A photographic portrait of a single boulevard in Berlin, taken before the buildings' demolition In 1952, East Berlin's municipal authorities commissioned Fritz Tiedemann to photograph a section of Fruchtstraße, where the buildings were set for demolition in the following decades. In this volume, German photographer Arwed Messmer (born 1964) assembles 32 archival images into a panoramic portrait of a bygone place.
Located in the geographical center of Berlin, the neighboring boroughs of Friedrichshain and Kreuzberg shared a history and identity until their fortunes diverged dramatically following the construction of the Berlin Wall, which placed them within opposing political systems. This revealing account of the two municipal districts before, during and after the Cold War takes a microhistorical approach to investigate the broader historical trajectories of East and West Berlin, with particular attention to housing, religion, and leisure. Merged in 2001, they now comprise a single neighborhood that bears the traces of these complex histories and serves as an illuminating case study of urban renewal, gentrification, and other social processes that continue to reshape Berlin.
In the archives of East Germany's Stasi secret police, there are countless photographs of failed escape attempts across the Berlin Wall. Here, German artist Arwed Messmer (born 1964) presents a complex collage of found, retouched and recontextualized visual records and Messmer's own photographs.
The Kronenhalle Restaurant is one of Zurich's great destinations: located in Bellevue Square, its walls are adorned with paintings by Picasso, Bonnard, Cézanne, Klee, Chagall and other modernist masters who frequented the restaurant in the days when it was owned by Hulda and Gustav Zumsteg, the parents of the current proprietor. This volume records this astounding Aladdin's Cave.
In Stille Straße 10 in the Pankow district of Berlin, a group of elderly people saved their meeting house from closure. The members of the group occupied the building for 112 days and took the initiative to organise and run it themselves. The fate of the place is still unresolved. The London-based architecture collective Assemble set up a dialogue with the group about community building, active citizenship, and housing for the elderly and have developed a housing model for Wohnungsfrage based on spaces for shared activities. The Haus der Kulturen der Welt (Berlin) project Wohnungsfrage investigates the fraught relationship between architecture, housing, and social reality in an exhibition of experimental housing models, an international academy, and a publication series that examines various options for self-determined, social and affordable housing. This publication series presents key historical works accompanied by new commentaries, contemporary case studies from around the world, and publications by activists concerned with urban policy issues, architects, and artists.
Abbas Kiarostami (*1940 in Teheran) became known primarily for his films made in the seventies, which were awarded prizes at film festivals such as Cannes (Golden Palm 1997) and Venice. Despite large-scale solo exhibitions at institutions such as the Museum of Modern Art in New York and the Centre Pompidou in Paris, the photographic oeuvre of this artist, who studied painting, has yet to be showcased in germanophone countries. Whereas Kiarostami's films contain haunting images of the human experience, he trains his photographic eye on untouched landscapes, often taking years to develop the images into series such as Snow White (1978-2004) and Rain and Wind (2007). This publication explores the correlation between photographic and filmic vision, between still and moving images. Exhibition schedule: Situation Kunst (for Max Imdahl), Kunstsammlungen der Ruhr-Universität, Bochum, October 6, 2012-January 20, 2013 - Museum Wiesbaden, March 29-June 30, 2013 - Kunstsammlungen Chemnitz, July 14-September 29, 2013 - And further venues
"365 Days of Invisible Work is a compendium of political representations of domestic work collected by the Domestic Worker Photographer Network, an online community of amateur photographers made up of migrant workers, gardeners, dishwashers, artists, teachers, and many more. Organized as a calendar, 365 Days of Invisible Work, is dedicated to making visible the myriad lavours negated by oppressive capitalist structures by highlighting the daily work of cleaners, mothers, interns, care-givers, and many others! The network drew name and inspiration from the international worker-photography movement of the 1920s and 1930s, the first amateur photographers using cameras to represent the lives and conditions of workers. In that spirit, 356 Days of Invisible Work collectively re-thinks today's living and labour conditions, starting from the routines of domestic maintance and care. Conceived during the Grand Domestic Revolution, organized by Casco--Office for Art, Design and Theory, Utrecht, 356 Days of Invisible Work is the third edition of the Werker Magazine series initiated by artists Marc Roig Blesa and Rogier Delfos."--
Since the revolution in 1979, Iran has developed an image culture projecting statesanctioned religious ideology in public spaces that serve as transit zones. Between 2011 and 2014, German artist and former freelance photographer for the New York Times Oliver Hartung produced a body of work on Iran comprised of images which, upon first glance, depict colorful street paraphernalia, posters, graffiti, murals, monuments, and war cemeteries, but upon a closer inspection reveal a much deeper psychology engineered to bolster the myth of the Islamic Republic. Hartungs unique view of the Middle Eastoften lost amid images of war and conflictcreates a portrait of a country still largely unknown to the West. Part of a long-term project exploring the contemporary cultures of the Middle East, Hartungs thoughtful monograph is packed with over 300 color images. Hartungs last publication with Spector was Syria Al-Assad.
Cultural meditations on kitchen design, in an elegantly produced volume Summarizing contemporary discourses on the kitchen from the realms of sociology, design and gastrosophy, Essays on Kitchens features six kitchens designed by the German-Austrian design studio chmara.rosinke. The project examines different facets of the kitchen: its performative and representational functions and its social and societal role, as well as craft and design aspects. The volume explores how these norms and expectations have developed in public, gastronomic and private settings, and how the kitchen has made its mark on cultural history. These meditations on kitchens and their place in our culture are housed in a handsome volume with a printed mylar cover representing one of chmara.rosinke's simple functional kitchens. Inside, beautiful color photographs show chmara.rosinke's innovative designs in use, assembled and unassembled.
