Sophie Ristelhueber

Errata Editions' Books on Books series is an ongoing publishing project dedicated to making rare and out-of-print photography books accessible to students and photobook enthusiasts. These are not reprints or facsimiles but complete studies of the original books. Each volume in the series presents the entire content, page for page, of an original master bookwork which, up until now, has been too rare or expensive for most to experience. Through a mix of classic and contemporary titles, this series spans the breadth of photographic practice as it has appeared on the printed page and allows further study of the creation and meanings of these great works of art. Each volume in the series contains illustrations of every page in the original photobook, a new essay by an established writer on photography, production notes about the creation of the original edition and biographical and bibliographical information about each artist.
In October of 1991, French artist Sophie Ristelhueber photographed the battle-scarred landscape of Kuwait following the end of the first Gulf War. The book, Fait, which in French means "fact" or "what was done," remains one of our least known but most powerful statements about the aftermath of war. Books on Books 3 presents all 71 black-and-white and color photographs as seen in the original artist's book as it was conceived and designed by Ristelhueber. Marc Mayer of the Musée d'art contemporain de Montreal contributes an essay that discusses Ristelhueber's disturbing yet beautiful achievement.

Drawing as much from the techniques of photojournalism and the poetics of the New Novel as from the aesthetics of fine art, the photographs of Sophie Ristelhueber convey a world at once intensely personal and objectively restrained. Her camera embraces the scars of human existence, whether the devastation of a war-torn landscape, the furrows of a suture, or the hidden wounds of remembered childhood, conferring on each a personal resonance that echoes far beyond the events portrayed. Details of the World offers the first comprehensive overview of Ristelhueber's career, presenting a selection from all her major installations as well as previously unpublished recent work. She has also worked closely on the book's design, making it not only the best anthology of her images, but also an art object in and of itself.