AUSCHWITZ-OSWIECIM

The Hidden City in the East

Hans Citroen and Barbara Starzynska

Artist Hans Citroen and architect Barbara Starzynska look anew at one of the planet’s most highly charged sites: the Auschwitz death camp and the Polish town of Oswiecim. In the process, the authors investigate how time re-writes and redefines the history of a place, exploring how we write history, and the meaning of collective memory. This striking, Japanese-style book mixes images and text, featuring Citroen’s contemporary views from front-to-back, and Starzynska’s blackand- white historical documentation when reversed. More than a million visitors a year come to see the wartime remains, creating a complicated engagement among pilgrims, tourists, survivors and residents. “A page-turner about the afterlife of a death camp?” asks Auschwitz scholar Robert Jan van Pelt. The authors “have made me see both wartime Auschwitz and today’s Oswiecim anew.”

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MICHAEL BRACEWELL: THE SPACE BETWEEN

Collected Writings

Michael Bracewell

Critic, novelist and cultural voyeur Michael Bracewell is not a writer who’s easy to classify. Born in 1958, a veteran of the British punk scene, he is a shockingly wide-ranging intellect whose influences range from Aubrey Beardsley to Enrico David. One of the most influential commentators on modern and contemporary art, he has been a regular contributor to Frieze since its inception.

In an engaging collection from the outstanding British art publisher Ridinghouse, Bracewell explores connections between the visual arts, pop music, modern iconography and various sub-cultures. These finely crafted essays appraise the vision and ideas of individual artists and the relation of their work to its broader cultural context. Bracewell has written extensively on artists including Gilbert & George, Richard Hamilton, Bridget Riley, Wolfgang Tillmans, Anish Kapoor, Keith Coventry, John Stezaker, Glenn Brown and Damien Hirst.

Reading Bracewell is sheer pleasure. His British colleagues describe his work as “lyrical” and “inspired.” One critic calls him “the poet laureate of late capitalism,” while another says his prose “shimmers with metaphysical warmth.” Even allowing for critical exaggeration, there’s no question this is a writer of huge talent, with a lot to say.

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