Just as the ‘black continent’ is nothing like as monochrome as our stereotyped ideas of it, so neither are the skin tones of its inhabitants. One variant, however, here more than elsewhere, marks people out as misfits: very white skin, unusually light hair color, blue or green eyes. This congenital metabolic disease is called albinism. People with albinism (PWA) are often visually impaired and need special protection from the sun. Most of all they suffer from social stigmatization. So it is little short of a miracle how courageously and confidently that the PWA of Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of the Congo, try to overcome their role as outsiders. Lead by the famous Congolese albino wrestler, Mwimba Texas, they demand to be treated with respect. In her photographs Patricia Willocq helps boost the self-assurance of people with albinism in the Congo. Her photo report is a testimony to hope, courage, love and success to give them the dignity they deserve.
Text in English, French and German.
Contents:
Photographic Essay; About albinism; The Dibwe family; Mwimba Texas; Gaëlle Kayowa Mukadi; Michel Mualaba Senga; Social Project.
List of events surrounding publication:
3 June 2015: press conference in Brussels to launch the book and to announce the opening of the photo exhibition and the First International Albinism Awareness Day
13 June (to 27 July 2015): opening of the exhibition “White Ebony” at the Halles St Gery in Brussels to celebrate the first International Albinism Awareness Day
02 July 2015: Projection of a movie about Mwimba Texas, the famous wrestler with albinism and albinism in DRC
13 July 2015: Concert with the Congolese artist Freddy Massamba engaged in the cause of albinism
09 – 30 October 2015: Exhibition “White Ebony” at the Maison de la Laïcité in La Louvière, Belgium
13 November to 11 December 2015: Exhibition “White Ebony” at la Maison du Hainaut, Charleroi
On July 21, 1969, the first man set foot on The Moon. When Neil Armstrong was asked if this made him feel big, he answered: “No, it made me feel really, really small.” 50 years later, this publication celebrates that special moment that put life on earth into a totally different perspective. It collects pictures of the world’s best photographers from the 1840s until today. Next to historical photographs and imagery printed in media, the publication features many artists that each in their own way reflect on this mystical celestial body, we call ‘moon’. The book shows the diversity of meanings of The Moon, it’s relation to mankind and to nature. The Moon has always both attracted and scared people around the world. It is our everyday connection to the unfathomable universe. Since time immemorial it is revered for its beauty, its stillness and mysterious appearance and yet also feared for its supernatural-seeming qualities. In mythology The Moon has always been given a central place. With its magnetic forces it changes the tides and has a direct and uncontrollable impact on mankind from above. In 1840, barely three years after the invention of photography, J.W. Draper makes the first picture ever made of The Moon and since that day photographers have never stopped following his example. The paradoxical aspects of the moon continue to fascinate and inspire. Like a photograph The Moon depends on sunlight to be visible. It has no light of its own and no apparent strength to resist our nightly city lights either. Photographers feel this close connection to The Moon’s characteristics and find the perfect object in its aesthetics. The landing on The Moon was a culmination point of the1960’s Space Race between the United States and the Soviet Union, which quickly became a symbol of the Cold War. The images of the landing became the bearer of values and symbols of the United States and were widely spread through various media. In 1973 NASA abolished its moon program. The Moon had been conquered and the public seemed to have had lost interest. However, today people still find The Moon fascinating, and humanity continues to dream about setting foot on the sun’s shadow.
About 40 muscular men half-nakedly face a dozen mirrors. One of them tenses up his gigantic biceps, another’s support team applies last minute corrections with spreadable fake tan. An old hand concentrates on some kind of meditation. A greenhorn meticulously checks his posing slip.
The air smells of aftershave, sweat, and loads of testosterone. The sun is burning. In a moment the big stage will be conquered. For this book, Firat Kara has asked what people can do with their bodies and with what diligence they proceed. Kara is not only interested in the bulky bodies but also in the people inside them. He has captured their inner impetus at international and national events, in studios and at open air training sites. He was able to find and record the personalities behind the muscles, especially right before the shows.
Supported by a wealth of photographs of archaeological objects, this book delves into a fascinating world of ancestral spirits, revealed by the surprising richness and variety of these pre-Columbian pieces fashioned out of various materials. These works, on exhibition in the Museo Casa del Alabado, in Quito (Ecuador), outline the pre-Columbian view of the world centred on a flow of energy aimed at preserving life. These pieces evoke this primordial energy emerging from mother earth, the source of the good deeds performed by spirits and the ancestral guardian of the permanent renewal of the world of daily life, where spirits constantly draw on the balance of the forces ensuring their survival. Pre-Columbian art has the extraordinary capacity to express the power of reciprocal opposites which together provide a meaning to the existence of animate and inanimate beings.
Hard materials, such as stones and shells, served to embody powerful spirits, such as carts, macaws, or primordial ancestors. Ceramics were suitable for the depiction of ordinary plants and animals. The extraordinary growth of metalworking skills led to the creation of ornamental pieces designed for the elite (chest decorations, nose jewellery, earrings, and crowns) whose purpose was to reflect the power of the sun.
Each picture in the book is accompanied by notes explaining the function the article would have served, while acknowledging that these pieces have lost none of their expressiveness in the modern world.
Text in English and Spanish.
Expo ’70 in Osaka was conceived in the late 1960s when the world was facing changing values in the midst of social and cultural turbulence. JA 113 is a reprint of selected articles originally published in the May 1970 issue of Shinkenchiku and May/June issue of JA, in commemoration of the upcoming Osaka-Kansai Expo 2025. The emphasis on high tech environments was evident in the Space Frame by Kenzo Tange which housed the Tower of the Sun by Taro Okamoto. The possibilities of advanced engineering were showcased by the Expo Tower by Kiyonori Kikutake and the air supported dome of the United States pavilion. Another highlight was the first ever IMAX film shown in the Fuji Group Pavilion by Yutaka Murata. All of these elements were part of a site master plan created by Kenzo Tange and Uzo Nishiyama. Text in English and Japanese.
Maria Lai always had a special relationship with fairy tales. She considered them a metaphor for art and a way of communicating with the public in a simple, straightforward way. Starting in the 1980s, fairy tales became central to her art. Tenendo per mano il sole, Tenendo per mano l’ombra, Curiosape and Maria Pietra, are her most famous “sewn fairy tales” – books created by the artist using castoff textiles.
Maria Lai’s fairy tales are not merely children’s stories, but profound reflections on life and what it means to be a human being. They are often inspired by Sardinian myths and legends, to which the artist gives a personal twist, adding autobiographical details and philosophical reflections.
This edition of Tenendo per mano l’ombra is a printed version of Maria Lai’s 1987 tale. The original consists of fabric pages sewn together and collages of dyed textiles, on which the artist has embroidered geometric figures, yarn and other materials. The fairy tale tells the story of a human being (and his double) who must learn to accept shadows, the dark part of the world and of himself. The figure’s shadow, in Maria Lai’s fairy tale, is not a negative element to be rejected, but an integral part of his personality. To live an untroubled and complete life, one must learn to accept and live with it.
Elena Pontiggia’s concluding essay accompanies the reader in a fascinating page by page interpretation of the fable, and discusses Lai’s artistic and stylistic approach in the context of an extensive network of philosophical, literary and artistic references: from Kant and Manzoni to Klee and Malevič.
Text in English and Italian.
“I have an old camera with which I have taken countless photographs of myself. It often produces astonishing effects”, Edvard Munch states in a 1930 interview. “Someday when I am old and have nothing better to do than work on an autobiography, all my photographic self-portraits will see the light of day again.” The autobiography was never realized, but the self-portraits have found their way to the pages of The Experimental Self. The Photography of Edvard Munch, which demonstrates the fundamentally experimental nature of the artist’s photographic practice. As a photographer, Munch embraced the freedom provided by the amateur position, and the unpredictable aspects of analogue photographic technology. By playfully approaching his own image in picture after picture, Munch extends his explorations of selfhood in other media through photography. The resulting photographs provide unique access to Munch’s radical artistic vision, which this book studies through eminent essays by Patricia G. Berman, Tom Gunning and MaryClaire Pappas.
“I’ve been photographing my daughter and nieces for a decade. There’s something sacred about the lives of girls, and their innocent, confident relationships to themselves, their world and one another is gravitational. Between them is an intimate and spiritual knowledge, both ordinary and extraordinary, and I aim to capture the brilliance of their communion. I hope when they look back on this work, they’ll see their beauty, and their devotion to each other, and find themselves here, in this work we made together, reflected with love.” – Kristen Joy Emack
Kristen Emack documents the moments of tenderness and kinship between her daughter and her cousins as they navigate childhood, bringing up social and racial issues rooted in the visual representation of our world.
Hasmukh C. Patel was at the forefront of Indian architecture, having designed iconic buildings of many types: private bungalows, theaters, speculative office buildings, banks, schools, religious buildings, factories and many others. He invented a contextually relevant, modern architectural idiom suitable for India, and combined this with an intuitive ability to make beautiful spaces. His work has helped define modern architecture in India, and here, for the first time, are reproduced lavish visual aids and extensive original research to understand his work.
Preface; Introduction; Row Houses; Apartments buildings; Hostels; Religious Communities; Schools; Institutional; Banks; Offices; Commercial Buildings; Medical Facilities; Theatres; Hotels; Stadiums; Industrial; Appendix; Maps with localization of projects; Biography; Published works and texts; Complete list of works.
Tornabuoni art returns to the origins of sculptor Arnaldo Pomodoro’s work (1926, Morciano di Romagna), specifically to the years 1956-1965, a pivotal period of the artist’s production. His creations, initially derived from the goldsmithing produced side by side with the brothers Gio and Giorgio Perfetti, evolves towards small concrete and lead reliefs, then in large mural panels engraved with illegible glyphs, inspired by Mesopotamian tablets’ cuneiform writing, Egyptian papyruses and Paul Klee’s graphic style. In 1960, Pomodoro was among the founders of the group Continuità, next to Novelli, Consagra, Tancredi, Dorazio and Fontana, preaching an ‘aesthetic of continuity’, defined as ‘the absence, the incertitude of limit’ and attached to the formal aspects of artworks. He thus produced his first Sfere, adopting gilded polished bronze as his preferred material of work, and of which the creation marks the definitive transition to monumental scale of his career.
Today, Pomodoro’s creations can be found in prestigious museum collections such as the Guggenheim in New York and the Vatican Museums. Moreover, his monumental artworks are exhibited in more than 40 public squares in major cities around the world. The artist lives and works in Milan, Italy.
Contents: Essays: Arnaldo Pomodoro. A discordant tension by Luca Massimo Barbero; The art of Arnaldo Pomodoro within the French art exhibition and critical context; Piecing together the traces of a dialogue by Chiara Mari; Artworks.
Text in English and Italian.
The Formula One book. Art of the Race – V18 is book 5 in a series that encapsulates the very essence of Formula 1 motor racing through the lens of Darren Heath, one of the sport’s most celebrated photographers. Art of The Race captures the key moments and rarely seen images of each race as the 2018 season unfolds, culminating in Lewis Hamilton winning his 5th World title. “Formula 1 is the aesthete’s ultimate sport: an intoxicating cocktail of speed, spectacle, competition and power, at the heart of which are the thoroughbred racing machines exquisite manifestations of form following function, driven at dizzying speeds by the quickest-of-the-quick, the best racing drivers on the planet. From a young age I dreamed of one day photographing the sport I adored. My one desire: to demonstrate through this creative art just how beautiful Formula 1 can be. This yearning has never dimmed. I hope you enjoy the pictures that follow as much as I enjoyed taking them.” Darren Heath – Multiple award-winning photographer with an Honorary Fellowship of The Royal Photographic Society in 2005.
The Formula One book.
Art of the Race, V19
is book six in a series that encapsulates the very essence of Formula 1 motor racing through the lens of Darren Heath, one of the sport’s greatest ever photographers. Across 256 pages of stunning photography, Art of the Race, V19
captures the key moments and rarely seen images of each race as the 2019 season unfolds, culminating in Lewis Hamilton winning his sixth World title. And there is no person better placed to capture these moments than Darren Heath, a multiple award-winning photographer and Honorary Fellow of The Royal Photographic Society, who is now in his 31st year covering the sport.
“A stunning collection of photographs by Alex Saberi, which illustrate the rich diversity of wildlife in Richmond Park throughout the seasons.” – Discover Wildlife.com
“Alex’s ethereal, fairy-tale-like images are a real wonder. His grasp of light, location and atmosphere make these photographs ones that border on the unique.” – Amateur Photographer
Sir David Attenborough has described Richmond Park as “A very special place” – and with good reason. This vast oasis of green, just eight miles from the centre of London, is an ecological pearl in the midst of sprawling urbanisation.
The park, most famous for its herd of 630 Fallow and Red Deer, is not only Europe’s largest park, but is as big as the seven other royal parks combined. Since King Charles I enclosed the park in 1637, it has provided a haven of tranquillity and diversion for all its visitors. Today, some 77 million people pass through its gates each year.
In this beautiful book, Alex Saberi captures Richmond Park’s unique blend of rare and diverse wildlife, plant life and rolling landscapes. From a crow perching on a bench in the morning haze to a foolhardy Labrador, breaking impatiently away from its owner, the photographs capture its inherent beauty as well as those rare moments of wildlife action and majesty that only yield themselves to the most patient and knowledgeable of observers.
There’s something especially beautiful about being able to look to the full expanse of a horizon, something that speaks to the most ancient part of our soul. With the continuing build up of our surroundings, that precious ability to gaze into the unfettered distance is one we all appreciate and savor.
This stunning edition showcases incredible houses in simply amazing locations, where the architect has rightly championed the accessibility to the endless views. Lavishly illustrated with full-color images of award-winning architecture, this compilation draws you in through its winning designs, but its the glorious and enticing images of the vast horizon that will capture your imagination.
We may all not be lucky enough to inhabit an eye-catching designer home with views to die for, but at least we can all share the beauty through these breathtakingly evocative images. Truly a book in which to lose yourself.