Marco Breuer

Early Recordings presents the first comprehensive look at the work of the respected, conceptually driven artist, Marco Breuer. Boldly experimental, Breuer uses an extensive and continually evolving range of processes to extract abstract and visually compelling images from photographic paper. Whether it involves placing burning coals on the photographic paper, repeatedly slicing into it or sanding away at the emulsion until holes appear, Breuer's work eviscerates the usual expectations of the camera-less image. The Minimalistic end results are surprisingly exquisite, and this oversized volume reproduces them with attention to every slice, abrasion and color shift. The images function as "recordings" of the artist's actions, so that only the trace of impact and Breuer's expended energy remain. The revered photography critic Vince Aletti describes Breuer's work as having "the intelligence and wit of the midcentury Modernist avant-garde and the anything-goes audacity of photography's earliest innovators." A limited edition of 30 copies of this book is also available, slip-cased and hand-altered by the artist.

Marco Breuer makes photographs without using a camera. In a process similar to that used to make photograms, one of the oldest photographic forms, Breuer directly exposes photo-sensitive paper to light and heat and materials like spit, blood, nail clippings, Windex, jello, beer, mold, kitchen matches, bomb fuses and hot coals. The result produces nearly pure abstractions that hover somewhere on photography's outer limits. This two-volume set presents Breuer's cameraless photographs together with a wide range of responses written by fiction writers, a psychiatrist, a poet, a composer and a chemical laboratory. Volume I contains images, volume II contains text, and both are spiral bound, providing an intimate, mysterious and coolly elegant notebook-sized package.