Rare Special Editions available from ACC Art Books –  More Information

This book covers the last 20 years of artistic research by one of the leading contemporary Italian photographers: Walter Niedermayr. Through the recurring themes of his work such as Alpine landscapes, architecture and the relationship between public and private spaces, the artist’s interest in investigating places not only from a geographical but also from a social point of view is highlighted.

Although in continuity with the legacy of the Italian photographic tradition, which views the landscape as the key to interpreting society, Niedermayr’s visual research is significant in terms of its ability to reinterpret this subject and renew it from both a conceptual and a formal point of view. For the South Tyrolean photographer, physical space today cannot be approached with an exclusively documentary intention, but as the pivot of a transformative relationship between ecology, architecture and society.

In some of the works in the Alpine Landschaften (Alpine Landscapes) series, for example, the presence of man in the depiction of the landscape is interpreted as a parameter for measuring the proportions of Alpine panoramas, and at the same time as a political yardstick for his intervention in the metamorphosis of the natural equilibrium. This topic is also underlined in works such as Portraits, where the snow cannons filmed during the summer season – and thus inactive – become ambiguous presences residing in the landscape.

Text in English and Italian.

Peter Vinding-Diers is a Danish aristocrat turned roving winemaker who, on escaping his studies at the Sorbonne one summer found himself on Burgundy’s Côte de Beaune, suddenly besotted. Peter’s first foray into wine took him to the Cape (via a quick turn parachuting into the war-zone in Vietnam), where he learned vineyard ways and wine science. Next came a dazzling decade in Bordeaux, where his pioneering exploits began to catch the world’s attention. He then ventured to Bulgaria, Brazil, Spain, Chile and Hungary earning himself the title ‘Flying Winemaker’ (he was one of the first!). Along his wine journey, Peter has frequently had to call on his Viking ancestors for help – not least in taming his ‘Montecarrubo’ vineyards on the wilder side of Sicily – but whether by accident or by design (mostly the latter), he has always found himself at the forefront of vinous discovery…

“I’ve never understood the passion that my friends have for hunting mushrooms. . . but now, after reading this gorgeous and vivacious book, I get it.”  —Star Tribune

Victoria Romanoff picked her first mushroom — a brown-capped butterpilz or sticky bun — at the age of four, at her family’s summer dacha on the shores of the Baltic Sea. Little did she realise that her newfound interest in mushrooming would soon become an essential survival skill, as she and her mother spent eight years in displaced persons camps in the aftermath of World War II, foraging wild foods to supplement their diets. Resettled in the United States, Romanoff has continued to pursue her mycological passion ever since, deploying her considerable culinary skills to convert friends and strangers to the joys of wild mushrooms. Now, in this marvellously written book, rich with anecdote, she shares the wisdom gathered from a lifetime on the hunt.

Romanoff introduces readers to 12 of the most easily foraged and delicious mushrooms, including the chanterelle, the morel, and the oyster. She describes the appearance, habits, and lore of each variety, and provides a recipe for each; her recipes include both refined kitchen creations and rustic dishes meant to be prepared over an open fire at the end of a successful hunt. Romanoff also shares personal stories from her eight decades of mushrooming. Detailed accounts of several of her most memorable excursions bring alive the sensory experience of the hunt, which offers a unique experience of nature as well as a culinary reward.

Illustrated throughout with Romanoff’s own colour photos — which are instructive and sometimes whimsical — these Mushroom Memoirs will be a friendly primer for novice mushroom hunters and an unexpected delight for veteran mycophiles.

Music For The Deaf II is the second book by concert photographer Koen Keppens. His first book Music For The Deaf was published in 2010, exactly 10 years ago. Koen Keppens (1967, Dendermonde) is a photographer with an undying love for music. He has been shooting musicians for more than 30 years. In the summer of 1996, he became the first photographer of “Go for music”, a team that reports online and live from Rock Werchter and Pukkelpop. Keppens has developed a very idiosyncratic style throughout the years. This culminates in the publication of Music For The Deaf in 2010, putting him on the map as one of the most distinct music photographers active today. The book, collecting the best of 20 years of music photography, receives rapturous reviews and underscores how different and unique Keppens’ body of work is. And how unfair it is that he has remained under the radar for so long, for lack of a more prominent and visible medium as an outlet for his talent. ‘Keppens belongs up there with the best of them’, the prominent Dutch music magazine Oor states in its review. ‘Most of all he calls to mind Rembrandt, with his deft use of light (and shade as well), and with a knack for capturing the most unique facial expressions.’ Keppens’ work has been published in Focus Knack and Humo, and he is one of the resident photographers for Rock Wercher.

Text in English and Dutch.

With a striking selection of images and a lively, informative text, Steven Kasher captures the danger, drama, and bravery of the civil rights movement. After an introduction explaining the significance of photography to the movement, the text in this important book proceeds from the Montgomery bus boycott through the student, local and national movements; the big marches; Freedom summer; Malcolm X; and the death of Martin Luther King.

Each chapter begins with a fast-paced narrative of a crucial event in the movement, complemented by a portfolio of the most effective and evocative photographs of the subject. Ranging from the well-known to the rare, these images were shot by such photographers as Richard Avedon, Danny Lyon, Charles Moore, Gordon Parks, Dan Weiner, and more than 50 others. Many of the pictures are accompanied by thought-provoking remembrances and analysis by various photographers and participants.

In the summer of 2021, the Nigerian artist Emeka Ogboh (*1977) transformed the centre of Frankfurt into a sound landscape on water and on land. The sound installation is dedicated to the city of Frankfurt am Main and offers a possible response to the crisis-ridden year 2020. For Emeka Ogboh, music is a medium for connecting people, regardless of their language, background, or religious denomination.

The catalogue documents the staging of THIS TOO SHALL PASS in the city and provides insights into the creation and conception of the work with accompanying text contributions. Parts of the sound installation are made accessible through the integration of augmented-reality elements.

Text in English and German.

Hermann Nitsch, born in Vienna in 1938, is a co-founder of Viennese Actionism, and one of the international pioneers of the Performance Art Movement. This Austrian universal artist’s world-famous painting actions have made a major contribution to the development of art post 1945.

More than 90 of these painting actions have been staged thus far, the most recent were held at the Bayreuth Festival in the summer of 2021 to accompany a new production of the opera The Valkyrie. Nitsch’s 20th painting action took place at the Vienna Secession in 1987 and is the only instance in which the artist’s action works have remained fully available. This is probably Nitsch’s most important integrated work of this kind. It symbolises his extraordinary artistic development and constitutes an unrepeatable contemporary document which exudes an international radiance.

Interior design in Barcelona, an important Mediterranean metropolis and a city with a rich history, draws influences from many different styles. The interiors featured here — notable for their airy sense of space and tiled floors — are cool in the summer but remain cozy and inviting. This book takes you behind the elegant facades, where timeless charm is created by the use of wood, warm colours and fabrics. Barcelona Interiors focuses on the most exclusive and unique homes that represent the authentic Barcelona way of living.

“Whether you’re sunbathing at the beach, killing time waiting for the subway, or flying abroad for summer vacation, AN editors have compiled new architecture and design titles for you.” — The Architect’s Newspaper
Environmental Activism by Design
, a monograph by architects and educators Coleman Coker and Sarah Gamble, challenges designers to actively engage the environmental crisis through their work, while articulating an optimistic, tangible means to pursue community good and environmental justice through design activism and engagement. The authors assert that in addition to greener buildings, cheaper housing, and technological fixes, we must rethink pedagogy and praxis so that every single architecture graduate can define equity and transform the profession.

Environmental Activism by Design centres on the award-winning Gulf Coast DesignLab at the University of Texas, which works directly with clients and stakeholders to produce spaces for the public to learn and researchers to undertake their environmental work. Environmental Activism by Design asks readers to challenge themselves, as agents of social equity, environmental justice, and climate action, to pursue operative practices and transformation rather than mere keywords and consensus.

In St. Louis, it is the summer of 1920 and the day is the Sabbath, but there is little rest for the Jews from Krimsk and less reverence for the wondrous Krimsker Rebbe, who led them to the New World 17 years before. The rebbe’s former hasidim have embraced America to discover that the vision of “gold in the streets” evokes larceny in the heart. Matti Sternweiss, the ungainly, studious child wonder in Krimsk, now the cerebral catcher for the St. Louis Browns, is scheming to fix Saturday’s game against the pennant-contending Detroit Tigers.It is an American Sabbath: Prohibition, bookies, the criminal syndicate, the Hiberian fellowship of the police brass, hometown blondes, a bootlegging rabbi, and big league baseball. It is also Krimsk in America: Boruch Levi, the successful junkman, confiscates his zany, crippled brother-in-law Barasch’s sizable bets; Barasch’s lusty wife, Malka, has her own connubial reasons for wanting to stop the gambling; the chief of police fatefully inspires his loyal disciple, Boruch Levi, to bring Matti before the Krimsker Rebbe on the Sabbath in order to preserve the purity of the national pastime. Recluse and wonder-worker, messianist and pragmatist, the Krimsker Rebbe navigates the muddy Mississippi River, haunted by a recurring prophetic vision of Pharaoh’s blood-red Nile. In the final, decisive innings, with Matti crouched behind home plate, it will come down to Ty Cobb versus the kabbalah. Richly imagined, populated with robust, complex characters, Big League Dreams is a profoundly original, inspiring, and comic creation. It is the second volume in the series Small Worlds, which follows the people of Krimsk and their descendants in America, Russia, Poland, and Israel. In each volume Allen Hoffman draws on his deep knowledge of Jewish religion and history to evoke the finite yet infinite “small worlds” his characters inhabit.

“Reading Tableaux was like revisiting old haunts, or places I would have liked to have haunted. It sparked visceral sense memories and made me nostalgic. And the ending …” – Midori

It is 1984, the year of Ronald Reagan’s re-election and the Brighton bomb; one can sense revolution in the air. Oliver Woolf is a thirty-something journalist, well-connected socially, and an instinctual conservative, whose comfortable routine is upset by a chance encounter in the rain. The girl in the rain is Candy, who is not what she first seems. Over the summer, Oliver and Candy form an unlikely friendship, and when she stops calling on him, he sets out to find her. His search leads him through a labyrinthine underworld that extends from London to Manhattan. Along the way, he meets someone who will change his life forever. A late-twentieth century Rake’s Progress, Oliver’s journey confronts issues that are still largely taboo. Illustrated with photographs by Steve Diet Goedde, Tableaux combines art and storytelling in a new hybrid form.

Tony Sarg (1880–1942), an American artist born in Guatemala to a diplomatic family, first achieved professional success as an illustrator in London and New York. But in the 1920s, he gained even greater renown for his touring puppet shows based on classic tales like Alice in Wonderland and Robinson Crusoe. Fusing the time-honoured craft of traditional marionette shows with a playful modern sensibility, Sarg’s productions were foundational to American puppetry: Jim Henson can be considered a direct artistic descendant. Yet this was only one facet of Sarg’s varied accomplishments: he was also a pioneer in animated films and children’s books, and, as a longtime designer for Macy’s, he invented the gigantic balloons used in the firm’s Thanksgiving Day Parade. (He also employed one of his parade balloons in the famous Nantucket Sea Serpent hoax of 1937.)

This abundantly illustrated volume, published to coincide with a major exhibition organised by the Norman Rockwell Museum, is the first to survey Tony Sarg’s protean career. It brings together imagery and artifacts from numerous public and private collections, and includes special sections on Sarg’s long association with the island of Nantucket and his influence on American puppetry. Tony Sarg: Genius at Play will be essential reading for anyone with an interest in the history of popular culture.

Over the course of a long and very successful career spanning the first half of the 20th century, Lucy Kemp-Welch established herself as one of the leading equestrian painters at work in the UK and one of the country’s best-known women artists. David Boyd Haycock’s new, extensively illustrated biography of Kemp-Welch brings this remarkable artist and her work back into sharp focus.  

Born in 1869, Kemp-Welch first came to the art establishment’s attention in 1897 when her immense painting, Colt Hunting in the New Forest, caused a sensation at the Royal Academy’s Summer Exhibition; the work was bought for the Nation by the Chantry Bequest in the year of exhibition. In 1915, she illustrated Anna Sewell’s Black Beauty, and was commissioned to paint images for the Government during the First World War. Later, the mural Women’s Work in the Great War, was placed in the Royal Exchange in London, where it remains to this day.

Respected art writer and curator Boyd-Haycock shines new light on Kemp-Welch’s life, writing from a 21st-century perspective and reflecting on her as a female painter in a male-dominated environment. Alongside Kemp-Welch’s paintings, the book will feature exclusive period photographs of the artist herself, shown at work and in her studio.

Els Sirejacob and Bram Debaenst take you on their camper van travels through the most beautiful regions of Italy, sharing along the way the most delicious recipes tailored to each destination.

This sequel to Camper Food & Stories is a personal record of the Italian summer road trips of food stylist Els Sirejacob and photographer Bram Debaenst, with absolutely stunning photos of their favourite spots in the Dolomites, the Veneto, Lombardy, Emilia-Romagna, Le Marche, Umbria, Abruzzo, Piemonte, Liguria and the Amalfi coast. It’s also an ode to the culinary traditions and the local specialities of the regions where Els and Bram went camping. They selected the tastiest recipes from Italian cuisine that you can prepare in or near your camper van: uncomplicated dishes that simply burst with flavour, made from fresh, local ingredients, like risotto with hazelnut pesto, authentic ragù, pasta al limone, insalata di polpo or coffee zabaglione? Obviously, all these recipes can also be cooked at home, with the added bonus of feeling like you’re on vacation in the land of la dolce vita.

This thought-provoking essay by Corinna Thierolf stems from the art created by Fabienne Verdier in a visual and spiritual dialogue with the Isenheim Altarpiece by Matthias Grünewald (1516), housed at the Musée Unterlinden in Colmar. Between 2019 and 2022, Verdier produced to a series of 78 large-format paintings that develop Grünewald’s meditation on light, drawing not only upon significant moments in the history of science, but also on pivotal themes of both Eastern and Western painting and thus confirm the universal power of art.

Text in English, French and German.

City kids and visiting families alike know there’s no better place for children than the Big Apple, and 111 Places for Kids in New York shows you where to take a big bite. From ultra-hip hangouts for the most urbane toddlers to natural wonders hiding in the middle of the concrete jungle, the five boroughs of New York offer children the richness and diversity of the world with the beloved traditions of home. In New York, you can explore the globe, from a Sri Lankan courtyard to a gritty parkour park to a quaint New England town — all with a swipe of a Metrocard. 

With this guide, you will be inspired to explore new neighbourhoods, treat the kids in your life to unbelievable experiences, and make the city your own. You’ll discover places and spaces you never knew existed, and rediscover familiar ones in new ways. Read up on helpful tips by been-there-done-that parents (psst — do you know where exhausted parents can bliss out on AC while their toddlers get friendly with baboons?). And learn insider secrets for ways to make the most of your visit to the parks, museums, restaurants, and adventures that make this metropolis so special and so inviting.

To many the words Hill Station are evocative of an exotic and exciting vision when the subjects of the British Colonial Government gloried in the Hill Stations of India and Burma. Beautifully constructed holiday towns built at 3,000 feet or more where people flocked to escape the heats of the plains. High up the Shan hills of east Burma stood Maymyo. This book tells the stories of the people for whom Maymyo really was a heaven ‘lost on the clouds’.

“Even the book’s cover sparkles with gold, a brilliant visual cue — at least for those of us of a certain age — of what’s in store: A traipse through that time in our lives when the sparkly flash of pop-cultural figures served as guides to millions of youngsters desperate to connect to a dim constellation we knew to be out there but couldn’t see alone.” — East Hampton Star

“A collection of fabled 20th-century musicians’ style from Diana Ross & The Supremes’ sequins to The Ramones’ leather jackets.” — Wall Street Journal

What The Band Wore by Alice Harris is an unprecedented collection of photographs that illustrates four decades of pop, rock, soul, disco, funk, punk, reggae, heavy metal, and hip hop fashion. Sparkling sequins, safety pins, and even suits from outer space are spotlighted in more than 80 images by acclaimed music photographers, including Terry O’Neill, Henry Diltz, Matthew Rolston, Bob Gruen, and Lynn Goldsmith.

Featuring exclusive comments from legendary artists, What The Band Wore traces the evolution of stage wear from the 1960s through the 1990s, from the self-made counterculture style of Jefferson Airplane, Janis Joplin, and Sly & The Family Stone to the custom designs that Bob Mackie, Bill Whitten, Larry LeGaspi, Vivienne Westwood, and Issey Miyake created for the most renowned names in music. Whether it’s Elvis Presley or Janet Jackson posing in tight leather, Freddie Mercury masquerading as a harlequin, or Run-DMC sporting their iconic footwear, these pages thread together a fabulous celebration of fashion and music.

Henri Gaudier-Brzeska (1891-1915) was one of the leading figures of European avant-garde sculpture. Gaudier played an important role in the development of modern sculpture in Britain, working alongside Ezra Pound, Jacob Epstein, Roger Fry, Wyndham Lewis and others. Like many artists of his generation, his career was tragically cut short by the war. Having volunteered for the French army in the summer of 1914, he was killed in action the following year, at the age of just twenty-three.

In 1930 Jim Ede, who three years earlier had acquired almost all of Gaudier’s work, published a biography of the sculptor. Entitled A life of Gaudier-Brzeska, the book was re-issued a year later with the title Savage Messiah. Ede’s book played an important role in re-establishing Gaudier’s reputation at a time when he was at risk of fading into obscurity.

This new edition, published in 2011 to mark the centenary of Gaudier’s arrival in Britain from France, includes previously unpublished material and new essays that re-contextualise the book art historically. It draws from the 1929 manuscript version of Ede’s book, now in the archive at the Henry Moore Institute in Leeds, reproducing many of the drawings and photographs first used by Ede.

Markus Raetz (1941–2020) is widely recognised as one of Switzerland’s most significant contemporary artists. His multifaceted oeuvre includes some 1,500 sculptures, installations, and objects. They are works that make us playfully aware of how strongly our perception of the world depends on the point of view we take.
This bilingual French–German book, published in conjunction with a major Markus Raetz retrospective at the Kunstmuseum Bern in summer 2023, focuses on the artist’s objects and mobiles, most of which have only so far been sporadically on public display. Essays by curator Stephan Kunz and French art historian and curator Didier Semin explore this part of Raetz’s work and place it within the overall context of his art. These are complemented by images newly taken by Swiss photographer Alexander Jaquemet in Raetz’s preserved studio, thus providing a direct insight into the artist’s former working environment.

Text in French and German.

“Capturing the spirit of every Glastonbury since 1992, this coffee table book from award-winning photographer Liam Bailey brings together three decades of revelry and wonder among festivalgoers on Somerset’s most famous dairy farm.” — Redonline.co.uk

“…Iconic Photos That Capture the Messy Essence of Glastonbury.” — VICE

“The book’s images capture the rugged anarchy that spreads through Somerset each year around the solstice.” — MSN

“There are many books about the music scene but few that show punters in all their beautiful variety. Liam Bailey’s long-term documentation has really paid off – this book about the craziness of Glastonbury Festival is terrific.” – Martin Parr

Glastonbury is the striking distillation of over 30 years’ unprecedented photographic access to the world’s largest green-field music and performing arts festival. In over 120 memorable images, Liam Bailey invites us to share his experiences of being among its diverse tribes.

Although Glastonbury has evolved into a sprawling fixture of the British summer calendar, this famously vibrant event is still powered by the belief in alternative communal culture. It is this special energy that has kept Bailey returning every year since 1992. Above all, this ‘access all areas’ visual diary makes a case for the positive human potential of over 200,000 people being able to get together in the open air – to enjoy music, performance and each other.

Bailey’s work has been exhibited in the UK and abroad, and appeared in magazines and newspapers including The Independent, The Guardian and Condé Nast Traveller.

“Every page is filled with stories that not only inspire but also demonstrate how hard work, perseverance, and self-confidence are the keys to success. It’s a book that not only motivates young athletes but also makes parents smile at the thought that their children can be the stars of tomorrow.” — NL Magazine

Get ready for the Olympics with this action-packed book on the greatest women gymnasts of all time.

Legends of Women’s Gymnastics profiles 28 champions from the Eastern Bloc gymnasts, like Olga Korbut and Nadia Comăneci, who brought a new athleticism to the sport; to Shannon Miller and her Magnificent Seven teammates, who dominated the 1996 Olympics; to today’s stars, like Simone Biles and Suni Lee, who are bringing gymnastics to new heights. Illustrated with dynamic colour photos, this book will be sure to wow passionate fans and aspiring gymnasts alike.

In Saint Louis, it is the summer of 1920 and the day is the Sabbath, but there is little rest for the Jews from Krimsk and less reverence for the wondrous Krimsker Rebbe, who led them to the New World seventeen years before. The rebbe’s former hasidim have embraced America to discover that the vision of “gold in the streets” evokes larceny in the heart. Matti Sternweiss, the ungainly, studious child wonder in Krimsk, now the cerebral catcher for the St. Louis Browns, is scheming to fix Saturday’s game against the pennant-contending Detroit Tigers.

It is an American Sabbath: Prohibition, bookies, the criminal syndicate, the Hiberian fellowship of the police brass, hometown blondes, a bootlegging rabbi, and big league baseball. It is also Krimsk in America: Boruch Levi, the successful junkman, confiscates his zany, crippled brother-in-law Barasch’s sizable bets; Barasch’s lusty wife, Malka, has her own connubial reasons for wanting to stop the gambling; the chief of police fatefully inspires his loyal disciple, Boruch Levi, to bring Matti before the Krimsker Rebbe on the Sabbath in order to preserve the purity of the national pastime.

Recluse and wonder-worker, messianist and pragmatist, the Krimsker Rebbe navigates the muddy Mississippi River, haunted by a recurring prophetic vision of Pharaoh’s blood-red Nile. In the final, decisive innings, with Matti crouched behind home plate, it will come down to Ty Cobb versus the kabbalah.

Richly imagined, populated with robust, complex characters, Big League Dreams is a profoundly original, inspiring, and comic creation. It is the second volume in the series Small Worlds, which follows the people of Krimsk and their descendants in America, Russia, Poland, and Israel. In each volume Allen Hoffman draws on his deep knowledge of Jewish religion and history to evoke the finite yet infinite “small worlds” his characters inhabit.

Bears All Things (from the Finnish “Kaiken se kestää”) is a lifelong art project by the artist couple Mammu and Pasi Rauhala. The project, which has taken place every year since 2013, comprises photographs of the artists going about their daily lives, from renovating their home, to gardening – always in the same getup: their wedding attire. Their gestures and appearance, always very serious, are a nod to the tradition of the family portrait. With a generous dose of humour, the works encourage the audience to reflect on the institution of marriage and issues of interpersonal relationships, both on the individual and the societal level.