Hans Eijkelboom | Portraits & Cameras

Hans Eijkelboom

Portraits & Cameras

Amsterdam, The Netherlands: Self Published, 2009

64 pp., 21 x 13.8 cm., softcover

Edition of 1000

Martin Parr - who selected this title as one of the more important photo books of the decade - wrote the following about the artist: "Anthropologists often make use of photography in their research, especially when gathering information about a society's strange and fascinating habits. If I were an anthropologist, the first photographer I would call upon is Eijkelboom.” 

Another book artist who employs serial photography, Erik Kessels calls Eijkelboom "one of the most remarkable people I have come to know during the last few years."

Eijkelboom's first exhibited work in 1971, when he was only 21 years old, in the landmark SONSBEEK 71 exhibition. He was the youngest artist in a show that included Vito Acconci, Stanley Brouwn, Tony Conrad, Hollis Frampton, Dan Graham, Donald Judd, On Kawara, Bruce Nauman, Dennis Oppenheim, Nam June Paik, Ed Ruscha, Fred Sandback, Richard Serra, Paul Sharits, Michael Snow, Joyce Wieland, Lawrence Weiner, and many others.

The Amsterdam-based artist has produced over thirty artist's books, many of them self-published. One of the best, and hardest to acquire is In de Krant, or Being in the Newspaper. For ten consecutive days Eijkelboom succeeded in having his picture appear in the same newspaper. He tracked a press photographer and snuck into the frame whenever possible, in photographs ranging from hard news such as accidents and demonstrations, to promotional pieces like store openings. It's a durational performance documented unwittingly by the press.

For With My Family, in 1973, Eijkelboom rang random doorbells during the day when husbands and fathers were likely to be out at work. He convinced the women answering the door to let him in and pose for a family portrait, with him in the place of the missing father, often with a toddler bouncing happily on his knee.

A more recent project, 10 Euro Outfits, consists of self-portraits while travelling. For each, Eijkelboom photographs himself wearing outfits he bought locally, never spending more than ten euros.

In Portraits & Cameras photography itself (the camera, representation, etc.) becomes the subject matter. Eijkelboom was sixty years old at the time, and the sixty pages of the book reproduce an image of the artist at every year of his life. These cropped portraits are coupled with a a magazine ad featuring a camera introduced in that same year. The artist ages as the technology advances. Like most of his work, the book is smart, compelling and funny.

Ernest Cole | House of Bondage

Ernest Cole

House of Bondage

New York City, USA: Aperture, 2022

232 pp., 21.5 x 29 cm., hardcover

Edition size unknown

Last night I went to see Raoul Peck's documentary Ernest Cole: Lost and Found, which was essentially an adaptation of an artist’s book. Cole was South Africa's first black freelance photographer and House of Bondage (originally published in 1967) was his only publication. 

The book features eighteen photoessays about life under apartheid, including mining, education, domestic work, healthcare and banishment. To avoid arrest, many of the images had to be taken surreptitiously, with Cole learning to shoot discreetly, from the waist. 

“That was the first time you basically have a camera inside the belly of the beast,” said Peck.

House of Bondage was instantly banned in South Africa and the photographer, 27 at the time, was exiled. Smuggling his negatives with him, Cole fled to live in New York, which he describes as a "soulless city.” He continued to take photographs, but never made another book. The film follows what he describes as his “slow disintegration and descent into hell”, living in rooming houses and sometimes on the street. 

Cole died of pancreatic cancer at the age of 49, in 1990 - a week after Nelson Mandela was released from prison. 

Almost thirty years later, in 2017, 60,000 negatives of his work were mysteriously discovered in a Swedish bank safe, along with research materials and writings by the artist. Ernest Cole: Lost and Found consists almost entirely of these still b&w images, and Cole’s own words, narrated by Actor LaKeith Stanfield (the star of Sorry to Bother You).

This 2022 expanded edition of House of Bondage makes use of some of these newly discovered images, and is also supplemented by a text by MoMA curator Oluremi C. Onabanjo, who observes: "Deftly harnessing image and text, Cole mines the grounds upon which Black life in South Africa during the twentieth century was surveilled, regulated, and subjected to forms of punitive existence. His lucid analysis and sophisticated visual grammar produces a blistering critique that reverberates not through the register of the spectacular, but rather through the relentless documentation of so-called unremarkable scenes".

Fumi Nagasaka | Teenage Riot

Fumi Nagasaka

Teenage Riot

Port Colborne, Canada: Bywater Bros. Editions, 2018

80 pp., 22.7 x 16.7 cm., softcover

Edition size unknown

Taking it's title from a 1988 Sonic Youth song, Teenage Riot is Japanese photographer Fumi Nagasaka's second book, after the 2016 Kohl Editions title Untitled Youth. 

The book presents a series of portraits taken over the course of several years, of four teenage girls from varying backgrounds: Maxine from the small Ontario town of Port Colborne; sisters Isabella and Alana from Brooklyn; and Fubuki, a young student from Tokyo. 

Nagasaka was specifically interested in how their different upbringings were reflected in each girl’s personality and interests.

"The place they grew up in really affects who they become," she told Paige Silveria at Office Magazine. "For the girl in Canada, she’s my book publisher’s daughter. I met her at the New York book fair three years or so ago. I was surprised how different she was from her parents, who are very cultural. She really likes Kim Kardashian and had really crazy eyelashes. I thought it was so interesting that she grew up in an art environment and had such dissimilar interests from her parents. That made me want to photograph her. So, I spent some time up with them at their home in Canada. Because the town is very small, all of the information she gets is from social media and the internet. She would wear Juicy Couture pink velour tracksuits and was really into Victoria’s Secret. Every year I went back and she would change her style—it was always very different from the year before. And when she turned 16, she got her driver’s license. So I would drive around with her in the white BMW her parents gave her."

Collaborating with a subject over many years helped Nagasaka create intimate and candid images of the young women that wouldn't be possible with single-sitting portraiture. 

"Photographing youth is very exciting for me as it underlines that youth is something fleeting and that we can’t keep forever. Listening to their dreams, looking at their pure expressions motivates me to capture and record moments in their lives. Youth in fact, has been the singular focus of my published works," she told NPR in 2021. 

Teenage Riot is available from the publisher, for $25 CDN, here. 

Gus Van Sant | 108 Portraits

Gus Van Sant

108 Portraits 

Santa Fe, USA: Twin Palms Publishers, 1992

[124] pp., hardcover

Edition of 4000

Stark, unadorned portraits taken in Portland, New York and Los Angeles between 1988 and 1992 by film director Gus Van Sant. 

The images include casting polaroids from his earliest films, such as Matt Dillon, William S Burroughs and Heather Graham (Drugstore Cowboy) and River Phoenix and Keanu Reeves (My Own Private Idaho).  Portraits of other filmmakers include Robert Altman, Dennis Hopper,  Francis Ford and Sofia Coppola, Todd Haynes and John Waters. Featured musicians include Tracey Chapman, David Bowie, David Byrne, and Flea and Anthony Keidis from the Red Hot Chilli Peppers. 

Hans Eijkelboom | Identity

Hans Eijkelboom
Identity
Amsterdam, The Netherlands: Self-published, 1977
1 pp., 15.2 x 22.5 cm., leporello
Edition size unknown


The artist's assistant is tasked with tracking down friends from the decade prior and asking them what they remember about Eijkelboom. They are asked to imagine what occupation he holds. The artist is then portrayed personifying the profession attributed to him by the interviewee. These include a bank clerk, a photographer, a jet pilot, a filibuster and an idealist.


"Basically, throughout my whole career I have examined the same things. It’s always about identity. In the beginning it was about my identity, and now it’s more about identity generally in society. I studied architecture and I used my camera to photograph landscapes and maquettes and so on. Then I was interested in trying to capture how weather affected buildings, for example how houses change colour when it’s raining. This led me to photograph myself when I was wet, and that was the start of all my work. "

- Hans Eijkelboom

Hans Eijkelboom | The Street and Modern Life

Hans Eijkelboom
The Street and Modern Life
Stockport, UK: Dewi Lewis Publishing, 2015
120 pp., 19 x 34.5 cm., hardcover
Edition size unknown

Multistory is a British arts organization based in West Bromwich who work with "outstanding artists to make art with, for and about the people of Sandwell." They work with local residents, photographers, writers, documentary film-makers and artists with the aim to reflect and celebrate "everyday life from factories, pubs and clubs, people’s homes, gurdwaras and markets." Their projects include Martin Parr's Black Country Stories, Black Country Allotment Society by his wife Susan Parr, and now The Street and Modern Life by Hans Eijkelboom.

Parr has long championed Eijkelboom's work, with effusive praise such as "If I were an anthropologist, the first photographer I would call upon is Hans Eijkelboom. In fact, if I were a visitor from another planet looking for information on the nature of city life, I would also engage the services of Eijkelboom".

Eijkelboom has published over fifty photo-based artist books, several of them portraits of cities (Amsterdam by Numbers, New York by Numbers, Paris New York Shanghai, etc.). In these series he stands on a street corner with a camera around his neck, surreptitiously photographing passersby. The images are later arranged into photogrids, creating 'teams' out of the random residents and tourists, typically based on their clothing. These images highlight the way our purchases reflect our deep rooted need to both belong to a community and to distinguish ourselves as individuals.

The book launches with a signing by the artist at 5pm on Wednesday July 8th, at the Cosmos in Magasin Électrique, Parc des Ateliers SNCF, Arles, France. Martin Parr will be signing his Black Country Stories the day prior. For a full listing of signings and events, visit the publisher's website, here.

Visit Multistory here.

Monica Alcazar-Duarte | Your photographs could be used by drug dealers

Monica Alcazar-Duarte
Your photographs could be used by drug dealers
London, UK: Self-published, 2014
24 x 33 cm., spiral-bound
Edition of 150

A photobook documenting the lives of two neighboring towns in Mexico. Spiral-bound on all four sides and housed in red sewn cloth bag. The title comes from a conversation the artist had with a soldier when she asked permission to take his photograph.

Annelies Štrba | Noonday

Annelies Štrba
Noonday
Zurich, Switzerland: Lars Müller Publishers, 2015
336 pp., 17.3 × 24 cm., hardcover
Edition size unknown


Annelies Štrba was born in Zug, Switzerland in 1947. She has been the subject of one person exhibitions in the United States, England, France, Germany, and Switzerland, at venues such as Frith Street Gallery, Tate Liverpool, Douglas Hyde Gallery, and Thread Waxing Space. She is best known for photographs of children, particularly her own. In 2002, the East London gallery Rhodes + Mann faced prosecution for an image of her daughter (reportedly 12, but actually 16) naked in the bathtub.

Noonday (the title is inspired by the final stanza of Emily Brontë's A Day Dream) can be regarded as a sequel to her book Shades of Time, published almost twenty years ago, also by Lars Müller Publishers. But whereas that collection featured raw and direct photographs of Hiroshima, Chernobyl, and Auschwitz, these images are more leisurely and melancholic. Intimate moments with the artist's family (her grandchildren, in particular) are captured in the village of Haworth, Yorkshire.

The book avoids the style of Štrba's 2002 title Aya, which contained digitally altered images saturated with colour and a painterly feel, but presumably Štrba is interested in the Haworth as portrayed in Brontë's Wuthering Heights, rather than the reality of the time. When the Brontë sisters were writing, over-crowded cemeteries filled with poorly-sealed graves led to the highest early mortality rate in England, with almost half of all children failing to make it to age ten.

We see cemeteries here, but if they are dreary at all, it is because of rainfall. There are a few other sites around town, but the volume mostly consists of costumed children playing, swimming and napping.

Accompanying the photographs is a text by Elisa Tamaschke titled "Magic and Loss", quoting from one of Lou Reed's more tender lyrics:

There's a bit of magic in everything

and then some loss to even things out

The line closes the song and album of the same name, from 1992, a disc about the death of two of Reed's close friends (Rotten Rita, from Warhol's Factory and songwriter Doc Pomus).

There is no death here, and the 'summer afternoon' feel of the photographs suggest the only loss being recorded is that of time.

The book is available from the publishers, here, for €49.00 / $65.00 / £39.00.

Hans Eijkelboom | Portraits & Cameras

Hans Eijkelboom
Portraits & Cameras
Amsterdam, The Netherlands: Self Published, 2009
64 pp., 21 x 13.8 cm., softcover
Edition of 1000

Martin Parr, who selected this title as one of the more important photo books of the decade, wrote the following about the artist: "Anthropologists often make use of photography in their research, especially when gathering information about a society's strange and fascinating habits. If I were an anthropologist, the first photographer I would call upon is Eijkelboom.” Another book artist who employs serial photography, Erik Kessels calls Eijkelboom "one of the most remarkable people I have come to know during the last few years."

Eijkelboom's first exhibited work in 1971, when he was only 21 years old, in the landmark SONSBEEK 71 exhibition. He was the youngest artist in a show that included Vito Acconci, Stanley Brouwn, Tony Conrad, Hollis Frampton, Dan Graham, Donald Judd, On Kawara, Bruce Nauman, Dennis Oppenheim, Nam June Paik, Ed Ruscha, Fred Sandback, Richard Serra, Paul Sharits, Michael Snow, Joyce Wieland, Lawrence Weiner, and many others.

The Amsterdam-based artist has produced over thirty artist's books, many of them self-published. One of the best, and hardest to acquire (it's available for $1500.00 US, here) is In de Krant, or Being in the Newspaper. For ten consecutive days Eijkelboom succeeded in having his picture appear in the same newspaper. He tracked a press photographer and snuck into the frame whenever possible, in photographs ranging from hard news such as accidents and demonstrations, to promotional pieces like store openings. It's a durational performance documented unwittingly by the press.

For With My Family, in 1973, Eijkelboom rang random doorbells during the day when husbands and fathers were likely to be out at work. He convinced the women answering the door to let him in and pose for a family portrait, with him in the place of the missing father, often with a toddler bouncing happily on his knee.

A more recent project, 10 Euro Outfits, consists of self-portraits while travelling. For each, Eijkelboom photographs himself wearing outfits he bought locally, never spending more than ten euros.

In Portraits & Cameras photography itself (the camera, representation, etc.) becomes the subject matter. The artist was sixty years old at the time, and the sixty pages of the book reproduce an image of the artist at every year of his life. These cropped portraits are coupled with a a magazine ad featuring a camera introduced in that same year. The artist ages as the technology advances. Like most of his work, the book is smart, compelling and humorous.

It's available here for £85.00.

Hiroshi Sugimoto | Theatres

Hiroshi Sugimoto
Theatres
Koln, Germany: Verlag De Buchhandlung Walter, 2006
224 pp., 11.5 x 12", hardcover
Edition of 4000
A silver-covered cardboard slipcase houses a hardcover book containing 96 images of cinemas, which the artist documented between 1976 and 1999. Sugimoto photographed inside movie theatres, framing the screen, while films played. He would open his aperture at the start of the movie and closing it at the end, using no other light source.



"Different movies give different brightnesses. If it's an optimistic story, I usually end up with a bright screen; if it's a sad story, it's a dark screen. Occult movie? Very dark."

Paul Graham | Films

The Guardian reports today that Paul Graham has been awarded the 2012 Hasselblad prize, presented yearly to "a photographer recognised for major achievements". Previous winners include Walid Raad, Sophie Calle, Nan Goldin, Bernd & Hilla Becher, Jeff Wall, Cindy Sherman, Robert Frank.

Below is Graham’s 2011 book Films, which was made while the artist was preparing for a retrospective exhibition in 2009. While scanning images for the survey show, he began scanning the blank ends of the film rolls and frames that were unexposed. They are presented, blown up and full bleed, over the 64 pages in the book, as a kind of “negative retrospective” of his practice. The title can be purchased here.