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).

Add to your order

MOTOHASHI SEIICHI

Sense of Place

Yoko Mori (Ed.)

For over a half century, Japanese sociodocumentary photographer Motohashi Seiichi (b. 1940) has combined still images and filmmaking to capture and investigate subjects ranging from Japanese coal miners to city street scenes, along with three comprehensive books and two documentaries on Chernobyl. This first-time in-depth retrospective of Seiichi’s career at the IZU Photographic Museum, Japan, and the expansive exhibition catalog covers nine bodies of work, from 1960 to 2014. Seiichi’s oeuvre brings to mind the work of internationally recognized Japanese photographers Daido Moriyama and Shomei Tomatsu, but once immersed in Seiichi’s graphically raw black-and-white investigations, one sees a unique and brilliant vision emerge. Highlights include two unpublished early series, Ofuyu and Yoron, along with noted series The Coal Mine, Ueno Station, Slaughterhouse, Performance East and West, Circus, Chernobyl and a new work, Arayashiki. A detailed artist’s chronology along with a complete title list of all 260 full-bleed black-and-white images assist in tracking this fascinating artist and career.

Add to your order