Saturday, June 20, 2015. It´s only five minutes to the beginning of the LECTURE BY THE AMERICAN STAR PHOTOGRAPHER WILLIAM KLEIN IN DIALOGUE WITH GERRY BADGER, the most expected one of this Vienna PhotoBook Festival 2015.
This is the first time that William Klein, one of the most important and influential photographers ever and a living icon in the History of Photography, comes to the Austrian capital.
Three years have elapsed since Michael Kollmann (photobook curator of Ostlicht Galerie für Fotografie), Regina Anzenberger (director of Anzenberger Gallery, Anzenberger Photographic Agency and Anzenberger Gallery Bookshop) and Peter Coeln (Director of Ostlicht Gallery für Fotografie) founded the Vienna PhotoBook Festival, whose first edition was held in 2013, and which has increasingly grown up and consolidated through strenuous work, illusion, love for photography, painstaking attention to every detail and the firm belief in the future possibilities of both top quality photobooks on paper focused on talents from the new generation, greatly fostered with the updated technologies. and the already existing first-rate photobooks, particularly the classic ones devoted to the photographic oeuvres of the great masters of photography, special editions, limited series, signed copies, etc.
The Anker Saal of the Brotfabrik Wien is overcrowded with attendants utterly aware of the huge significance of the moments which are about to be lived.
William Klein, born on April 19, 1928 in New York, has just gone up to the stage.
The collective thrill is huge and emotions skyrocket. Many of the attendees have admired him for decades and possess some of his famous books like New York (1956), Rome The City and Its People (1959), Tokyo (1964), Moscow (1964), Mister Freedom (1970), The Films of William Klein (1989), Torino ( 1990), In and Out of Fashion (1994), MMV Romani (2006) and others.
The dialogue between William Klein and the photographic critic, architect and photographer Gerry Badger flows in a very relaxed way, with William Klein quickly gaining the public appreciation through his special sense of humor and the scores of anecdotes lived throughout his almost seventy years as a professional photographer. Everybody is relishing this major and memorable occasion in which the towering human stature and true humbleness of this man comes to surface every time he answers the questions asked to him by Gerry Badger.
 |
VIENNA PHOTOBOOK AWARD 2015 CEREMONY
After a Collector´s Talk held at the Anker Saal of the Brotfabrik Wien betwen 18:00 h and 19:00 h with Michel Auer, Andreas H. Bitesnich and Manfred Heiting as speakers, moderated by Gerry Badger, at 19:00 h of Saturday, June 20, 2015 started the Award Ceremony of the Vienna PhotoBookAward at the lecture room of the ground floor, presented by Regina Maria Anzenberger and Gerry Badger.
In only two years since its first edition in 2014, the Vienna PhotoBook Award has become a prestigious recognition within the photobook sphere, because of the high level of the participants and the internationally acclaimed panel of reviewers choosing the winners and which this year was made up by Gerry Badger (photographer, architect and photocritic), Andreas H. Bitesnich (photographer, collector and photocritic), Josef Chladek (The Virtual Bookshelf, Austria), Nela Eggenberg (Eikon, Austria), Peter Gössner (collector from Austria), Manfred Heiting (designer, editor, curator and collector from United States), Rob van Hoesel (publisher from the Netherlands), Rainer Iglar (Fotohof Salzburg, Austria), Silvia Jaklitsch (Verlag für Moderne Kunst, Austria), Klaus Kehrer (Kehrer Verlag Heidelberg, Germany), Dominique Kempers (Bookshop Walter König, Austria), Calin Kruse (Die Nacht, Germany), Harald Latzko (collector from Austria), Ania Nalecka (Tapir Book Design, Poland), Colin Pantall (photobook critic from United Kingdom), Johannes Schlebrügge (Schlebrügge Editor, Austria) and Hannes Wanderer (Peperoni Books, 25 books, Germany).
The Winners of the Honorable Mentions of the Vienna PhotoBook Award 2015 were Reka Szent-Ivanyi (Hungary) for her photobook dummy There´s Nothing Wrong with That, Ikuru Kuwajima (Japan) for her dummy photobook Trail and Kateryna Snizhko (Russia) for her photobook dummy My Friend is a Sniper.
Kateryna Snizhko (left) and Reka Szent-Ivanyi (right, beside the projector) at the moment of being bestowed the Vienna PhotoBook Festival 2015 Honorable Mentions by Regina Maria Anzenberger and Gerry Badger.
Regina Maria Anzenberger and Gerry Badger announcing the Second Prize of the Vienna PhotoBook 2015 Award given to Dimitry Lookianov (Russia) for his photobook dummy Instant Tomorrow, who will be published by Peperoni Books (Germany).
Projection of one of the images of Instant Tomorrow, the photobook including pictures by Dmitry Lookianov that was bestowed the Second Prize of the Vienna Photobook Awards 2015.
Two more images of Dmitry Lookianov´s photobook dummy projected on the screen of the lecture room.
Reka Szent-Ivanyi, Kateryna Snizhko, Dmitry Lookianov, Regina Maria Anzenberger and Gery Badger at the moment in which the latter announces the Vienna Photobook Award 2015 First Prize bestowed to Mark Duffy (Ireland),
for his photobook dummy Vote No.1
Mark Duffy speaking after receiving the First Prize of the Vienna Photobook 2015 Award
before the many attendees present during the Vienna PhotoBook 2015 Award ceremony.
Projection of one of the images of Vote No 1, Mark Duffy´s dummy photobook winner of the Vienna PhotoBook 2015 Award.
The Vienna Photobook Award 2015 has featured from scratch an amazing level, since there was a previous selection from hundreds of submissions and a final photobook review of the deemed best 30 photobook projects made very good photographers: Julia Autz, Sonja Bachmayer, Alexander Bondar, Simon Brugner, Thomas Bundslchuch, Sebastian Collett, Mark Duffy, Marco Frauchiger, Marta Giaccone, Jacqueline Godany, Tamsin Green, George E. Holroyd III, Libuse Jarcovjákova, Gabor Kasza, Karl Ketamo, Ran Kokubun, Sasha Kurmaz, Ikuru Kuwajima, Dmytri Lookianov, Caleb Ming, Aleksey Myakishev, Christian Nowak, Borut Peterlin, catherine Rocke, Ursula Röck, Kateryna Snizhko, Mika Sperling, Reka Szent-Ivanyi, Xiaoxiao Xu, and Georg Zinsler.
The following day Sunday, June 21, 2015 had also a massive attendance of public and was made up by more lectures and visits to the 80 photobook international sellers located in the different facilities of the Brotfabrik Wien.
The level of the international booksellers present during this Vienna PhotoBook Festival 2015 was such that dumbfounding experiences for visitors were often churned out: here we can see two magazines of the legendary Russian illustrated magazine Sovetskoe from late thirties in very good condition at the booth of Rotes Antiquariat (Germany), a great bookseller based in Berlin, and behind them the top-notch photobook JOHN HEARTFIELD Buchgestaltung und Fotomontage, published by Rotes Antiquariat and Galerie C. Barscht in 2014, featuring 224 pages and the most complete work on this photographer made hitherto.
From its foundation in 1926 by the writer and editor Mikhail Koltsov, Sovetskoe photographic publication turned into an international flagship in terms of articles and essays on photography, layout of pictures, advertisements of photographic products and pretty lavish information about all kind of photographic equipment, photographic chemicals, etc.
On the other hand, from 1927, Sovestkoe magazine became one of the key publications in the spreading of the revolutionary way of getting pictures handheld with the new German miniature 24 x 36 mm format screwmount rangefinder Leica cameras through the iconic pictures of both avant-garde photographers like Aleksandr Rodchenko with its iconic pictures The Mother (cover of Sovetskoe Foto number 10, October 1927), The Stairs (1929), Demonstration (1932), Girl with a Leica (1934), Dive (1934), Dive (1935), etc, and professional photojournalists like Evgenii Khaldei, Georgi Zelmanovitch, Arkady Shaykett, Georgi Selma and others, all of them using Leicas, along with new image techniques like the multilayer pictures with 4 x 5 and 5 x 7 inch large format cameras made by El Lissitzky.
In spite of the not very good paper, almost eighty years after its production, the image quality of the b & w pictures inside these vintage Sovetskoe magazines is still amazing and showing a unique aesthetics of image, because in spite of the 35 mm black and white films of the time (mostly bulk loaded 24 x 36 mm nitrate panchromatic cinematographic ones with a lot of grain and very low sensitivity of around Weston 32, roughly equivalent to ASA 40), the remarkable acutance attained by the then commonly used Agfa Rodinal developer, optimized for excellent sharpness of contours and discernibility of details, fostering the Mackie lines, along with the amazing resolving power for the time of the Leitz Elmar 5 cm f/3.5 designed by Max Berek, paid off on printing the images on the magazine pages from original 35 mm negatives.
Iceland Photographs by Eliot Porter, a significant book featuring 126 pages and including 56 pictures made by one of the greatest masters of color bird and landscape genres.
It was published in 1989 by Bulfinch Press, one year before his death, and follows the main keynotes of this sublime artist photographer who committed himself to explore the diversity of natural world and its colourful beauty through the use of Linhof Technika large format camera with Kodachrome 4 x 5 film (second half of forties and fifties) and Ektachrome 4 x 5 (from early sixties onwards), a tremendous mastery of technique and composition, a wise use of overlying contrasts and the attainment of pretty wide and delicate tonal range along with superb color and detail by means of complex dye transfer developments and prints as a creative tool to convey extraordinary subtleties and nuances, together with boundless control possibilities as to the look of the definitive print, needing some days of hard work to get them.
Eliot Porter devoted most of his photographic career to create and exhibit painstakingly rendered dye transfer color prints of his photographs, with a richness, depth and fidelity unmatched by any other method, displaying an awesome subtlety of tone and hue and a brightness range of more than 500:1 from blackest black to whitest white, with better, more accurate and purer color than any other color print, particularly when using his Kodachrome 4 x 5 sheet films, which have been preserved flawless until now and currently boast a potential of 320 megapixels at 4,000 dpi per image.
UNTERGANG EINER WELT Der GroBe Krieg 1914-1918 in Photographien und Texten, published by Brandstätter and written by Wolfgang Maderthaner and Michael Hochedlinger, another of the excellent photobooks on sale during this Vienna PhotoBook Festival 2015, on display at the booth of Christian Brandstätter Verlag (Austria).
It features a 24 x 30 cm format, 320 pages, 300 photographs and has been Silver Medal of the German PhotoBook Award 2015.
The pictures included in this book are truly impressive, mostly unknown, and fruit of a strenuous research work made by Wolfgang Mathertaner (Historian and General Director of the Austrian State Archive) and Michael Hochedlinger (Ph.D and archivist at the Austrian State Archive).
Exoticism to spare at the Antiquariat Mag.Michael Bauer (Austria) during the Vienna Photobook Festival 2015: First edition of Wunder in Der Natur, a photobook by Karl Blossfledt, published by H. Schmidt & C. Günther Leipzig (Pantheon- Verlag für Kunstwissenschaft) in 1942 with a 24,7 x 32,5 cm format, 120 pages and 120 excellent black and white pictures of different plants, while two original ambrotypes from 1860s can be seen in the foreground.
Some attendees perusing old photobooks. The love for black and white photography was apparent enough throughout the two day event.
A further excellent photobook at the booth of Verlag Scheidegger & Spiess (Switzerland) : Brasilia, first edition edited by Arthur Rüegg and published by Scheidegger & Spiess in 23 x 31 cm format and including the best pictures made by René Burri (104 in colour and 118 in black and white) between 1958 and 1977 in the City of Utopy, designed by Oscar Niemeyer in late fifties, with text in German and English.
Music, a digitally printed photobook by Andreas Oetker-Kast on sale at the booth of bt:st verlag (Germany), featuring 160 pages and 87 pictures, epitomizing the unique experience of live concerts and the photographic opportunities it provides, on creating images during magic musical instants in which the photographer (a specialist in documentary and musical genres) embeds into the artists´ muses and feelings while they are on the stages.
It took place between 11:00 h and 12:00 h in the morning of Sunday, June 21, 2015.
Three photobook enthusiasts at the booth of FOTOHOF edition (Austria).
A visitor talking to Christopher Anhalt, founder and director of Homeparkpress (Germany) at the booth of this photobook seller during the Vienna PhotoBook Festival 2015. It is an independent publishing project created in Hamburg seven years ago and producer of remarkable photobooks interspersing design, photography and typography in very carefully made editions, greatly manufactured with craftsmanship parameters and top-notch offset printing, as in the photobook Scars & Beauty (2010), featuring pictures by Christopher Anhalt, design by Stefan Kaetz, stitched brochure binding, Multidesign Original Natural 150 high quality paper and 21 photographs, which was selected by AD France as one of their favourtite three titles at Offprint Paris 2011.
Christopher Anhalt is likewise an accomplished photographer author of outstanding black and white urban pictures and portraits exuding an image aesthetics following the track of the mythical Kodak Tri-X 400 35 mm film rendering visible grain but getting impact and an accurate depiction of the atmosphere of the moments.
Utak Ways by Benko Imre, at the booth of the Association of Hungarian Photographers (Hungary). The first edition of this 132 pages photobook was launched into market in 2004 in Budapest, and includes a lot of pictures made by the Hungarian photographer Benko Imre between 1971 and 2002 in different countries of the world like the Soviet Union, Vietnam, Cambodia, China, Cuba and United States, aiming at depicting the social structures of their peoples and their sociological grounds).
Imre Benko, born in 1943, is a photojournalist linked to the great tradition of Hungarian photography, embodied since late twenties onwards by figures like Brassai, Martin Munkácsi, Laszlo Moholy-Nagy, Eva Besnyo, André Kertész, Robert Capa, Cornell Capa, Béla Kondor, Károly Escher, Laszlo Willinger and others, both in the photojournalistic sphere and in the artistic one.
He has been twice Gold Medal of the World Press Photo Competition in 1975 and 1978, Pulitzer Memorial Prize-Winning Artist of Merit, and in 1996 he won the W, Eugene Smith Memorial Fund Scholarship for his extraordinary reportage on the dismantling of the iron foundry in Ózd made by him throughout nine years, and was lecturer in Documentary Photography at the Hungarian Academy of Applied Arts between 1988 and 2000.
Kinky City by Pawel Jaszczuk, on sale at the booth of WestLicht Bookshop (Austria).
A fascinating photobook featuring 44 pages and 39 photos, product of the three years spent by the author between 2007 and 2010 submerging into the night life of Tokyo, searching for swinger clubs, special bars, private sex parties, etc, managing to gain the confidence of the people fulfilling their fantasies, performing a voyeuristic observer role and capturing with his Leica rangefinder and very high ISO black and white film the key ingredients of these contexts: the dominance and submission interactions, the fetish apparels of all kind and epochs mostly made with leather and latex, the creation of rather bizarre atmospheres, the instants of excitement and dither, the physical encounters, the pain and desire, the quest for the unknown and forbidden, the inconfessable dreams, the transcending of taboo boundaries ..., all of them elements far from the mostly rigid lives these persons have at their works in full daylight, when their attires and behaviours are rather different.
This is a special photobook including pictures often blunt, depicting reality as it is in this Kinky City night, a world apart in itself, and the experience can be a bit disturbing for some readers, but it is undoubtedly a work deserving accolades for its images often taken in extreme contexts, with the photographer plucking up courage and displaying a remarkable mental strength enabling him to get very good pictures as a beholder of actions, sometimes from a very near distance, immersing himself in the intimacy of developments and the unleashing of human most hidden passions.
Paweł Jasczuk works have been exhibited in different countries and published in a number of newspapers and magazines like The New York Times, the British Journal of Photography, GUP magazine, PHOTO and others, having also been bestowed the Lead Awards Portrait Photography of the Year in Germany.
Pilgrimage, an excellent photobook by the Russian photographer Ekaterina Solovieva at the booth of the Rodchenko School for Photography and Multimedia of Moscow (Russia), where she gets with her Leica rangefinder b & w pictures of Russian people taking part in popular processions or inside churches and in which she excels revealing their true personality and convictions.
Ekaterina Solovieva is a photojournalist and documentary film maker whose work is particularly devoted to social photographic projects and the coverage of the lives of common people living in different areas of the former Soviet Union.
She has made a number of exhibitions throughout Europe hitherto: Russian North (at the Gallery Go East of Hamburg) in 2007, Kamchatka, the Land of Vulcans (at the Gallery Go East of hamburg) in 2008, Group Exhibition Sony World Photography Awards (at Somerset House, London, UK) in 2011, Group Exhibition The Best of Russia (at the Vinzavod Center of Contemporary Art, Moscow) in 2012, Group Exhibition Light (at the Gallery Morgenland in Hamburg, Germany) and others.
And her portfolio " Black Crimea " with 12 pictures was published in Leica Fotografie International magazine on February 22, 2015.
Vienna Spots, a photobook by Carolina Frank, at the booth of Schule Friedl Kubelka für künstlerische Photographie (Austria).
LECTURE " INTAC INTERNATIONAL ART COLLABORATIONS: ARTIST´S BOOKS AS PROCESS " BY WALTER BERGMOSER AND PETER SRAMEK
It took place between 12:00 and 13:00 h of Sunday, June 21, 2015.
Two visitors (on the left of the image) at the booth of Peperoni Books, a Berlin based European reference-class publishing house created by Hannes Wanderer (its founder and director, on the right) in 2004 aiming at the production of illustrated books delving into contemporary photography with such acclaimed photobooks like It was a Grey Day by Gerry Badger, Heartland by Thomas Hoepker, Be Happy by Igor Samolet, Hong Kong Informal Seating Arrangements by Michael Wolff, In Tune Variations on an Orchestra by Julia Baier, Itoshima by Juliane Eirich, History of the Visit by Daniel Reuter, and others.
One of the key factors of the Vienna Photobook Festival is the deep knowledge of their trade and the experience featured by the professional booksellers who steadily solve the attendees doubts and advise them in every regard.
First edition 2014 of Martin Parr Looking at Books, featuring 64 pages and 22 photographs, edited in Zurich by Roger Eberhard, and designed by Alexandra Brun, at the booth of b.frank books (Switzerland), its publisher.
2D23D Photography as Sculpture Sculpture as Photography, at the booth of Ostlicht Galerie für Fotografie (Austria).
Edited by Verlag für moderne Kunst, Wien in 2014 and featuring 136 pages, it is the catalogue photobook about the exhibition 2D23D held at Galerie Ostlicht Vienna between October 4th and November 26th, 2014 and curated by Rebekka Reuter (Chief Curator at Ostlicht Galerie) and Martin Guttmann (artist) that included works by Alfons Schilling, Peter Weibel, Nadim Vardag, Kerstin Cmelka, Will Benedict, Heimo Zobernig, Sonia Leimer, Michael Hakimi, Nora Schultz, Birgit Jürgenssen, Clegg & Guttmann, Christian Mayer, Michael Hoepfner and Friederike Pezold.
Limited signed print edition of the photobook Conversations by Rémi Coignet at the booth of The Eyes Publishing (France).
People in the Soviet World and in the Russian World, at the booth of the Association of Hungarian Photographers (Hungary).
A photobook by András Bánkuti, published in 2007 and dealing on the social, political and economical changes experienced between the last years of the former Soviet Union and the two next decades of Russia after the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, and their influence on the civil population.
András Bánkuti is an awarded Hungarian photojournalist who in 1983 was bestowed the International Master of Press Photography by the International Journalists Association, and in 1993 won the Pulitzer Memorial Prize.
He´s currently the Editor-in-Chief of Digitalis Foto Magazin, one of the best photography magazines in the world and published bimonthly.
LECTURE " WHY MAKE A PHOTOBOOK " BY THE AWARD WINNING PHOTOBOOK DESIGNER FROM POLAND ANIA NALECKA
It took place between 14:00 and 15:00 h of Sunday, June 21, 2015.
LECTURE " ONLY ON PAPER " BY MICHAEL MACK
It took place between 15:00 and 16:30 h of Sunday, June 21, 2015.
Text and Photos: José Manuel Serrano Esparza
