MARK RUWEDEL

One Thousand Two Hundred Twelve Palms

From the artist: “For many years now, my work has been concerned with offering an understanding of the American West as a palimpsest of cultural and natural histories. Dusk and Dog Houses may best be described as chapters of a much larger project entitled Message from the Exterior, while 1212 Palms is a complete work representing my long-term interest in place names and a conceptual approach to landscape photography. 1212 Palms is a set of nine black and white photographs of locations in the California deserts that were named for a certain number of palm trees. From Una Palma to Thousand Palms Oasis, the nine names add up to one thousand two hundred and twelve, although the number of trees depicted do not.” Mark Ruwedel was one of the featured artists for the Discovery Award at the 2011 Rencontres d’Arles photography festival.

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MARK RUWEDEL

Westward the Course of Empire

Mark Ruwedel (born 1954) has photographed the American West for the past twenty-five years, revealing the narratives—both geological and human—contained within the landscape. This stunning book presents more than 70 prints from Ruwedel’s ongoing series Westward the Course of Empire, an inventory of the residual landforms created by the scores of railroads built in the American and Canadian West since 1869.

The grades, cuts, tunnels, and trestles depicted in Ruwedel’s photographs speak to a past triumph of technology over what was often perceived as hostile terrain, as well as to the desire and struggle to create wealth and power from the land. Long abandoned (and in some cases never completed), the railroads also evoke the futility of the enterprise. This book is thus a sublime yet restrained elegy to the land and to the follies and wonders of human ambition.

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GREGOR SAILER

Ladiz

Perhaps it’s because one of photographer Gregor Sailer’s Tyrolean ancestors lost the Alpine pasture he owned in a card game a few generations ago. Maybe it’s the challenge of working with large-format film in the extreme conditions of the Alps: above-timberline altitudes, sub-zero temperatures, wind blasts and blowing snow. It could be the enchantment of composing photographs that capture the beauty of the Austrian Alps, or the responsibility of documenting the mutations of alpine landscape under the pressures of tourism and global warming. In any case, this beautifully designed volume, wrapped in a tasteful vellum dustcover, is the perfect showcase of Sailer’s most recent work. Includes an essay by photo-historian Anton Holzer.

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GEORG SALNER

Chandigarh Brasília, reVision

Why does a visual artist make a photographic “excursion” to the architectural works and sites of Le Corbusier and Pierre Jeanneret in Chandigarh, India? Or to the architectural landmarks of Oscar Niemeyer in Niterói and Rio de Janeiro, Brazil? Of all the “grand masters” of architecture, Le Corbusier and Niemeyer are the ones who have infused entire capitals with their ideas, bequeathing to these cities key landmarks and contributing to their identity. For Austrian artist and photographer Georg Salner (b. 1958) they were the ideal types of designers: innovative, influential and motivated by a commitment to the idea of world civilization. Georg Salner’s Chandigarh Brasília reVision is a document of the artist’s journey to the architectural sites and expressions of Le Corbusier and Niemeyer in India and Brazil—the spaces, places and buildings in 321 intriguing black-and-white images.

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SALON MODERNE

Fabienne Eggelhöfer & Monica Lutz

Hair salons are curious little worlds and their window-dressing an art unto itself— fascinating, perplexing, risible and often divorced from the core business itself. Showcased in this collection of 360 images assembled by editors Eggelhöfer and Lutz are veritable gems of eccentric aesthetics: a window adorned with Corinthian columns, fishing nets and shells; colorful life preservers during the summer season; or photos of Miss Switzerlands, past and present. But what could Swiss hairdressers possibly be thinking when they place a nibbled pinecone and a wooden hedgehog (half of whose spines are broken) on a Styrofoam pedestal in the window? The sheer diversity of hair salons’ one-off productions is unrivaled in any other line of retail business. That such a decorative culture should survive into the age of professional branding is but one more reason to devote a whole book to this bizarre phenomenon.

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RICO SCAGLIOLA & MICHAEL MEIER

years later…

For three years, Zürich-based photographers Rico Scagliola (b. 1982) and Michael Meier (b. 1985) have been taking candid photographs of people from all walks of life on streets and city squares, in cafés and bars, train stations and airports, stores and shopping centers. In the tradition of subjective street photography, they explore everyday rituals and self-presentation strategies, observing how the boundaries between public and private spheres are being increasingly blurred by new media. The photographs in this timely and provocative artist book reveal how individuals from Western cultures strive to display unique identities, yet cannot escape all-engulfing mainstream culture of homogenized commercial urban centers. Text fragments alongside the photographs capture snatches of conversations overheard in the street and passages from YouTube monologues. Scagliola and Meier’s account of ordinary everyday experience immerses the reader in a “mainstream” consciousness in which pictures and texts yield an overall view of our increasingly transnational society. Their second publication with Edition Patrick Frey. The duo has shown at FOAM (Amsterdam) and Fotomuseum Winterthur (Zürich).

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MICHAEL SCHÄFER

Models

No one’s going to accuse appropriation artist-photographer ichael Schäfer of trying to deceive anyone with his photo montages. The manipulation of images is obvious in the witty works featured in this exhibition catalog: Schafer chops the heads off political figures and replaces them with movie stars, making a powerful statement about the meaning of a public identity. Take away the persona and what’s left? In the two bodies of works featured, Berlin-based Schäfer uses computer-aided photo montage as a content-based image strategy. In one group, pupils at an elite boarding school put on business outfits and the camera catches them acting out expected social roles. In another, the artist re-stages press photos of politicians and business people, showing their essential isolation.

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Hans-Christian Schink

LA

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Nikolaus Schletterer

Lighten

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NIKOLAUS SCHLETTERER

Suspended

Nikolaus Schletterer’s photographic imagery can be seen as a conceptual engagement with the ontology or history of apparatus-assisted perception— from premodern machines to contemporary photography, filmmaking and screen culture. Suspended, the work exhibited at the Manifesta 8 biennial in Spain, is about processing appropriated imagery and examining its reducibility to the bare essentials. Ironically, the artist’s process begins with raw images collected from the Internet. This radical “distillation” process generates the final abstract images, seductive and completely reinterpreted. For the first time, this series is being reproduced accompanied with essays by Lauren Mele, Alfredo Cramerotti and Andrej Siclodi.

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