkeit ist beachtlich: Zu Beginn steht ein Aufenthalt in Japan im Jahre 1968. Italien, Guatemala, Brasilien, Peru, Indien, Mexiko, Nepal, Südafrika, Irland, Kolumbien, Nepal, Tibet und Israel

Bill Wood’s business was photography–and he produced tens of thousands of images over the course of his career. A tall, slender, hardworking family man with a penchant for bow ties, Wood (1913-1979) was born, lived, and died in the Fort Worth, Texas, area, and his photography played a central role in how his clients chose to see and to portray themselves and their city. Bill Wood’s Business features approximately 300 of Wood’s photographs, and essays by Diane Keaton and Marvin Heiferman that pay respect to the skills Wood (and professional photographers like him) brought to the business of photography. The extraordinary range of Bill Wood’s images, and a shared appreciation of archives and the construction of photographic realities are what drew Diane Keaton and Marvin Heiferman to this project.

“About thirty years ago, the beaches and streets of Tangier were haunted by an automaton. It was nothing but skin and bones, and I often lost sight of it, blinded by the sun. Its silhouette of a marsh-bird vanished in the middle of the crowd of Moroccans in djellabahs and indifferent tourists. Like me they ignored the fact that this skinny man was the great writer Samuel Beckett. His path seemed to follow the movement of a pendulum, adjusted to his own rhythm, his heels touching the ground long before his weight followed, the body leaning backwards. He looked far above the horizon, his ocean blue eyes hidden by big sunglasses, and tried to orientate himself. It troubled me so much not to be able to capture the real dimension of this figure that I often forgot to put a film into my camera. As our paths kept crossing we finally met. So I abandoned the camera and stopped taking pictures. With his dark voice, he told me of the twenty seven books he couldn’t find a publisher for, of his wife Suzanne, of his friendship with Joyce, of his family in Ireland. He imagined how his mother would have been surprised by him getting the Nobel Prize, if ever she had known; he advised me to read “to learn how the others do it”. But I wanted to retain this attitude and his face, so I had to step away, to leave the treasure of his words, his opinions, and get back to the place that suits the photographer best: the one behind the lens.”

Last season we published Horn’s Dictionary of Water, a universal lexicon, now we offer This Is Me, This Is You Horn’s handbook of identity. Here in this uniquely bound twinned volume we have a book with no end. Peruse the 48 images taken with a ‘point and shoot’ camera, and as you arrive at the last image, you turn the book over and begin again: now with a paired complement for each of the 48 images, taken only a few seconds later. This work, a single and singular portrait photographed over a two year period evokes a multitude— of identities, of images, of icons from Bette Davis to Marlon Brando. Ultimately it is the multitude in each of us.

Robert Frank’s film One Hour is a single-take of Frank and actor Kevin O’Connor either walking or riding in the back of a mini-van through a few blocks of Manhattan’s Lower East side. Shot between 3:45 and 4:45 pm on 26 July, 1990 the film presents the curious experience of eavesdropping involuntarily on strangers. It appears to be a document of a journey but is also a kind of stream of consciousness retracing the same patterns and spaces. This book is a reprint of a little-known Frank publication first issued by Hanuman Books in 1992, a tiny book, comprising mainly a transcription of the dialogue heard but also two pages of credits: half a dozen production or crew workers and 27 actors. Unravelling the apparent documentary nature of the film, there is also an acknowledgement that the film has a script (by Frank and his assistant, Michal Rovner), that a conversation heard in a diner is written by Mika Moses, and that Peter Orlovsky’s lines (intercepted by Frank roughly halfway through the hour, in front of the Angelika Cinema on Houston Street) are “total improvisation”.

Helios: Eadweard Muybridge in a Time of Change offers a unique opportunity to trace the life and complex art of the 19th century photographer. This book places his entire body of work – both artistic and technical – in the context of one of the most transformative periods of American and European history. Published to accompany a retrospective exhibition organized bythe Corcoran Gallery of Art, this catalogue includes essays by Philip Brookman, Marta Braun, Corey Keller, and Rebecca Solnit that investigate a variety of new ways to understand and interpret Muybridge’s art and influences. Born in England, Eadweard J. Muybridge (1830–1904) moved in his early twenties to the United States, where he was soon drawn to the dramatic Western landscape. After a stagecoach accident, during a long convalescence in England, he learned photography. Returning to San Francisco in 1867, he soon earned his reputation photographing both the landscape and urban development of the West. Muybridge is best known for this inventive work and his massive atlas of stop-action motion studies, Animal Locomotion, first published in 1887.

In seinen fotografischen Arbeiten jenseits typischer Modeästhetik präsentiert Michael Roberts seine komplexe Vorstellung von Sizilien, seinen Einwohnern, seinen Traditionen und der typischen Landschaft. Der Band dokumentiert Roberts' Vision einer sinnlichen und androgynen Umgebung, einer Vision, die er im Laufe von zwanzig Jahren ständig verändert und angepasst hat. Er beruft sich auf die Fotografie Wilhelm von Gloedens, weckt Erinnerungen an Filme von Visconti oder Bolognini, bewegt sich aber dabei jenseits festgelegter Stilmuster. Seine Kamera hält die Schönheit der Jugend vor bröckelnden Tempeln fest, dokumentiert traditionelle Osterparaden und das alltägliche Theater, das die Anziehungskraft Siziliens ausmacht.

Rosalind Solomon made her first pictures in Poland in 1988 during a time of political change, and returned there in 2003, a time of increasing violence and inhumanity in the world. All of the images are of individuals, their relationships and environments and are observations and commentaries on Poland itself, as well as on the rest of the world. Polish Shadow at times evokes the darkness of an earlier era and recalls the ghosts of ethnic violence, but also gives a human view of modern Poland. For over 30 years Solomon has been producing emotional imagery which pulls the viewer into a world of sun and shadow where past and present intersect. As one commentator put it: “Rosalind Solomon embraces her subjects with unusual warmth—a combination of candor, curiosity and concern.” Her photographs provoke a physical, gut reaction and her empathy and sensitivity inform her images, giving them substance and power. Her photographs are influenced by the films of Luis Buñuel and Satyajit Ray, whom she met and photographed in Calcutta.

Mitra Tabrizian’s photographs combine techniques from documentary photography, film and advertising to explore ideologies underlying the construction of cultural identities. As the philosopher Stuart Hall has written: “The images which comprise the projects in this book are indeed “fictive visual spaces”. There is evidence everywhere of a photographic practice inscribed by “the cinematic”. Some reference their cinematic equivalents directly — for example, the deliberate Takeshi Kitano/Tarantino/Reservoir Dogs echoes and references in the implied narrative of Tabrizian’s The Perfect Crime. However, far from merely mimicking the cinematic discourse of the contemporary crime film, or mounting a moral critique of its violence, Tabrizian unravels and re-works its “logic” from the inside. Un-framing the images from their Pulp Fiction-like locations and re-staging them, as she says, “within wider contexts of racial and sexual violence” allows the frames to become charged by deeper, more unconscious currents, permitting these powerful and eloquent contemporary images to signify “otherwise.” The racial and sexual edge, so thoroughly disavowed in Tarantino’s cynical, cartoon-eye universe, is restored.“