White Books

The white books feature artworks I have made over the course of my career. They are catalogues of particular projects that have not previously been available as books. The editions of the white books are unlimited, the books are neither numbered nor signed. They are obtainable either through my shop or directly at the Blurb or Lulu online bookstores. Please click the links below for book previews.

Arcana
Arcana is a series of photographs made from discarded and damaged negatives that have been collected over a long period of time from many cities. These abandoned images have either been rejected or lost by their original owners. Removed from their original context and scratched by the streets they were dropped on, we are given a rare, altered glimpse into the everyday lives of strangers. There is a kind of violence in the degraded objects these negatives have become, but also a beauty. The book includes the entire series of 45 photographs.
18 x 18 cm, 80 pages, b&w, softcover 24 € / hardcover 34 € – preview

Bilder von der Straße
Bilder von der Straße (Pictures from the Street) is a thirty-year project which began in 1982 and ended in 2012. During this time I picked up one thousand lost or abandoned photographs from the world’s pavements. Although the collection has been exhibited widely, this is the first time it is printed as a complete set. Published in four volumes, the books present every found photograph or its  fragments in their original size and in the chronological order they were discovered. No artistic intervention has taken place except for the inclusion of the date and location where each picture was found. As well as providing a record of my travels, the books document people’s use and abuse of photographs, with almost all the photographs in the collection depicting people and more than half of these being ripped or defaced in some way.
This act of discarding or destroying individual photographs seems to point to a desire to eliminate memories of specific moments in people’s lives. By encouraging viewers to imagine the stories of the people depicted, the project raises questions about the emotionally-charged events that could warrant such destruction. I consider this collection to be a social documentary consisting of both visual artefacts and human documents. Produced in a systematic manner, it is an inventory of lost photographs and memories that hint at the mysteries of people’s private lives and at their attempts to document and destroy them.
29.7 x 21 cm, softcover, 4 volumes in a box, 256 pages each, colour, 180 € – preview vol. I, vol. II, vol. III, vol. IV

Cyberspaces
Cyberspaces is a series of interior photographs taken from many web cams. It is a collection of pictures that are devoid of actual human presence. The focus of the image unclear, you will start to hunt the image for human presence, for any object that will help identify the scene you are faced with. Bedrooms and chairs, rooms with garish colours stare blankly back at you, until a pair of shoes come into view. Plastic stilettos. And then the vibrators appear. This is a series of screenshots taken from interactive pornography websites, but without the sex workers. The book includes the entire series of 36 photographs.
18 x 18 cm, 40 pages, colour, softcover 20 € / hardcover 28 € – preview

Faits divers
“Through photographs, the world becomes a series of unrelated, free-standing particles; and history, past and present, a set of anecdotes and faits divers. The camera makes reality atomic, manageable, and opaque. It is a view of the world which denies interconnectedness, continuity, but which confers on each moment the character of a mystery.” Susan Sontag, On Photography, 1977
Faits divers is a collection of non-sensational images taken from a Berlin tabloid newspaper. The images, along with the title of the photograph have been removed from their original context, enlarged and placed separate from their news story. The result is a view of how image and minimal text can reveal and hide the connecting story in equal measures. It makes comment about some of the mundane news stories that make it to print. The book includes the entire series of twelve photographs.
18 x 18 cm, 36 pages, b&w, softcover 20 € / hardcover 28 € – preview

Reload
The book Reload brings together a selection of photographs from various online image searches. This book begins to show something of the way in which we photograph everyday scenarios and highlights what we deem to be ‘event’ enough to capture on film. All of these photographs depict a kind of triumph, whether it be at finding a particularly violent road kill, documenting the fact that you are flying on an airplane, or that you have finished in the top three of a competition. The book Reload is an edited version of a digital multichannel photo installation that shows 900 photographs.
18 x 18 cm, 64 pages, colour, softcover 24 € / hardcover 34 € – preview

Untitled Portraits
Twenty-one pixelated and decontextualized portraits of politicians altered in such a way as to test the treshold of recognition.
23 x 15 cm, 32 pages, colour, softcover, 12 € – preview

Vierzig einfache Zeichnungen
Forty simple drawings (2002)
23 x 15 cm, 50 pages, b&w, softcover, 10 € – preview

Zwölf einfache Zeichnungen
Twelve simple drawings (2003)
23 x 15 cm, 32 pages, b&w, softcover, 10 € – preview

Zwölf Frauen
Portraits of twelve women united by a status unique only to them.
23 x 15 cm, 34 pages, b&w, softcover, 10 € – preview