Urs Stahel Books

Photographer Zoe Leonard practices a type of cerebral roaming combined with carefully considered observation. For more than 20 years she has crisscrossed nature and culture, cityscapes and museums, always searching for signs that say something about structures, about natural and cultural conditions and the contradictions, parallels and connections between them. Leonard's photographs of anatomical wax figures, fashion shows, trees and fences present figures in sparse black-and-white images that open up visual fields of thought and reveal within them our visible world--the concrete and established structures that make up our reality. Leonard first created an international stir at the Documenta 9 exhibition in Kassel, Germany, in 1992, when she placed black-and-white photographs of female genitalia in the context of a male-dominated museum. Since then, the political aspects of her work have formed a backdrop for her constant struggle with shape, imagery and the union of symbols and content. This is the first book to showcase Leonard's complete oeuvre.

The creator of radical and poetic work, Boris Mikhailov focuses his camera on people's everyday life, capturing both the social and historical conditions in the Soviet Union and the changes that occurred after 1989, with the breakdown of order in the Ukraine. In the 1970s, Mikhailov started to photograph "life the way it is." He dealt with the "city without a main street," the anti-heroic, the incidental, the private sphere and leisure time in the Soviet Union. His book Case History, a heart-wrenching monument to the forgotten losers of system change, documented the plight of the homeless in the Ukraine after the collapse of the Soviet Union. The critical aspects of his photographs, provocative performances and combinations of words and images make Mikhailov a conceptual documentary artist who creates moving images of the wounded human soul--simultaneously full of humor and seriousness. This book is dedicated to Mikhailov's entire oeuvre. Essays on individual works and periods run together with a flow of images to underline his different photographic techniques and to deepen our understanding of a rich work that intentionally seems unspectacular. Created in collaboration with Fotomuseum Winterthur. Essays by Urs Stahel, Ekaterina Dyogot, Anne von der Heiden, Michael Schischkin, Inka Schube, Helen Petrovsky and Margarita Tupitsyn. Hardcover, 7 x 9.5 in./176 pgs / 60 color 0 BW35 duotone 0 ~ Item D20311

NOWHERE explores a world dominated by Instagrammability, where reality is shaped by seductive images. It features the work of Dutch photographer Frank van der Salm over 25 years, presenting an imaginary, consumer-driven metropolis. The book includes essays linking his art to design, architecture, and urban development.

Wo steht die Fotografie in der Schweizer Kunst am Anfang des neuen Jahrtausends? Bereits 1999 stellten das Fotomuseum Winterthur und der Christoph Merian Verlag unter dem Titel ‹Young – Neue Fotografie in der Schweizer Kunst› (ISBN 3-85616-108-2) die damals jungen Fotografinnen und Fotografen vor; seither sind aussergewöhnlich viele neue Künstlerinnen und Künstler dazugekommen. Aus rund 250 Dossiers wurden rund 20 ausgewählt, die ein Bild abgeben, wie heute in der Schweiz gedacht und fantasiert, wie erkundet, verstanden und verarbeitet wird. Beteiligt sind u. a.: Sami Benhadj, Collectif_Fact, Serge Frühauf, Goran Galic, Anna Kanai, Florence Lacroix, Loan Nguyen, Marco Poloni, Daniel Schibli, Shirana Shabazi, Nele Stecher, Herbert Weber. Ausstellung im Fotomuseum Winterthur 4. März 2006 – 21. Mai 2006

Die grossen Utopien des 20. Jahrhunderts sind zusammengebrochen, wir erleben gegenwärtig einen ›Degree Zero‹, erfahren mehrere Nullpunktsituationen. Die Arbeiten der in ›Ordnung und Chaos‹ vertretenen Künstlerinnen und Künstler (Marianne Müller, Nanna Hänninen, Juha Nenonen, Sonja Braas, Marjaana Kella, Sophy Ricket, Inés Lombardi, Janaina Tschäpe) beschäftigen sich in unterschiedlichster Form mit dieser Situation. Sie tun dies in unterschiedlichen Bildformen, in konkreter oder abstrakter, in dokumentierter oder inszenierter Weise, und auffallend ruhig, konzentriert und spekulationsfrei. Erscheint zur Eröffnung des neuen Zentrum für Fotografie in Winterthur.

New Europe seeks to dig beneath the utopian dream of a united continent arising to face the 21st century. Paul Graham's photographs reflect on the inescapable shadow of history that falls over each nation's conscience, from the dictatorships of Franco and Hitler, to the Holocaust and the Irish conflict

Two Thousand Light Years from Home reveals concealed traces of a city. At first sight the photographs taken by Pietro Mattioli show cryptic vertical structures and intricate patterns, deploying their own beauty by being reduced to their complex forms, surfaces and colors. A closer look exposes familiar objects like trees, fences, masts, lattices so as stairs or walls. Mattioli focused on those ordinary objects while strolling like a flaneur through his neighborhood – during three seasons, at night, while his child was asleep, as far as the radius of the baby phone allowed him to go. He scrutinized this clearly defined area with a flashlight, that isolated the hidden objects from the black of the night. The result is ultimately alienating and takes the familiar even more far away from the common, not to say two thousand light years from home. By documenting his nocturnal excursions, Mattioli created a typology of the everyday, that focused on these well-known details, nobody really spends time to look closer at. Two Thousand Light Years from Home offers this opportunity, although a steady gaze is needed. As the book itself as an object intensifies the alienation by unprocessed pages, that try to divert a quiet look. Two Thousand Light Years from Home presents a selection out of a series of 80 photographs.