Peter Bialobrzeski

In today’s city, sunlight is the last “great Other,” something beyond the cities, the only thing that penetrates the space from the outside and occasionally reminds us that there is something else out there besides streets, subways, and functional cells. This natural light is missing from Bialobrzeski’s photographs; the gray remains of daylight blend with neon lights, turning into an emotional dusk.... Although one sees a great deal of sky, there is not a star in sight. In his “Paradise” pictures, the city even lights the jungle—which was always the heart of darkness—making a completely illuminated biotope out of it, as if the trees were standing in an aquarium or were lit by neongreen operating room lights.

Alex Rühle from Paradise Now

With a keen eye and strong political instincts, photographer Peter Bialobrzeski (born 1961) has made photobooks about new Asian metropolises, wastelands on the outskirts of global cities and a Filipino squatters' camp.

 

FORTHCOMING & NEW RELEASES

PETER BIALOBRZESKI: THE RAW AND THE COOKED
HATJE CANTZ
U.S. $95.00 | CAN $95
ISBN: 9783775731928 | TRADE
PUB DATE: 1/31/2012 | In stock

       

ACTIVE BACKLIST

PETER BIALOBRZESKI: INFORMAL ARRANGEMENTS
HATJE CANTZ
U.S. $45.00 | CAN $45
ISBN: 9783775726603 | TRADE
PUB DATE: 10/31/2010 | In stock

PETER BIALOBRZESKI: PARADISE NOW
HATJE CANTZ
U.S. $85.00 | CAN $85
ISBN: 9783775723329 | TRADE
PUB DATE: 9/30/2009 | Awaiting stock

PETER BIALOBRZESKI: CASE STUDY HOMES
HATJE CANTZ
U.S. $45.00 | CAN $45
ISBN: 9783775724692 | TRADE
PUB DATE: 1/31/2010 | In stock

PETER BIALOBRZESKI: LOST IN TRANSITION
HATJE CANTZ
U.S. $60.00 | CAN $60
ISBN: 9783775720496 | TRADE
PUB DATE: 2/1/2008 | In stock

    

OUT OF PRINT LISTING

PETER BIALOBRZESKI: HEIMAT
HATJE CANTZ PUBLISHERS
U.S. $55.00 | CAN $55
ISBN: 9783775716734 | TRADE
PUB DATE: 2/1/2006 | Not available

PETER BIALOBRZESKI: NEON TIGERS
HATJE CANTZ PUBLISHERS
U.S. $45.00 | CAN $45
ISBN: 9783775713948 | TRADE
PUB DATE: 6/2/2004 | Not available

Peter Bialobrzeski

Shot at the Baseco compound in Manila, this improvised structure is home to one of the 70,000 newly arrived migrant workers who have left the Philippine countryside in hopes of finding a better life. German photographer Peter Bialobrzeski documents the Baseco compound in Case Study Homes.In his introduction, Bialobrzeski writes, "Beyond all political, cultural and historical reflection, these images remind me of something completely un-hip: the long-forgotten word "humility."

Peter Bialobrzeski: The Raw and the Cooked

Text by Peter Bialobrzeski, Peter Lindhorst.
Published by Hatje Cantz

In The Raw and the Cooked, Peter Bialobrzeski (born 1961) sets forth the most complete account of his vision of the Asian megacity. From the simplest shack to the tallest highrise, from vernacular buildings made from scavenged materials to corporate buildings made from steel, concrete and glass, Bialobrzeski records the demented proliferation as Asia’s cities reach higher into the sky and farther across the land. With nearly 130 color plates, The Raw and the Cooked collects a series of tableaux from 14 countries around the world, in which economic transformations are shown to have brought dizzying disparities between wealth and poverty. As with the era-defining series Neon Tigers and Lost in Transition, The Raw and the Cooked depicts these cities with a seductive glow that renders them eerie and unreal as expressions of progress.

PETER BIALOBRZESKI: THE RAW AND THE COOKED
$95.00 | In Stock: Order now or contact your local bookstore or museum shop.

Peter Bialobrzeski: Informal Arrangements

Text by Indra Wussow.
Published by Hatje Cantz

With a keen eye and strong political instincts, photographer Peter Bialobrzeski (born 1961) has made photobooks about new Asian metropolises, wastelands on the outskirts of global cities and a Filipino squatters' camp. His latest project, Informal Arrangements, opens a window onto the interiors of a South African slum. In 2009, Bialobrzeski shot in Kliptown, a poverty-stricken suburb of Soweto less than ten miles away from a glistening new soccer stadium built for the 2010 World Cup. The area's resonance as a symbol of the vast discrepancies of wealth and status that persist in present-day South Africa--representing, as the South African newspaper The Citizen put it, "the dashed hopes and broken dreams of so many"--is unmistakable, and Kliptown has a larger historical significance: it was here, in 1955, that members of the anti-apartheid movement drew up the Freedom Charter, a guiding document for the ANC that today forms a foundation of the South African constitution. The lives of the inhabitants of these informal settlements have scarcely improved in the past 50 years, yet the Kliptownians arrange their homes as comfortably as they can, given what is available to them. With 70 color prints, this book cements Bialobrzeski's reputation as a social documentarian of the highest order. "For me, the individual picture is not too important," he has said. "I am advocating photography as a cultural practice."

PETER BIALOBRZESKI: INFORMAL ARRANGEMENTS
$45.00 | In Stock: Order now or contact your local bookstore or museum shop.

Peter Bialobrzeski: Case Study Homes

Published by Hatje Cantz

An ironic take on the Case Study House Program--initiated in 1945 by Arts and Architecture magazine in an effort to develop low-priced single-family homes by architects such as Richard Neutra and Charles and Ray Eames--German photographer Peter Bialobrzeski's Case Study Homes was shot at the Baseco compound, a squatter camp near the Port of Manila, which is home to an estimated 70,000 people. As Bialobrzeski was considering the series--startling images of provisional structures fashioned from slats, cardboard, corrugated metal and other cast-off materials and refuse--Lehman Brothers Bank collapsed and the media declared a global economic crisis. These recent events lend resonance to Bialobrzeski's images, which recall the photographs of impoverished rural Americans commissioned by the Farm Security Administration in the 1930s. Conceived as a sketchbook for a larger project, the images evidence the human will to survive and a profound resourcefulness.

PETER BIALOBRZESKI: CASE STUDY HOMES
$45.00 | In Stock: Order now or contact your local bookstore or museum shop.

Peter Bialobrzeski: Lost in Transition

Text by Michael Glasmeier.
Published by Hatje Cantz

In Heimat, his previous collection of photographs published by Hatje Cantz, German photographer Peter Bialobrzeski, born in 1961, gave us pictures of his homeland that showed it as it had never been seen before. Photo International deemed it “one of the most beautiful and significant photography books this year.” Even before that, Bialobrzeski’s critically acclaimed exploration of the Asian megacity phenomenon, Neon Tigers, had made him a common topic of debate on the international photography scene. Bialobrzeski’s gift is for the portrayal of epic sweep in urban vistas and of the energies that inhabit and galvanize them. In Lost in Transition the photographer applies his grand vision to the transformation of wasteland areas, many of which are located on the peripheries of cities. The photographs were taken in more than 28 cities (including Hamburg, Dubai, New York, Singapore, New Delhi and Kuala Lumpur) and 14 countries and trace the transition from old to new, from the familiar to the abstract, from the dilapidated to the renewed. These images are as seductive and sublime as nineteenth-century Romantic paintings, but their apparent beauty is deceptive. As in his earlier works, Bialobrzeski always tests and pushes at the limitations of the documentary image itself.

PETER BIALOBRZESKI: LOST IN TRANSITION
$60.00 | In Stock: Order now or contact your local bookstore or museum shop.