Fotobook Festival 2 Kasseler Fotoforum Photography

The independent Photobook
The second Kasseler Photobook-Festival

From the wish to the book. how does a photographic work become a photobook? Is a photobook without compromises possible? Which avenues towards the photobook are currently possible? For a few years now software, internet and digital print have opened completely new perspectives: small and even smaller editions, print on demand, flexible production.

What are the compromises that concept, creation and production demand and how do in-house productions reach their buyers? of what significance are virtual internet photobooks? How do established publishers respond to these challenges and which criteria do they use when choosing book projects for publication?

The 2nd Photobook Festival in the course of the Fotofrühling Kassel will address questions in detail such as content, production and distribution, from 14 to 17 May 2009.

Just like in previous years renowned guests (photographers, publishers, publicists) will be invited to speak on these topics and to engage in discussions with the participants. and in order to get a practical impression of how photos can be turned into books, the Fotoforum Kassel will be calling for the submission of photobook dummies – the prototypes of photobooks. The best of the submitted dummies will be exhibited at the event. Furthermore, we will continue the Photobook award with its renowned nominations of the best new releases of the previous year, accompanied by a new exhibition and a second catalogue. Apart from exhibitions and talks there will also be workshops for the production of photobooks. Stalls by booksellers and antiquarians will be part of the program and together with the well established portfolio viewings there will once again be a stimulating discourse between photographers and experienced experts.

Lectures and reviews by GERRY BADGER, JEFFREY LADD (5B4 & errataeditions), WASSINKLUNDGREN and others ..

101 Billionaires by Rob Hornstra will used on 16 May 2009 during “New Documentations”, a special evening screening of long-form works at the upcoming New York Photo Festival. The book will also be exhibited during the Fotobook Festival in Kassel, Germany (15-17 May 2009), where it has been nominated for the best photo book of the past year. And Fw: (a platform for photographers) has included 101 Billionaires in its book exhibition ‘Pages’ during Photo España.

See for Kasseler Fotoforum 2008 ...

Open publication - Free publishing - More press

Views & Reviews Gand (Gent/Ghent) Sasha (Sacha) Stone Photography

Rare city book on the Belgian city of Gand (Gent/Ghent) by Russian photographer Sasha (Sacha) Stone and his wife Cami, together Studio Stone. With a preface by Paul Colin.

Sasha Stone is also known for his work in surrealist magazines Bifur and Varietés, his books on Berlin and Paris and the famous nude portfolio 'Femmes'. In the 1930's Studio Stone was based in Brussels.

He died aged 45, fleeing the German attack on Brussels in May 1940.

Russian/American Photographer | Born: 1895 - Died: 1940Sasha Stone (1895-1940) was born Aleksander Serge Steinsapir in St. Petersburg, Russia, of Jewish parents. He lived and worked in Europe and America between the wars and is best known for his portraits, nude studies, photographs of Berlin and for his photojournalism. Stone studied engineering in Warsaw, and then spent several years in New York, where he obtained American citizenship and chose the pseudonym Sasha Stone. After a sculptor and painter education in Paris and Berlin, Stone described himself as an expert in the fields of advertising, architecture, illustration, film, and stage design. In the 1920s, Sasha Stone worked as a professional photographer in Berlin, primarily for the illustrated magazines published by the Ullstein publishing house. He belonged to the circle around the constructivist periodical "G", which included Moholy-Nagy, Mies van der Rohe, El Lissitzky and Walter Benjamin. He created the photomontage for the original book jacket of Benjamin's famous Einbahnstraße (One-Way Street) - which is still used for the English Penguin edition. In 1929, Stone published Berlin in Pictures, which is extremely difficult to find today. Both, his and his wife Cami's photographs were published in the German photography annual Das Deutsche Lichtbild. Threatened by the rising Fascism, they fled Germany in 1932 and moved to Brussels. Their studio was located at 18 rue de Naples until the German invasion of Belgium in 1940. Sasha Stone's nude work appeared in Les Femmes, and was published by Editions Arts et Metiers Graphiques, Paris, in 1933. His nudes are usually in poses that are quite modernist in sensibility, and the lighting emphasizes their sculptural shapes and angles. The couple separated in 1939. Cami again assumed her maiden name. Sasha died in 1939 during his flight to the United States in Perpignan. 800 photos of the archive of Cami and Sasha Stone, lost until recently, were auctioned in Argenteuil, France, in 2009. Cami Stones nephew had rescued the archive during World War II and stored it until last year.

Gand Gent august 21 2007

Gand Gent august 21 2007

Nurse Midwife Maude Callen Eases Pain of Birth, Life and Death Life Magazine W. Eugene Smith Photojournalism Photography

Life Magazine December 3, 1951 – Black Nurse Midwife Photographic Essay by W. Eugene Smith


In 1951 Life Magazine was at it’s best and this issue had one of the best photographic essays ever by W. Eugene Smith. The 12 page story is titled "Nurse Midwife Maude Callen Eases Pain of Birth and Death" The story follows Maude and her work in Pineville, South Carolina (Berkley County) and takes you on "Maude’s 16-Hour Day" In 1951 "There are only nine trained Midwives in South Carolina and 300 in the nation" and Maude was one of the 20,000 common midwives practicing. This is a wonderful story with pictures of a way of life that has slipped by.

This winter, Foam presents a retrospective containing work by W. Eugene Smith (US, 1918-1978). Smith has been hailed as the founder of the photographic essay. His extensive pictorial narratives, accompanied by captions and comments, appeared in magazines such as the world-famous American periodical Life in the 1950s, the heyday of photographic journalism. Smith’s black-and-white reportages exhibit a powerful sense of involvement, dealing with subject matter that reflects his social commitment.

Foam features six of his finest series, including The Country Doctor (1948), acclaimed as photojournalism’s first official photo essay. Other famous series such as Nurse Midwife, A Man of Mercy, Spanish Village, Pittsburgh and Minamata are also shown in the exhibition. Alongside the photos, magazines are on display as well as the short documentary entitled Lamp Unto My Feet.

Smith became interested in photography at an early age, inspired by his mother who was an enthusiastic amateur photographer. At fifteen, he published his first picture in a local newspaper. This marks the start of his professional career as a photographer for publications such as Newsweek, culminating in his appointment at Life.

It was in this magazine that he published about fifty series, including The Country Doctor, Nurse Midwife, A Man of Mercy and Spanish Village.

His tremendous sense of involvement, his essential humanism and his desire to achieve social change are all characteristic of W. Eugene Smith’s photography. Yet his tenure at Life was marked by constant conflict with the editors. Smith researched his stories thoroughly and submitted his photos with extensive captions, notes and lay-out suggestions. These were generally ignored, which eventually led to Smith’s resignation.

In 1955, Smith joined Magnum in the hope that this would give him the freedom to publish his photos the way he wanted. His first project for Magnum, Pittsburgh, was also his last: the series failed to meet his exacting demands. Smith invested all his emotional and financial resources in Pittsburgh. Other subsequent reportages, such as Minamata, suffered a similar fate.

Having been wounded while taking pictures on the front line during the Second World War, overcome by frustration and bedevilled by his own perfectionism, Smith succumbed to drug and alcohol abuse. His health quickly deteriorated. He ended his career as professor at the Center for Creative Photography in Tucson, only to die shortly after his appointment. 

Sex Objects: An American Photodocumentary Eric Kroll Highly Uncomfortable Photo Books Erik Kessels / Paul Kooiker Photography

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ABECEDA [Alphabet] VITEZSLAV NEZVAL KAREL TEIGE Graphic Design

NEZVAL, VITEZSLAV; TEIGE, KAREL, design.

ABECEDA [Alphabet]

"In Nezval’s Abeceda, a cycle of rhymes based on the shapes of letters, I tried to create a 'typofoto' of a purely abstract and poetic nature, setting into graphic poetry what Nezval set into verbal poetry in his verse, both being poems evoking the magic signs of the alphabet." -Karel Teige

FIRST EDITION IN ORIGINAL WRAPPERS, one of 2000 copies printed, of one of the most important and influential books of European modernism. Illustrated with 25 black and white photomontages.

"The 1926 book Alphabet (Abeceda) is a landmark achievement in European modernism. Its frequent reproduction in exhibition catalogues and scholarly articles has made it a key symbol of Devetsil (1920-ca. 1931), the Czech artists' collective within whose ranks the book was conceived, and its importance is increasingly measured in international terms as well. The book consists of a series of rhymed quatrains by Devetsil poet Vitezslav Nezval, titled and ordered according to the letters of the Latin alphabet. Facing each set of verses is a Constructivist photomontage layout by Karel Teige, a painter turned typographer who was also Devetsil's spokesperson and leading theorist. Teige developed his graphic design around photographs of dancer and choreographer Milada (Milca) Mayerova, a recent affiliate of the group, who had performed a stage version of "Alphabet" to accompany a recitation of the poem at a theatrical evening in Nezval's honor in April 1926... The project to create a new alphabet epitomizes the proselytizing attitude of avant-gardists in various fields in the years after World War I. From Dada poetry to Constructivist architecture and design, from calls to overhaul theater to revolutions in literary theory, a panoply of experiments took the alphabet as their model or target and disclosed the potency of this elementary linguistic structure as a trope for creative renewal and social revolution. With its large print, childlike verses, and an instructional sequence that matches a single letter in text and image on every page spread, Alphabet presents itself as the class reader for that internationally sponsored course in universal reeducation." (Matthew S. Witkovsky, "Staging language: Milca Mayerova and the Czech book Alphabet").

"An important landmark of the Czech Avant-Garde and ... one of the first conceptual artists' books"; an "important book which attempted to challenge both conventional artistic hierarchies and class distinctions with an art that could be equally embraced by a professor or a street cleaner" (The Photobook).

Nezval Vitezslav Abeceda 1926

Nezval Vitezslav Abeceda 1926