josef chladek

on photobooks and books

Volker Renner - Die Anderen, Textem Verlag, 2013, Hamburg

Hardcover, edition of 500 copies, design by Christoph Steinegger.

This book—the title means The Others—presents eighty-seven found photographs, or more precisely speaking, slides. And yes, Volker Renner, who unearthed them, studied with Peter Piller, who works with found materials as well. The pictures are snapshots of a Germany so stuffy and cozy it makes you gag. The German shepherd is barking, the child is turning a cartwheel, the Christmas tree silently stands to attention. Yet the images Renner has picked for the book from the original trove of two thousand photographs highlight how the attempt to capture family life and domestic bliss on camera can go seriously awry or at least take strange turns. Weird selections of detail and oddities like the taxidermied hawk that seems to be lunging at the Easter bouquet invite us to examine the private idiocy that lets us perceive strange arrangements as perfectly normal and even idyllic.

Order at Volker's site.

Pages: 48
Place: Hamburg
Year: 2013
Publisher: Textem Verlag
Size: 16 x 25 cm (approx.)