photobooks
Sebastian Hau (1976, Germany) runs LE BAL BOOKS, the specialized Photobookshop linked to the independent exhibition space LE BAL in Paris. He previously worked for ten years at Schaden. com. He regularly contributes to Fotokritik.de, Foam Magazine and photo-eye Magazine.
Useful Photography #010 Rushing through a big city, past an endless series of advertisements, signs and images all calling out for our attention, we can easily lose our sense of what is important. Mallarmé’s prediction that advertising would level out high culture only makes matters worse. This is one of the reasons why I like to leaf through the magazine Useful Photography or publications by other artists who give new life to everyday photographs. For the most recent edition of the magazine, the editors compiled pictures of private weddings and their preparations, stylized images for photo albums, and photographs of celebrations and honeymoon trips. As always, they do this with sympathy, an eye for detail, and a certain degree of unflinching courage, manifested by the editors’ use of repetition and variation. Collected & edited by Hans Aarsman, Claudie de Cleen, Julian Germain, Erik Kessels, Hans van der Meer.
As a thirteen-year-old, Basil Hyman photographed things around him, visits to the circus, and events surrounding the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II. The photographs of this attentive and curious young boy have now been published, along with his collection of 1950s ephemera, in a book that is a cross between private photo album and social retrospective. Sentimentality and British self-love were probably important in the creation of this publication, but the recipe books, theatre tickets, motor fuel ration books, and circus programmes from that time as well as the visual richness of the material sustain this exuberant publication and give it an unconventional driving force.
KesselsKramer Publishing ISBN 9789070478346
Booth-Clibborn Editions ISBN 9781861543202
Basil Hyman The Lost Album: A Visual Documentary of 1950s Britain
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