Sweet Life, 122 Colour Photographs, The Banquet, Drum Errata Editions Summer 2012 Photobooks Photography

2012 is an exciting year as Errata Editions becomes a 501(c)3 non-profit organization. One of the goals of the Errata Foundation will be to distribute our books to schools and public libraries for free through the estabilshment of library donation programs.

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* Books on Books #13 Ed van der Elsken: Sweet Life Hardcover w/ Dustjacket 9.5 x 7 in. 190 pages 120 Duotone illustrations Essays by Ed van der Elsken, Frits Gierstberg ISBN: 978-1-935004-25-7 $39.95

In 1960, armed with two magazine commissions and a stipend from Netherlands television, Ed van der Elsken and his wife Gerda set off on a fourteen month journey around the world. Six years after their return, he published his travelogue Sweet Life which exhibited a panoply of layout effects - double-page bleeds, crops, printed in deep gravure, and different cover designs for each of the six countries in which it was published. Books on Books #13 presents a study of this classic book with a contemporary essay by Frits Gierstberg.

Martin Parr and Gerry Badger : The Photobook: A History volume 1/ The Indecisive Moment: The 'Stream-of-Consciousness' Photobook

Ed van der Elsken Sweet Life

Out of stream-of-consciousness photography emerged several distinct genres - the 'personal' documentary, the diaristic photobook, the photonovel and so on. Another was the photographic odyssey, the photographer's quest to find himself (it's generally a boy thing), the photographic version of On the Road. The epitome of this genre is, of course , Robert Frank's The Americans, but not far behind is Ed van der Elsken's epic photojourney - Sweet Life. Whereas Frank criss-crossed the United States, Van der Elsken was even more wide-ranging. Sweet Life is the result of a 14-month world trip that he made in 1960-1, covering West Africa, the Malay Peninsula, the Philippines, Hong Kong, Japan, the United States and Mexico. Sweet Life was the name of a little tramp steamer in the Philippines, which makes its appearance in the book. Not surprisingly, modes of transport form one of the volume's major leitmotifs.

Van der Elsken's rationale for this freewheeling odyssey is typical Existential: 'I didn't understand one damn thing about it, except that it's enough to keep me in a delirium of deligth, surprise, enthusiasm, despair, enough to keep me roaming, stumbling, faltering, cursing, adoring, hating the destruction, the violence in myself and others.'

Although Sweet Life chronicles a journey, Van der Elsken's magnum opus has more in common with William Klein's New York than with The Americans. Like Klein, Van der Elsken designed the whole package himself, in an equally cinematic, improvisational, free-association way - there is no linear determinism in the narrative, though it does progress more-of-less logically from country to country.Like Klein, Van der Elsken brings into play a whole panoply of layout effects - double-page bleeds, crops, running pictures together and so on - and it is an unprecedented book in that a different cover for each of the seven countries in which it was published. Also like Klein's book, van der Elsken's was a big hit in Japan. His work consituted a significant influence on the young japanese photographers of the 1960s, about to be hit by the iconoclasm of the Provoke era.

Van der Elsken's words quoted above describe the tenor of the book as much as his journey. Sweet Life is a sprawing, exuberant cornucopia, a preview of the pure stream-of-consciousness, machine-gun approach that would soon come with the japanese Provoke aestetic, Van der Elsken's work has its dark and pessistic undertones, although in Sweet Life bold, frantic energies predominate.

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* Books on Books #14 Keld Helmer-Petersen: 122 Colour Photographs Hardcover w/ Dustjacket 9.5 x 7 in. 136 pages 75 Color illustrations Essays by Mette Sandbye, Jeffrey Ladd ISBN: 978-1-935004-27-1 $39.95

In 1948 the Danish photographer Keld Helmer-Petersen prefigured the work of Willam Eggleston and Stephen Shore by two decades with the aim to make pictures that would only work in color, and not in black and white. By concentrating on the mundane and the everyday 122 Colour Photographs deserves credit as a singular, remarkably early and largely successful attempt to make color photography work. Books on Books #14 presents Helmer-Petersen’s masterwork along with an essay by the historian Mette Sandbye called Colour Cool.

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* Books on Books #15 Nobuyoshi Araki: The Banquet Hardcover w/ Dustjacket 9.5 x 7 in. 136 pages 85 Color and Duotone illustrations Essays by Nobuyoshi Araki, Ivan Vartanian ISBN: 978-1-935004-29-5 $39.95

Nobuyoshi Araki’s “Shokuji” (The Banquet) is a tribute to his late wife Yoko through a ‘photo-diary’ of the food they shared together in the last months of her life. Resembling commercial food pictures that Araki had been making with a ring flash and a macro lens and combined with black-and-white images he photographed at home after doctors told Araki that his wife had only a month left to live. Books on Books #15 presents Araki’s deeply personal diary of loss in its entirety along with an essay by Ivan Vartanian.

"Shokuji (The Banquet) is another tribute to Nobuyoshi Araki's late wife Yoko...A 'photo-diary' of the food they ate together in the last months of her life, the book is divided into three sections. Two parts are double-page photographic spreads of food, enclosing a middle section that is a written 'food diary'...Araki was making commercial food pictures on a regular basis, and the color section of the book represents a selection of these, beginning in 1985, and shot with ring flash and a macro lens. The black-and-white section was photographed using available room light at home, and was started when doctors told Araki that his wife had only around a month left to live...The obvious metaphor is to suggest that the color was leaving Araki's world, but his intentions are not quite so simple. The retreat from color is a retreat from realism to romanticism, where what were clearly images of food now become images of matter, like micro-photography, echoing the viral landscape of the cancer that was destroying his wife."--Parr & Badger, The Photobook, A History, vol. I 

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* Books on Books #16 Krass Clement: Drum Hardcover w/ Dustjacket 9.5 x 7 in. 120 pages 55 Duotone illustrations Essays by Rune Gade, Jeffrey Ladd ISBN: 978-1-935004-31-8 $39.95

Photographed in a single evening with only three rolls of film, Krass Clement’s Drum is now considered one of the most important contributions to the contemporary Danish photobook. Concentrating on one principal character – a hunched, weather beaten old man who sits alone with his drink, Drum comments on community, the outsider, alienation and the terrors of being alone. Books on Books #16 presents every page spread from Clement’s masterwork with an essay by the photo historian Rune Gade called Halting, Without Halting: On Krass Clement’s Photobook Drum.