The core themes of Bernd and Hilla Becher's extensive work from the early 1960s on were the coal mines and steel mills in the German ruhr region and other iron smelting regions of the world, from Lothringen to Pittsburgh. By way of a contribution to the European Capital of Culture "Ruhr.2010" program, the Josef Albers Museum Quadrat in Bottrop has compiled a comprehensive exhibition with photographs by Bernd and Hilla Becher on this key subject. The exhibition centers on the "industrial landscapes," as the two artists called them. The Bechers did not seek to depict these areas as individual architectural objects, but rather to contextualize them as complete facilities and heavy industry complexes in their urban and rural environment. Now that iron smelting as an industry has almost completely disappeared from the Ruhr region and the European coal mining industry is following hard on its heels, this collection of impressive pictures, which includes photographs from the German Siegerland region, Great Britain, France, and the USA, provides an overview, which we can already deem to be nostalgic, of a past era of industrial history. Our publication accompanies the exhibition with a total of 154 duotone plates of mines and iron works from all over the world. Heinz Liesbrock, art historian and Director of the josef Albers Museum, wrote the introductory essay to this publication. As well as famous Becher icons, the volume also features many previously unpublished photographs.
An unprecedented catalogue exploring the formal and visual affinities and contrasts between Josef Albers and Giorgio Morandi—two of modern art’s greatest painters. Rarely seen together, the artworks of Josef Albers (1888–1976) and Giorgio Morandi (1890–1964) share many similarities. Although they never met, both artists worked in series as they explored difference and potential through their distinctive treatment of color, shape, form, and morphology. They were also both influenced by Cezanne. As master illusionists and experts in proportion, they tackled similar conceits from different perspectives. Albers focused on the effects of subtle or bold changes and interactions in color, while Morandi made still lifes that treat simple objects as a cast of characters on a stage, exploring their relationship in space. Published on the occasion of the critically acclaimed exhibition Albers and Morandi: Never Finished at David Zwirner New York in 2021, the book illuminates the visual conversation between these two artists. With the exhibition hailed by The New Yorker’s Peter Schjeldahl as “one of the best … I’ve ever seen,” this publication brings this unusual, thought-provoking pairing to your home. Gorgeous reproductions are accompanied by a roundtable about form and color between the exhibition’s curator, David Leiber; Heinz Liesbrock, the director of the Josef Albers Museum Quadrat Bottrop; and Nicholas Fox Weber, the executive director of The Josef and Anni Albers Foundation, as well as an essay by Laura Mattioli, the Morandi expert and founder of the Center for Italian Modern Art.
Walker Evans (1903-1975) is one of the most important photographers of the twentieth century and has influenced contemporary art beyond his medium until today. In 1938 the Museum of Modern Art in New York dedicated its first ever solo photography exhibition to Evans's work, and he has shaped America's image of itself particularly through his photographs of the Great Depression. The publication Walker Evans: Labor Anonymous is the first in-depth investigation into a series of the same name, which Evans published in Fortune magazine in 1946. On a Saturday afternoon in Detroit, Evans positioned himself with his Rolleiflex camera on the sidewalk and photographed pedestrians, mostly laborers, in his characteristically clear and unadorned way - an aesthetic he described as the "documentary style". As in his earlier series, e.g. in the famous Subway Portraits from the New York underground, his subjects were often unaware they were being photographed, but some of the pedestrians also looked straight into the camera. Representing much more than a simple typology, this photographic series does not offer a preconceived image of humankind or class, but - as foreshadowed in its ambiguous title - encourages critical reflection on such concepts. This publication anchors the series in Evans's oeuvre and presents a selection of more than fifty photographs from the series along with contact sheets, drafts for an unpublished text, notes, and letters from the Walker Evans Archive at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York"--
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