Photobooks of 2017: Eva-Maria Kunz

How do I buy books? There are those that matter, those that are simply gorgeous, those that the world probably wouldn’t miss but I for sure would. There are books that I don’t need to mention because I know they will be on others’ lists, like Jim Mortram’s very necessary Small Town Inertia or Colin Pantall’s gorgeous All Quiet on the Home Front. To mention just two. Ok, so I mentioned them anyway 🙂

And then there are books that I haven’t gotten yet and I will regret not mentioning now.

If I could pick only one, it would be with no doubt Miki Hasegawa‘s Internal Notebook, it has it all: a very respectful treatment of the important subject matter of child abuse, something we need to talk about, it is well researched and shot, and the book design integrates perfectly all the different elements.

But since I can pick more, I’ll also mention two of the books that deal with another subject matter that has finally exploded in 2017, and with which we must deal, and of course is all but new: migration. Henk Wildschut’s Ville de Calais and Christoph Oeschger’s They’ve Made Us Ghosts, similar but different help see that sweeping the problem under the rug is definitely not the solution.

I’m so happy that Irina Popova has re-published If You Have A Secret, so I can add it here (I have the first edition and didn’t get a chance to do so back then). And staying in Russia (sort of), I want to signal David Monteleone’s The April Thesis, which combines text, archive pictures and new photographs, plus a crossover between the latter two in the sense that Monteleone puts himself in Lenin’s shoes. A different twist.

Igor Posner’s Past Perfect Continuous feeds my need of plein immersion into photography without needing any explanation. As a book object it is very classic and straightforward, no frills. Hunter Grill by Alexandre Christiaens on the other hand, while fulfilling the same purpose as Posner’s book, has a much more complex design, that also satisfies the handy/crafty woman that is in me. Full disclosure: I still haven’t read the texts, I want to stay in my own bubbles when looking at the pictures.

Last but not least, After the Firebird by Ekaterina Vasilyeva. Because it is delicate, close, intimate, fragile, weird and beautiful, in some ways it resembles Pantall’s, even though it is completely different.

All this is a very personal take on books I had the pleasure of discovering this year. In no way it can be complete. But these titles have provoked a gut reaction. And that is how I usually am drawn also to the projects we publish with ceiba editions, where I am one of the co-founders and the artistic director.

Images: top, Miki Hasegawa – Internal Notebook, below, Igor Posner – Past Perfect Continuous, Henk Wildschut – Ville de Calais

Photobooks of 2017: Eva-Maria Kunz

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