Böcker utgivna av Steidl Publishers

Is it a book, an exhibition, a catalogue of the exhibition? Is it mass produced? Is it unique? Dayanita Singh is a book artist who stretches the imagination of what a book can be, transcending the spaces between publishing and art. Book Building traces the journeys of Singh's books, from the first, Zakir Hussain (1986), to her latest, Zakir Hussain Maquette (2019), showing the spectrum of her book-building process, from idea to material object and how she inventively circulates them in the art world and beyond.Both a short history and a deep dive, this is Dayanita Singh's manifesto for the photobook. Taking those she has made with Steidl as a basis, we witness the transformation of books into book-objects which open up new interpretative spaces: Museum of Chance (2014), for example, first became a book-object, then a diptych, a book-case, a suitcase museum and a book museum, before finally becoming the ongoing museum in Singh's Museum Bhavan (2017). Book Building documents Singh's 13 books in images and short texts, along with several DIYs Singh has created with detailed instructions on how to display her books as exhibitions-making us the curators-as well as various performative interventions, from book carts and happenings, to installations and tours. At the heart of Book Building is the collaborative process that Dayanita Singh and Gerhard Steidl have established over 20 years; the belief that a book is always in a process of becoming.

Imagery of crowds and mass gatherings has been the focal point of Michel Comte's work for many years now. Particularly powerful are the yearly Easter blessings in the Vatican City; the papal conclaves with aerial views of all the gathered cardinals have not changed since the Middle Ages. From Shibuya's crossings to New York's Times Square; from the Hajj in Mecca, to Woodstock, the World Cup final, and the Italian Grand Prix; from the March on Washington with Martin Luther King, to Hong Kong in 2019-2020-each of these places attracts enormous crowds approaching a point of imminent danger that have led to catastrophic events in the past.In November 2019 the first cases of COVID-19 were reported in the city of Wuhan in Hubei province; in the months since, our world has changed. Social distancing has become the new norm and our entire perspective towards gathering, meeting and closeness have taken on different meanings. Suddenly, images of crowds look unfamiliar. The dots are drifting apart.

In one of his last acts as mayor of New York City, Rudy Giuliani signed an order permitting the High Line, that beloved elevated railroad ruin which snaked down the west side of Manhattan, to be torn down. Everyone who had managed to climb up onto the High Line loved it: the wildflowers growing through disused tracks, the birds that followed the path north in spring, and south again in fall-that rural feeling magically flowing through the city like an unbidden river. Who didn't love the High Line? Those who owned the land beneath it and longed to erect high-rise buildings on the site, if only the High Line wasn't blocking their way. And so when Giuliani signed that order, the Friends of the High Line, the small community organization led by Robert Hammond and Joshua David, sprang into legal action, seeking an injunction.For over a year, Joel Sternfeld had already been photographing this hidden jewel in every season, so New Yorkers could visually climb up and see it too. In October 2001, while the rubble of the World Trade Center was still smoldering, Gerhard Steidl accepted Sternfeld's urgent request to make a book and flew to New York: together they designed Walking the High Line and just seven weeks later it was delivered, a vision for the wildly successful park that today hosts over two million visitors a year. Now in a new edition with nine additional photos, a larger format and an updated timeline, this is the book that made walking the High Line possible.

Please Please Return Polaroid is Miles Aldridge's ongoing love letter to Polaroid, a process once integral to the craft of many photographers but now more or less extinct, apart from the rare and out-of-date material traded on eBay for exorbitant prices. The sequel to Aldridge's Please Return Polaroid of 2016, this book presents new and vintage Polaroids from his more than 20-year archive in a seemingly random sequence shaped by a dreamlike logic and surprising juxtapositions.Please Please Return Polaroid explores Aldridge's dedication to analogue processes where cut-and-paste is still a manual process, made with scissors, gaffer tape, intuition and not a little patience. Aldridge continues to use Polaroids as part of his work-in-progress "sketches," often scratching, tearing and taping them together, even drawing over them; each mark part of the creative act. Known for creating immaculate photos of a less than perfect world, Aldridge revels in these unpolished images, transforming some into extreme enlargements filling double pages with their re-worked and damaged surfaces. Long live Polaroid!

With ATACAMA, Jamey Stillings again shares his distinctive aerial perspective to examine dramatic large-scale renewable energy projects, the visual dynamic of enormous mining operations and the stark beauty of the Atacama Desert, so often scarred by human activity. Chile produces a third of the world's copper and has the largest known lithium reserves, and we utilize these resources daily in our cars, computers and smartphones. The country's mining industry has traditionally been dependent on imported coal, diesel and natural gas for its energy. Yet the Atacama Desert has excellent solar and wind potential: new renewable energy projects there now supply significant electricity to the northern grid, transmit power to population centers in the south, and are reducing mining's dependence on fossil fuel.Stillings' aesthetic interest in the human-altered landscape and concerns for environmental sustainability are principal pillars of his work. His photography elicits a critical dialogue about meeting our needs and desires while seeking equilibrium between nature and human activity. ATACAMA, the latest chapter in his ongoing project "Changing Perspectives," shows how photography can concurrently be a source of inspiration, motivation and information, and reminds us that a carbon-constrained future is crucial to a responsible approach to life on earth.