Artist Blog

Every week an artist whose single image was published by Der Greif is given a platform in which to blog about contemporary photography.

Why books?   Books travel, are an amazing way to share ideas and stories because of their intimate character. Most books I look at present a unique materiality that the pixel caption can’t reproduce. I like that. I feel It makes sense to do editions that only exist in the « real » life. The reflection of "why make book" was developped over a 3 year collaboration with editor Delphine Bedel, with whom we discussed and experimented with the idea of the book form. Our first common work called « Ma tête à couper » (with graphic designer Jeremy Schorderet) was published by hardcopy in 2011. We tasted blood. 2012, we brought out « Vote for me! » (with graphic designer Nicolas Leuba). A black and white rather punk edition, with additional orange fluo riso print and handmade spray paint. Idea was to blur the perception between what’s printed and what’s painted. I wanted a book that stinks, that gets old, that lives. Last year, we publish a third book « A Plastic Tool » (with graphic designer Niels Wehrspann, printed by Ditto Press). Visually quite violent, complicated, messed up. For sure, It’s not telling any fair tale. It is telling about life nowadays (at least It tries in an indirect way), it tells about a saturated world, a suffering and yet fighting world. Beauty hides on ever page. The organic pattern (that contains the idea of time passing, of what rots), covers the photographic material in a poetic manner. Again, the risographs overlapping on the digital offsetprint as well as the manual spray paint, create a subtile pictorial experience that only the physical reading can transmit. The book making became over time, a hybridization between editorial and artistic practice, a great learning process between editors, graphic designers as well as with the printers.

Do crazy books, love them hard!

+++ Check out this riso drawing book I LOVE LOVE LOVE Art Prison #4 'Drawjin' by Mathias Forbach & Thomas Koenig