Published by Steidl. Text by Florian Ebner, Martin Kippenberger.
+ - 0 ("plus minus null") is a facsimile of a unique, handmade artist's book crafted by German photographer Volker Heinze (born 1959) in 1986. Its photos are the result of the young Heinze's decision to capture the world around him—cityscapes, rooms cast in warm artificial light, friends or simply objects sitting on a table. Heinze employs color not as a tool of realism but with experimental flair, and plays with focus and the inevitable "mistakes" of analogue film. Heinze originally presented this body of work in two forms: as an installation in the influential 1986 exhibition Remnants of the Authentic at Museum Folkwang in Essen, and as + - 0, with its experimental layout, leaves of tracing paper with hand-painted quotes such as "To search for reality is like diving for pearls in an aquarium" and a booklet with excerpts from Martin Kippenberger's artist's book 241 Bildtitel zum Ausleihen. Edition of 750 copies.
In January 2016 Hong Kong was selected for the sixth time in a row as the world's "freest economy" by America's Heritage Foundation and the Wall Street Journal. In six densely composed sections of images—from "Heart of Gold" to "Dystopian Confusion"—German photographer Volker Heinze recounts "the Chinese gamble on greed.