Photo journalism plays an important role in public life: providing accurate, contextualised information through images. When the camera lens focuses on the most harrowing realities, the photographer becomes the link transmitting the subjects’ pain to all other people, thereby in a certain way becoming a spotlight taking some of the darkest sides of humanity out of the shadows. Upfront, both book and exhibition, was created precisely at a time when photo journalists in Spain and Latin America had begun to play an increasingly important role in the world. This book delves further into the work of twenty-three photo reporters from Latin America and Spain, not only the most highly acknowledged, but also others who, though having left behind a more modest mark and theories using more limited means, have helped to keep the their colleagues’ commitment and excellence alive. Text in English and Spanish.

Qianyuan (the ‘Hidden Garden’) is a classic southern Chinese scholar’s garden that was gifted to Ruhr University (Germany) by its sister school, Tongji University of Shanghai, in 1990. Beginning with the original concept, this book illustrates the history and design of the garden through 29 themes, with abundant pictures and accompanying text. The garden draws on the Legend of Peach Blossom Spring, in which a fisherman who is drawn to a blossoming peach orchard accidentally discovers a hidden outcrop of paradise, which once discovered can never be found again (a plaque in the garden recounts the tale). Qianyuan has borrowed theory and techniques from the ancient Chinese gardening masterpiece The Garden Treatise, whose artistic language was influential in the creation of this Chinese ‘paradise’ in Germany. The garden is considered an important example of Sino-German cultural exchange. 

Text in English and Chinese.

“An entrancing companion for wine lovers. Celebratory, discerning writing with all the variety and unexpectedness of the wines explored.”  — Michèle Roberts, author and Emeritus Professor of Creative Writing at the University of East Anglia
“This book is about feeling, tasting and describing the beauty of wine, as well as understanding the intensity of emotion that wine can engender.” — Decanter Magazine

“So precise and dancing, so chiselled and so free, as complex and delicious as your favourite bottle of wine, you will enjoy the world of wine differently after reading through Jefford’s words.” — Pascaline Lepeltier on Instagram
“A new sort of literary gumption arrived on the scene with Andrew Jefford; a powerful blend of science and poetry. Here is a writer who does his interviews, delves deep into motives and methods, and then lets fly with whatever imagery he finds winging by.” Hugh Johnson (2019)

Poet, philosopher, author, radio presenter and journalist, Andrew Jefford lives in France; but buried deep in one wine country what does he miss most about the rest? The answer: “Drinking young port. It’s the wine drinker’s equivalent of zorbing, wing-walking, base-jumping … you won’t fully understand it unless you have tasted it young, in its ‘Ride of the Valkyries’ stage, when it comes hurtling out of the glass and puts the screamers on you…”

Andrew is the ideal companion for anyone wine-curious. In this collection of his essays, opinions and articles he shares his fascinating observations from half a century of discovery. For Andrew, wine should be listened to and admired, wherever it comes from; old-school pretentions turned on their head; style-points disdained; stellar prices dismissed; questions asked…

Paul Farren claims he and his wife Charlie have around 85 percent of the pre-1900 bicycles in Australia — all under one roof in a Melbourne warehouse-cum-museum. Thirty years of hunting them down and collecting has resulted in one of the most impressive early bike collections in the world. It includes 160 pre-1900 bicycles, including hobby horses, boneshakers and Penny Farthings, as well as early 20th-century models. The collection charts the development of the bicycle, which foreshadows the invention of the motor car in many surprising ways. It also shows wider social change and the role the bicycle has played in female emancipation, war and its progression from plaything of the wealthy to utilitarian mode of transport of the masses. Paul generously shares his outstanding knowledge of the mechanical, social, and historical aspects of antique bicycles as well as many entertaining anecdotes about how his collection came together. The Farren Collection ranks as one of the finest in the world but also functions as a dynamic collection, with items being loaned to various regional galleries.

The South of France in the Golden 1950s. The sun is shining and palm trees cast jagged shadows on a polished motor purring up the drive to the Grand Hotel. Irish photographer Edward Quinn delighted in these scenes of Côte d’Azur splendour. Like no other, Quinn captured the essence of the Riviera high society, revealing its glamorous social and cultural life with a subtle and fine sense of humour. This new edition of his Riviera Cocktail has all the fabulous and fascinating ingredients of the era: movie stars and starlets, gamblers and musicians, business magnates and faded nobility — captured out and about on the sparkling Riviera and in more intimate moments.

Text in English, French, German, Spanish, and Italian.

Japanese screens (byobu) are made of wooden lattices with two to twelve panels, covered with a canvas of paper or fabric. Artists, embracing the dynamic format of screens, incorporated shadows and other elements on the canvas to direct the viewer’s eye from one panel to the next. Screens are unique for being beautiful artworks as well as lightweight, portable objects, acting as backdrops for court ceremonies or partitions for intimate tea services.

This sumptuous book explores the 1,300-year history of screens created in Japan. In the text, leading experts on Japanese art and culture describe how screens developed from the 8th to the 21st century, from their ceremonial use in royal residences and Buddhist temples to their functional and decorative use in the homes of samurai and aristocracy. The authors examines the stylistic evolution of screens and the wide variety of subjects depicted, such as flying dragons, the passing of seasons, monumental battles, and The Tale of Genji.

This book includes 250 colour illustrations, many that are reproduced to full page, and shows the screens to their best advantage with a landscape orientation and large-format size. It features Japanese-sewn binding and is kept in a clamshell box, which contains foldout poster reproductions of six screens housed in a separate pocket inside the box. This volume is an elegant addition to the library of any admirer of Japanese art.

From germ theory to plantation logic, this book charts the 528-year legacy of global, colonial powers in the violent search for the elusive Cinchona plant of South America, the only known natural cure for malaria in the world. Stolen by the Jesuits in the 17th century, smuggled abroad by Britain and Holland during the 18th century, mapped by German explorer Alexander von Humboldt in the 19th century, and exploited by global pharma in the 20th century, the Cinchona plant and the story of its powerful quinine extract not only lie at the base of modern civilisation but trace the deep roots of Indigenous, territorial resistance back to the Amazon and the Andes. Using the unfamiliar format of an illustrated historical timeline, the chronological organisation of images and stories presented as unique spatial evidence offer counter-narratives to the conventional bounded map of the nation state and the distancing of the past that often overshadows and obscures realities of the present-future.

Text in English and French.

For his new book 07:27:47, photographer Jonas Dahlström studied urban environments in Sweden. With the immediacy of street photography, he captured their beauty in a continuous sequence of images taking place during exactly 12 hours. Focusing on the interaction of light, shadows, and architecture, the aesthetics of his stunning photographs are strict, clear, and minimalist. Regardless, these external landscapes can be read as “internal landscapes” projected outwards. They tell a tale of fragility, loneliness, and isolation, of human existence holding out against such anonymous, concrete habitats.

Text in English and Swedish.

Following the success of Magic Moments in Florence, Adriana Silvestri explores another of Italy’s historic cities. Her kaleidoscopic images and subtle variations on a theme offer new perspectives on what, in the age of mass tourism, have become all too familiar sights, capturing the true essence of the “Eternal City.” Her eye zeroes in on all kinds of small details, there are even the stray cats of the Colosseum and the Fori Imperiali, whose long shadows stand out against the purple of cardinals’ robes and the white marble of classical Rome.

Lucien Hervé (1910-2007) was one of the great architectural photographers of the 20th century. His methodological and conceptual patterns were reflected in his work, which includes a long collaboration with Le Corbusier.

In 1958 he launched the project for a photobook on the monastery of El Escorial commissioned by the RM publishing house in Barcelona, and a year later, during a trip around Spain, a second commission on popular Mediterranean architecture arose. Although they remained unpublished, both works were the object of constant revision by the photographer throughout his life.

Sixty years later, both photobooks are published, preceded by specialised texts by architects Javier Mosteiro and Marco Iuliano. The publication is completed by a volume in which Iñaki Bergera and art historian Horacio Fernández offer us an overview of the artist’s life and investigate the relationship between these two projects.

Text in English and Spanish.

Contents:
Volume 1: Prefacio / Preface – Judith Hervé; Hervé en España. Blancos y negros, luces y sombras / Hervé in Spain. Whites and Blacks, Lights and Shadows; – Iñaki Bergera; Rigor y tijeras / Rigueur and Scissors – Horacio Fernández.
Volume 2: Mediterránea / Mediterranean – Marco Iuliano; Arquitectura popular española / Spanish Popular Architecture – Lucien Hervé.
Volume 3: El Escorial, a la luz -y contraluz- de Lucien Hervé: imágenes y reflexiones / El Escorial in the Light – and the Backlight – of Lucien Hervé: Images and Reflections – Javier Mosteiro; El Escorial – Lucien Hervé.

Published to accompany an exhibitions at PhotoEspaña, Galería José de la Mano, Madrid, from 5 June to 31 July 2019.

Upon setting foot in Dhaka, with its beautifully landscaped gardens adorning ancient mosques and monuments, it becomes clear that this is a city steeped in history. One of the oldest settlements in Bangladesh, it is today among the largest cities in the world, and rapid, often unplanned, urbanisation has vastly outpaced sustainability, threatening the historic buildings and communities that make up the city’s cultural soul. But, despite bursting at the seams, Dhaka’s six centuries of history are still visible if we look carefully in the shadows of the tall buildings, in the spaces between the speeding cars. Dhaka-based architect Kashef Chowdhury’s camera captures a record of the capital city of the local character that may soon be lost due to urban development. In Chowdhury’s photographs, a woman hangs sheets of polythene to dry and resell, a blind man sings mystic love songs. Other photographs reflect Dhaka’s state of social and cultural flux, like an image of weary night-shift workers returning from a wholesale market in the late morning or of the barely visible lights of a pick-up truck concealed to prevent theft. Chowdhury is one of South Asia’s most renowned architects, and Dhaka: Memories or Lost constitutes his deeply personal tribute to the city.

Shimmering lakes. Snow-capped mountains. Primeval forest where pumas haunt the shadows. Free-flowing rivers that race to the sea. This is Chile’s Corcovado National Park, one of the last great wilderness areas on Earth. Rising above it all is the Corcovado volcano, whose striking form has been a landmark for travellers along the Pacific coastline in southern Chile for centuries. Modern visitors to the region have called the mountain, the Matterhorn of South America. In Corcovado National Park, renowned landscape photographer Antonio Vizcaíno captures the beauty and diversity of a magical setting almost untouched by modern humans. Designated in 2005 by President Ricardo Lagos, the park was born of an innovative public-private collaboration spurred by the largest-ever donation of private land to Chile’s system of protected areas. With a foreword by Lagos and essays by other principals in the park’s creation, Corcovado National Park explores the natural wonders of an extraordinary place and tells the stories of the conservationists who made certain it would remain a bastion of wild nature held in trust by the Chilean people for future generations.