03.04.2024  •  Shop NEWS

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BEUYS LAND – the first book to place the natural landscape of the Lower Rhine and Kleve, the city in which Beuys was likely born, at the center of the Beuysian universe – published by EDITION LAMMERHUBER

“The hare is my animal, extremely prolific and nimble, elusive and a crossover artist, at home up and down the steppe.“ Joseph Beuys.

Joseph Beuys is regarded the world over as one of the most important artists of the 20th century. But where exactly are his artistic origins? Where did his sources of strength lie? In January 1978, photographer Gerd Ludwig impressively captured how Beuys approached his past – in the city of Kleve and its Lower Rhine surroundings. There, where everything began for Joseph Beuys.

When Frank Mehring came up with the idea in 2021 of creating an installation with six of the Beuys photos by Gerd Ludwig in a large format in the exact same spot in the Lower Rhine landscape in which they were created in 1978, he connected it with a bike path. Freddy Langer took a ride on the bikeway for a day together with Mehring and Ludwig, and dedicated an essay to the tour. It is an amalgamation of conversations between the three gentlemen along the way as well as their bizarre encounters on the route with thoughts on art and ecology as well as reflections upon Joseph Beuys’ attitude towards nature.

In his text, focused on the biographical origins of Beuys in the Lower Rhine region, Mehring analyses how we can recognize the person behind the one-man brand Joseph Beuys and understand his significance for the digital generation today. He highlights how photography had been a vital tool for Beuys to permanently document his short-lived actions in the public space.

In Gerd Ludwig’s photos of Beuys on the Lower Rhine, Mehring sees a type of master key to discovering the very landscape that is at the center of Beuys’ life and work. With the photographs, Mehring deduces how Beuys drew his energy from this region, sharpened his ecological awareness, and developed the artistic vitality that catapulted him to the top of the international art world.

German-American photographer Gerd Ludwig is among the pioneering documentary photographers of our time. He studied under Prof. Otto Steinert at the legendary Folkwangschule (today: Folkwang University of the Arts) in Essen, Germany, and gained recognition in the late 1970s for his captivating reportages in GEO, ZEITmagazin, Stern, and others. Particularly notable are his artist portraits of Friedensreich Hundertwasser and Joseph Beuys.

After moving to the United States, he became a core member of the American magazine National Geographic for three decades. His dedicated coverage of the aftermath of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster is considered a milestone of modern photojournalism. He is the recipient of the University of Missouri Medal of Honor for his outstanding achievements in journalism and the Dr. Erich Salomon Award of the German Society for Photography. His photographs are exhibited in museums, galleries, and public spaces around the world.

Gerd Ludwig lives in Los Angeles today and focuses primarily on personal long-term projects. His books ‘The Long Shadow of Chernobyl’ and ‘Sleeping Cars’ have been published at Edition Lammerhuber.

FRANK MEHRIG is a Professor of American Studies at Radboud University in Nijmegen. His research focuses on the intersection of art, culture and politics in a transatlantic exchange. Among the numerous publications on the soft power of the Marshall Plan in photographs, films and exhibitions, his monograph entitled ‘The Democratic Gap’ (Winter, 2014), on the American promise of democracy in German emigration history, received the European Rob Kroes Award.

Frank Mehring’s latest work is dedicated to the life and work of the German-American artist Winold Reiss (Deutscher Kunstverlag, 2022). But Mehring’s contribution is not limited to academic circles. As an Americanist and honorary director of the Forum Arenacum museum, he is actively involved in building bridges between university and society. He is particularly committed to projects that use music and art as a key to opening up new perspectives on history and transnational cultures of remembrance for young people.

FREDDY LANGER, born in 1957, is an editor for Frankfurter Allgemeine. He was responsible for the travel column for 20 years and is in charge of photography for the culture section. For his own series entitled ‘Blind Date’, he has been photographing prominent artists, whom he asks to wear a sleeping mask, for more than forty years. He is the author of multiple books on the history of photography alongside his other great passion: hiking all over the world.


BEUYS LAND Gerd Ludwig, Frank Mehring . 29.7 x 21 cm, 108 pages, 59 photos . German, English . Hardcover . 978-3-903101-99-9 . April 2024 . EUR 49.90

GoSee : edition.lammerhuber.at//beuys-land
 
CREDITS
Photographer     Gerd Ludwig

 
EDITION LAMMERHUBER presents Gerd Ludwig´s “BEUYS LAND“

EDITION LAMMERHUBER presents Gerd Ludwig´s “BEUYS LAND“

 
EDITION LAMMERHUBER presents Gerd Ludwig´s “BEUYS LAND“

EDITION LAMMERHUBER presents Gerd Ludwig´s “BEUYS LAND“

 
EDITION LAMMERHUBER presents Gerd Ludwig´s “BEUYS LAND“

EDITION LAMMERHUBER presents Gerd Ludwig´s “BEUYS LAND“

 
EDITION LAMMERHUBER presents Gerd Ludwig´s “BEUYS LAND“

EDITION LAMMERHUBER presents Gerd Ludwig´s “BEUYS LAND“

 
EDITION LAMMERHUBER presents Gerd Ludwig´s “BEUYS LAND“

EDITION LAMMERHUBER presents Gerd Ludwig´s “BEUYS LAND“

 
EDITION LAMMERHUBER presents Gerd Ludwig´s “BEUYS LAND“

EDITION LAMMERHUBER presents Gerd Ludwig´s “BEUYS LAND“

 
EDITION LAMMERHUBER presents Gerd Ludwig´s “BEUYS LAND“

EDITION LAMMERHUBER presents Gerd Ludwig´s “BEUYS LAND“

 
EDITION LAMMERHUBER presents Gerd Ludwig´s “BEUYS LAND“

EDITION LAMMERHUBER presents Gerd Ludwig´s “BEUYS LAND“

 
EDITION LAMMERHUBER presents Gerd Ludwig´s “BEUYS LAND“

EDITION LAMMERHUBER presents Gerd Ludwig´s “BEUYS LAND“

 



About EDITION LAMMERHUBER
IT’S ALL ABOUT PASSION ...

Dear fans of beautiful and sophisticated books,

“An extraordinary publisher, dedicated to little known themes, who presents them with courage and high quality, without descending into stereotypes.” This is how the jury of the FEP European Book Prize of the Year Awards argued their choice of Edition Lammerhuber for Best Publisher 2017, an accolade also awarded to the publisher from Baden bei Wien in the preceding competitions in 2013 and 2015 of this biennial event.

Present on the book market for more than seven years, with a steadily growing programme, we have worked our way to the top – internationally. Your are best at what you love doing. And we love books, we love photography. The photobook is the ideal medium to combine these loves. Photography documents the world in a very particular way and shapes human memory like no other medium does. Our ambition is twofold: We want to publish books with fascinating themes from art and science, with excellent photography, sophisticated texts and brilliant authors, but, most of all, we want to make books that have something to say, books that transport important themes into the heart of society. For us, a book charged with emotional photography is a point of reference for communication that reverberates far beyond the number of sold copies. We believe that we can  make a real impact with a book. For us, a book is not just a commodity but an incomparable cultural technique.

Edition Lammerhuber wants to be the publisher for writer-photographers, for whom seeing is a vocation and whose ways of seeing the world is a process of insights. A process they are capable of transforming into the immediacy of a photograph, a creative act, initiated and completed within seconds or split seconds. As in the motto of Hungarian photographic artist László Moholy-Nagy, who declared, “Photography is there to make the visible visible.” Edition Lammerhuber strives to be home to the best ‘cyclops’ of our time, legends and new talents alike.  

And how does an Edition Lammerhuber book come about? The theme must be important to us, the photography captivate us, there must be something special, magical, in the pictures. Once a decision has been made to publish, the photographer visits us at our publishing house. We go through the photographic material, determine the format of the book, think about a setting to suit the theme. This is when the almost magical process of designing and layouting starts. It usually takes about a week for the concept to be completed to the point where the work of everyone involved can be browsed on-screen, then it passes on to the next steps in the production.

Our declared aim is to approach a perfect book through a passionate creative process. Craft aspects are an essential part of it and of our publishing philosophy. All production steps up to the printing are done in our house. Our own experts produce the prepress. We really care about the reproduction quality of the photographs, the feel of the printed papers and the quality of the binding. We check every single printing form.

So it is hardly surprising that some reviewers call the books of Edition Lammerhuber pieces of art emanating from a ‘book chamber of marvels’ and that nearly all titles gather awards, including those of the Art Directors Club New York, the Deutsche Fotobuchpreis, the Pictures of the Year International (POYI) Awards, USA, the Visa d’or, France, the FEP European Book Prize of the Year Awards or the World Press Photo. Today our books are available in more than 170 countries, usually published in two, sometimes three, languages.

Exceptional photography is not only found in the books of Edition Lammerhuber but also in a photo competition jointly initiated in Vienna in 2013 by Edition Lammerhuber and the Photographische Gesellschaft. Under the general heading What Does Peace Look Like? , the Alfred Fried Photography Award, worth 10 000 euros, chooses the peace image of the year. Participation in the award has exploded in recent years, confirming the status of photography as a medium for transporting essential socio-political themes. From 2017, a separate competition for the peace image of the year is open to children up to the age of 14.

At the biennial LUMIX Festival in Hannover, the Lammerhuber Photography Award for young photo journalists is presented, with a prize money of 5000 euros. Photography and the photobook are an essential, defining, medium for society and for our publishing house. This is why we believe it is important to encourage young photographic talent.

We would be honoured to see our books available from your bookshops and libraries.

Yours
Silvia Lammerhuber and Lois Lammerhuber
Publisher


GoSee : edition.lammerhuber.at

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