German photographer Hans-Peter Feldmann (born 1941) is a virtuoso taxonomist of contemporary visual culture, whose artists’ books collate vernacular found imagery into revelatory historical documents. With Nur für Privat (which translates roughly as "for private use only"), Feldmann has created a portrait of the German "swinger scene" of the 1970s and ‘80s.
The book is composed of amateur photographs of women in various degrees of undress, which were enclosed with letters and circulated among couples to convey sexual proclivities and attractiveness, as a way of getting to know each other. (Initial contact would be made through ads in newspapers and magazines.) The photos, taken from a collection of more than 1,000 images, were mostly shot in domestic settings, or outdoors against bucolic backdrops, with props ranging from bondage gear to imaginatively deployed candles. Nur für Privat is destined to become a landmark installment in Feldmann’s oeuvre.
Now reaching its fifth edition, Hans-Peter Feldmann's continually updated Voyeur project is one of the original zeitgeist image-trawls (alongside Gerhard Richter's Atlas). A chaotic compendium of movie stills, photojournalism, ads, amateur photos, art, scientific imagery and much else, it dips into the iconographic whirlpool of our times and presents a world both familiar and utterly bizarre.
Published by Walther König, Köln. Edited by Hans Ulrich Obrist.
Here, Hans Ulrich Obrist and Hans-Peter Feldmann have decided to play with the interview format: Obrist poses the questions in writing and Feldmann answers each of them with a picture. The results are frequently funny, and an impressive exercise in visual thinking.
Now reaching its fourth edition, Hans-Peter Feldmann's bestselling Voyeur trawls the image wreckage of our consumer-driven culture, making eccentric or sinister juxtapositions (shots of nude women next to aircraft crashes) and cataloging the blandness of media bombardment to render its toxic assault visible to us, its near-helpless voyeurs.
Pin-up girls, weight-lifting studies, newspaper clippings, baby pictures... Hans-Peter Feldmann tells stories with pictures. Accordingly, apart from the title page, this photo album contains no text. Even the frontispiece is a photograph of boxes from Feldmann's picture archive--amassed over many years and comprising images from magazines, advertising supplements, photography books, postcards and collectibles. Travel photos, family snapshots and pictures of friends play their part as well. In recent years, Feldmann has become increasingly noted for his commentary on the way we archive photos, sending up the everyday from a very personal perspective. He seeks out the trivial incidents, the unnoticed moments, and keeps them close at hand. According to Feldmann, "Works of art should not be expensive, nor unique, but cheap and fast to produce. A painting immediately acquires a sort of importance, whereas a photo is much more arbitrary, as it's a lot easier to throw away."
Published by Walther König, Köln. Text by Inka Schube, Martin Clark, Martin Hochleitner.
Düsseldorf-based Hans-Peter Feldmann is a passionate collector of images and stories, an original thinker and one of the first conceptual artists. This is Feldmann's most personal book, a racy parcours through images before and behind the retina: clouds and strawberries, women in graceful poses, pants that don't fit, the longing of retired civil servants, flying people, Christmas decorations, soccer images, collections of country-code plates and much more. These images are at once common, strange, smart, stupid and human. Of his focus on the "poetic moments of the ordinary," a 2003 review in Artforum said, "It is precisely this continual, ever-expanding reflection on and skepticism about the various functions and values of images, their truth content and modes of employment, that make Feldmann's work now seem seminal. And his relevance to contemporary art practice derives not least from his acknowledgment of the arbitrary relationship between signifier and signified, the moments of displacement and projection inherent in every form of representation."
Published by Walther König, Köln. Edited by Norbert Schmalen.
Hans-Peter Feldmann's idiosyncratic field research investigates the momentum of human perception and the processing of images. This tight collection includes found images of an erupting volcano, a red-eyed ape, a competitive swimmer and celebrity shoes, among others--all taken from journalistic sources.
This artist's book by the influential but deliberately elusive Düsseldorf Conceptual photographer features a series of pictures of a woman putting on her makeup. A peer of Gerhard Richter, Joseph Beuys and Bernd and Hilla Becher, Feldman helped pave the way for artists like Richard Prince, Sherrie Levine and Christopher Williams.
PUBLISHER Walther König, Köln
BOOK FORMAT Paperback, 6.75 x 9.5 in. / 96 pgs / 80 color.
PUBLISHING STATUS Pub Date 2/1/2007 Out of stock indefinitely
DISTRIBUTION D.A.P. Exclusive Catalog: SPRING 2007 p. 126
PRODUCT DETAILS ISBN 9780920751954FLAT40 List Price: $30.00 CDN $40.00
Published by Walther König, Köln. Foreword by Karel Cisai.
This small paperback offers a 30-year overview of the Düsseldorf photo artist Hans-Peter Feldmann, who uses archival images from advertising, magazines and sometimes private albums to create odd narrative arrangements. Feldmann's montages do not offer predictable readings, but rather present journeys through everyday worlds with surprising moments.
Published by Walther König, Köln. Photographs by Hans-Peter Feldman.
In the early 1970s, Hans-Peter Feldmann went on vacation in Scotland with his girlfriend and his son. He took five rolls of film and, upon developing them, realized he had taken pictures of seagulls and nothing else. (Well, there was one picture of his girlfriend's arm and two or three of his son.) This book acts as a kind of strange photo album of their trip.
PUBLISHER Walther König, Köln
BOOK FORMAT Paperback, 6.5 x 9.5 in. / 80 pgs / 78 duotone.
PUBLISHING STATUS Pub Date 5/2/2004 Out of stock indefinitely
DISTRIBUTION D.A.P. Exclusive Catalog: FALL 2004
PRODUCT DETAILS ISBN 9783883757902SDNR30 List Price: $30.00 CDN $40.00
Hans-Peter Feldmann: Voyeur 5
Hans Ulrich Obrist & Hans-Peter Feldmann: Interview
Hans-Peter Feldmann: Voyeur
Hans-Peter Feldmann: Album
Hans-Peter Feldmann: Buch/Book No. 9
Hans-Peter Feldmann: Zeitungsphotos
Hans-Peter Feldmann: Birgit
Hans-Peter Feldmann: Foto
Hans-Peter Feldmann: The Little Seagull Book