Publications

“Similar to a composer, Miriam Prantl carefully employs rhythms and a broad spectrum of hues to construct entire light scores. She creates spatial and site-specific interventions that immerse the viewer in colored light, allowing him or her to merge with the artistic environment. The volatility of the experience, as well as the slowness of the sometimes barely perceptible color changes, virtually forces the viewer to concentrate and contemplate.”

112 pages; 30.5 x 21.5 cm; hardcover; ISBN 978-3-900822-13-1

Published by Galerie am Lindenplatz / c.art publishers in Spring 2021

Personal involvement: Author

In 2018, the parish of St. Moritz in Augsburg invited artist Karin Irmer to create site-specific works for the church interiors designed by John Pawson. With her three installations, Karen Irmer managed to disrupt the sober and austere design of St. Moritz without disturbing the contemplative tranquility of the space. On the contrary: the quiet poetry of her works reinforced the meditative atmosphere of the church, her subtle interventions creating virtual refuges beyond space and time, offering visitors new possibilities for reflection and contemplation.

Published by St. Moritzkirche in Fall 2020

Personal involvement: Author

Imagining Everyday Life: Engagements with Vernacular Photography brings together leading scholars and critics to consider vernacular photography: snapshots and family pictures; photo albums and displays; mug shots and identification photographs; and ethnographic, scientific, industrial, and architectural images. What do these ordinary photographs that people make and use every day tell us about our social patterns and personal rituals, and how we reinforce or resist structures of identity or political participation? Defining vernacular photography by its social function rather than by its aesthetic features, the essayists reexamine these ordinary photographs in relation to power and ideology, as well as to gender, race, ethnicity, and sexuality in the communities from which they originated. The authors reevaluate the agency of the makers, compilers, subjects, and viewers of these vernacular images, and highlight the affects, touch, and sounds that shape them and the social roles they play. These new approaches recast existing histories of photography, and insert into those narratives objects and questions that have been in large part ignored or erased.

Awards: Winner “Photography Catalogue of the Year,“ ParisPhoto Aperture PhotoBook Awards 2020

Nominations: Shortlist „Traditional Category,“ Lucie Photo Book Prize 2020

432 pages; 24.5 x 17 cm; softcover; ISBN 978-3-95829-627-5;

Published by The Walther Collection/Steidl in May 2020

Personal involvement: Editorial Assistant

Autoportrait is the first comprehensive survey of self-portraits by Samuel Fosso, one of the most significant African photographic artists working today. Since the mid-1970s, Fosso has focused on self-portraiture and performance, envisioning variations of identity in the postcolonial era. With new essays and research by leading scholars and writers, Autoportrait demonstrates Fosso's unique departure from the traditions of West African studio photography, established in the 1950s and 1960s by modern masters Seydou Keïta and Malick Sidibé. By charting his conceptual practice of self-portraiture, and sustained engagement with notions of sexuality, gender, and self-representation, this landmark monograph reveals an unprecedented photographic project—one that consistently reflects and commemorates themes in global visual culture, and covers the range of expressive applications of the photographic medium.

Edited by Okwui Enwezor, Autoportrait features contributions by Quentin Bajac, Yves Chatap, Elvira Dyangani Ose, Chika Okeke-Agulu, Oluremi C. Onabanjo, Jean Marc Patras, Terry Smith, Claire Staebler, James Thomas, and Artur Walther, as well as an in-depth conversation between Samuel Fosso and Okwui Enwezor.

Nominations: Shortlist „PhotoBook of the Year,“ ParisPhoto Aperture PhotoBook Awards 2020; Shortlist „Traditional Category,“ Lucie Photo Book Prize 2020

352 pages, 171 images; 24 x 28 cm; cloth-bound hardcover; ISBN 978-3-95829-612-1;

Published by Steidl/The Walther Collection in June 2020

Personal involvement: Editorial Assistant

SIXSIXSIX consists of 666 large-format Polaroid self-portraits, produced in an intensive process by Samuel Fosso with a small team in his Paris studio between October and November 2015. Shot against the same rich, colored backdrop, these striking photographs depart from Fossos earlier self-portraits through their understated and stripped-back approach. Fosso's challenge was to create 666 self-portraits each with a different bodily expression, reminding us of the link between his performances and photography. The publication opens with a conversation between Fosso and curator and critic Hans Ulrich Obrist.

680 pages, 666 images; 24 x 30 cm; hardcover; ISBN 978-3-95829-509-4;

Published by Steidl/The Walther Collection in May 2020

Personal involvement: Editorial Assistant

Since the early 1990s, photography and media art have rapidly come to occupy significant positions in Chinese contemporary art. Life and Dreams: Contemporary Chinese Photography and Media Art (2018) shows the widespread adoption of photography, video, and digital imaging by successive generations of Chinese artists, as seen in a range of visually inventive and emotionally charged works. Many of them reflect the artists' immediate responses to the unprecedented changes that have swept through China in recent decades, transforming not just the urban landscape, but also key aspects of social relations and everyday life. Life and Dreams features contributions by Christopher Phillips and Wu Hung (eds.), Lu Yang, James D. Poborsa, Stephanie H. Tung, and Xin Wang; a conversation between Christopher Phillips, Artur Walther, and Wu Hung; and a selection of seminal early writings and conversations on Chinese photography and media art by Sze Tsung Nicolás Leong, Rong Rong, Karen Smith, Wu Hung, and Yang Fudong.

Awards: Deutscher Fotobuchpreis 2018 Silber

384 pages, 643 images; 25 cm x 25 cm; Cloth-bound hardcover with dust jacket; ISBN 978-3-95829-490-5;

Published by The Walther Collection/Steidl in May 2018

Personal involvement: Editorial Coordination

Recent Histories: Contemporary African Photography and Video Art (2017) unites the perspectives of 14 artists of African descent, who investigate social identity, questions of belonging, and an array of sociopolitical concerns. Providing a point of entry to engage critically with current practices and the frameworks of contemporary African photography and video art, Recent Histories features contributions by Daniela Baumann, Joshua Chuang, and Oluremi C. Onabanjo (eds.), Antawan I. Byrd, Emmanuel Iduma, M. Neelika Jayawardane, Allison Moore, Moses Serubiri, Mikhael Subotzky, and Drew Thompson.

Nominations: ICP Infinity Award, Category „Critical Writing and Research“; The Best Photo Books of 2017, The New York Times; The Best Photography Books of 2017, vulture.com

384 pages, 218 images; 25 cm x 25 cm; Cloth-bound hardcover with dust jacket; ISBN 978-3-95829-350-2;

Published by The Walther Collection/Steidl in May 2017

Personal involvement: Co-Editor and Author

Massimo Vignelli's 1972 map of the New York City subway system is considered an icon of graphic design, being praised as a design solution of tremendous aesthetic clarity. What triggered enthusiasm among experts caused problems and many complaints in the daily business of transit operations. The essay reconstructs the genesis of the map and, incorporating semiotic theories, explains the failure of the design in practical use.

Essay in: Sophie Jung (ed.), Zwölf Gegenstände, 118–137.

Zwölf Gegenstände tells a hundred years of industrial design history. Created between 1914 and 2004, products have been presented that changed people's daily lives, designs that were marketed with new strategies, or objects that make the lifestyle of a certain decade tangible. Whether the Wonder Bowls by Earl Silas Tupper, the Valentine typewriter by Ettore Sottsass or the iPod mini by Jonathan Ive—twelve contributions and interviews with renowned designers and authors bring icons of design to life and turn them into witnesses of our cultural history.

224 pages; 14.9 x 2 x 21.1 cm; softcover; ISBN 978-3899862232;

Published by avedition in May 2015

Personal involvement: Author