josef chladek

on photobooks and books

Xavier Cambre - Vacuus Bacchus, Self published, 2016, USA

Softcover, edition of 300 copies (unnumbered) signed, text by A. Coffey.

Xavier Cambre's second photo book, VACUUS BACCHUS, explores the relation between Eros and Nothingness with a series of black & white photographs, uncanny images of female nudes alternated with empty spaces, which have been subjected to chemical, digital and painterly manipulations. In the book’s essay, A. Coffey writes: “VB's body, mostly women, comprises a collection of manipulated black and white images, tenebrous, bleached, washed or tinted to be wholly unglamorous but not lacking poignancy and far from bereft of beauty. Noirish female forms reprise the Surrealists' love of ironic juxtaposition, black humor and Freudian reverie… In the abraded concrete corners and cavernous twilight piazzas there is a profound lack, both monumental and weighty, representative of the gravity of our mortality. The initial vacant lot contains a lit blank billboard; its empty white square floats portal-like against a brick edifice. Immediately opposite is the prone cruciform female stretched on a white square and spot lit. Does the woman fill the void, act as entry, or more so, is she the oasis of horror set in Baudelaire’s desert of boredom?"

Order at Javier's site or at Amazon.

Pages: 92
Place: USA
Year: 2016
Publisher: Self published
Size: 22 x 28 cm (approx.)