Dutch Photobooks selected in Photo-Eye's Best Books of 2010 Photography

THE BEST BOOKS OF 2010SELECTED BYMorten Andersen Timothy Prus & Ed Jones Alan Rapp Elizabeth Avedon Rinko Kawauchi Ramón Reverté Alexa Becker Hester Keijser Michael Schmelling Bruno Ceschel Anne Kelly George Slade Jörg M. Colberg Loring Knoblauch Alec Soth Marco Delogu Larissa Leclair Peter Sutherland Antone Dolezal Melanie McWhorter Willem van Zoetendaal John Gossage Colin Pantall Laurence Vecten Todd Hido Martin Parr Fabrice Wagner For nearly two decades photo-eye has been selecting the best photography books of the year. In the past we sat around the table at Director Rixon Reed's home or in our Santa Fe bookstore debating for hours on topics such as each book's historical importance, how a particular title contributes to the expansion of our understanding of an important photographer's oeuvre or the nature and relevance of the book as object. The features or factors making a book the best for one person are not always the same for another. As the years progressed, the list of nominees and the stack of books to review in one evening made the task of narrowing down the list to a few titles almost impossible. In 2008, photo-eye decided to invite some of our favorite contemporary publishers, writers, photographers and photo professionals to assist us in this process. Their opinions reflect the diversity of the medium. This year's list of contributors offers up the aesthetic tastes of 27 contributors from Europe, the US, Japan and Mexico. The evolution and shift of interest in the photobook community has come to rest heavily on self-published and indie books. These titles

have shot a breath of fresh air into not only the photobook world, but into the art community as a whole. Self-published titles such as Rob Hornstra & Arnold van Bruggen's Empty Land and Maxwell Anderson's See You Soon make it onto several of our contributor's lists and showcase the diversity and creativity that self-published and indie titles have brought to the table. Several of our contributors are leading voices in this exploding new photobook world. Self-Publish, Be Happy's Bruno Ceschel, Indie Photobook Library's Larissa Leclair and curator of Publish It Yourself Laurence Vecten were included this year as representatives of this phenomenal movement. Even well-established photographers such as Alec Soth and Martin Parr give their nod to the self-publishing industry. We are honored to have such a diverse list of contributors reflecting this shift in aesthetic trend. view all selected books

Quatorze Juillet. Photographs by Johan van der Keuken.Van Zoetendaal Gallery. Bastille Day, Paris, 1958; a wind-blown couple dances in the street on the Quai de Bourbon, isolated and oblivious to the derelict buildings beside them. This well-known image by documentary filmmaker and photographer Van der Keuken was first published in 1964; the discovery of 32 negatives from the same shoot informs this book and exhibition at Amsterdam's FOAM. Groups of girls socialise; other couples dance and drift off; children laugh; chance passers-by take centre stage. As the image's context is revealed in dynamic sequence, Van der Keuken's perception, processes and choices are uncovered, evincing the cinematic qualities and capturing of motion that concerned him throughout his later career.

Selected by:

● John Gossage● Ramón Reverté● Morten Andersen● Jörg M. Colberg● Martin Parr

The Kaddu Wasswa Archive. A Visual Biography. Edited by Andrea Stultiens, Arthur C. Kisitu and Kaddu Wasswa.Post Editions. The Kaddu Wasswa Archive by photographer Andrea Stultiens is the visual biography of Ugandan Kaddu Wasswa, born in 1933, who played a an important role in his community as a teacher and social worker. What is exceptional about the now 77-year old Wasswa

is that he has always documented his activities. He wrote novels, plays and essays, took photographs and collected photos. Additionally, his extensive archive contains letters and newspaper clippings, often with added commentary. Andrea Stultiens met Kaddu Wasswa in 2008 through his grandson, photographer Arthur C. Kisitu. Together, Stultiens and Kisitu set out to explore Wasswa's archive. She took photographs of the documents to which she added her and Kisitu's own photos which were taken during their meetings. The result is a unique biography in which the author is personally visible as well. Kaddu Wasswa started his archive in the period when Uganda was seeking independence from Great Britain, its coloniser. The many photos in the archive present a fascinating view of the country Uganda and its inhabitants during the first fifty years of independence, which will be commemorated in 2012. The Kaddu Wasswa Archive preserves the history of a man and tells the story of a country. The book The Kaddu Wasswa Archive will be launched on October 30th at the exhibition with the same name in the Nederlands Fotomuseum in Rotterdam.

Selected by:● Melanie McWhorter● George Slade● Larissa Leclair

Flamboya. Photographs by Viviane Sassen.contrasto. Flamboya includes photographs taken across Africa—from Cape Town to Kenya to Zambia—that disregard traditional boundaries of genres and tackle the problematic bond between photography, imperialism, and the colonial imagination. Viviane Sassen’s aesthetic vocabulary suggestively recalls documentary as much as staged photography and relies on a visual economy that invites the formulation of multiple interpretations. Seen through Sassen’s lens, the ethnic Other interrogates the traditional nexus laid between vision, knowledge, and power, which lies at the heart of the history and ideology of photography. Read Shane Lavalette's review of Flamboya in photo-eye Magazine.

Selected by:● Alexa Becker● Rinko Kawauchi

Empty Land. Photographs by Rob Hornstra & Arnold van Bruggen.The Sochi Project. In Empty Land, Promised Land, Forbidden Land photographer Rob Hornstra and writer Arnold van Bruggen explore the unknown country Abkhazia on the Black Sea. Abkhazia broke away from Georgia after a short, violent civil war in '92-'93 and was recognised as independent in 2008 by Russia, Venezuela, Nicaragua and the atoll of Nauru. Hornstra and Van Bruggen spent the last four years travelling through the country, seeing how it is slowly trying to claw its way out of isolation. They visited the refugees in Georgia and described the attempts made by the Abkhazian government to repopulate the empty, war-ravaged country with new immigrants. Abkhazia was once the holiday paradise of the Soviet Union’s elite. During the war of independence many hotels and sanatoria were shot to pieces.

The country is empty – more than half of the pre-1992 inhabitants have fled – and impoverished. But an increasing number of Russian investors and tourists are discovering the country. After signing cooperation treaties, Russia took over Abkhazia’s border patrol. In the meantime, Abkhazia is trying to convince Turks of Caucasian descent to emigrate to Abkhazia. In Empty Land, Promised Land, Forbidden Land, Hornstra and Van Bruggen sketch a picture of Abkhazia from the perspective of many different Abkhazians, from pupil to president, in cities and in the countryside. It is the first time that the young country has been so extensively portrayed in words and images. Rob Hornstra and Arnold van Bruggen together form TheSochiProject.org and are regarded as pioneers in crowdfunding. Support from donors (currently 352) enables them to travel to the Caucasus several times a year. The five-year documentary project aims to map the changes taking place in and around the Russian city of Sochi, which will host the Olympic Winter Games in 2014. Selected by:

● Marco Delogu● Ramón Reverté

My Grandma Was a Turtle. Photographs by Cuny Janssen.Snoeck. For this rhapsodic artist's book, Dutch photographer Cuny Janssen visited that town of Bartlesville, Oklahoma, to photograph children with Native American ancestors and their surroundings. Her motivation was curiosity about what traces of their origins could be seen in these modern Native American children; the title refers to the Turtle clan of the Delaware tribe in Oklahoma. The 85 elegiac photos in this book, some in beautifully reproduced color, were taken with Janssen's large format camera, and include surprisingly anachronistic images of the prairie, complete with bison. Janssen's unique combination of children and history results in a lyrical

bridge across time. The hand-pasted reproductions make this book feel like early photograph albums or collector's albums for cigarette cards. Limited edition of 1000 copies. Selected as one of Antone's Picks on photo-eye Blog. Read the blog post here. Selected by:

● Antone Dolezal● Alexa Becker

Playing Borders. Photographs by Anouk Kruithof.Revolver Publishing by VVV. The scenery of my fictitious photographic image-essay Playing borders is an office building from the eighties in Rotterdam. One floor of the building was my studio during the first three months of 2008. The floor consists of cold dreary voids, wherein decay and destruction are clearly visible. All traces of human activity have perished from the floor and there is nothing left but an atmosphere of desolation. This atmosphere embodies the 'state of mind' of Western man in my opinion, as I describe it in my prologue. Playing Borders is an experimental journey with the camera through the abandoned floor, wherein many temporary installations and interferences have playfully been constructed. The materials that have been left behind, which where once

the firmaments of the same floor, were reused by me, and they form the base of a newly construed subjective reality. Useless junk gets a meaningful importance again. During the process I invited people, who got into contact with the installations in the rooms. They executed performance like actions at times, or simply left a trail of their presence. The images mainly exist through my constant intuitive reaction to all that happens during the process. There are swift and dynamic constructions and destructions and through this new situations arise. In my story of images, I constantly play with the borders between photography, installation art and performance. The images mainly come into being via constant intuitive reaction. The eventual images are mostly the insignificant intermediate moments, stacking layer upon layer and calling questions considering their meaning into being. Berlin 2009, Revolver VVV, ill., 20 x 30 – 32,5 cm, slipcover, photos, posters Selected by:

● Alec Soth

Eastward Bound. Photographs by Marco van Duyvendijk.Marco van Duyvendijk. Marco van Duyvendijk is a ‘slow’ photographer, preferring to work on a series for months and sometimes years. Even so, over the past decade he has produced enough work for a retrospective at the Hague Museum for Photography in the Netherlands, demonstrating an impressive start to

a career. Van Duyvendijk does not confine himself to any single genre, alternating travel and documentary photography with portraits. But his work always shows the control and care that are the marks of an empathic and intelligent photographer giving his subjects the time they deserve. Selected by:

● Larissa Leclair

Portfolio. Photographs by Thijs groot Wassink and Ruben Lundgren.WassinkLundgren.. This portfolio contains a selection of our work up to 2009. Selected by:

● Timothy Prus & Ed Jones

Der Baum. Photographs by Erik van der Weijde.4478ZINE. Inspired in part by a German photography book from 1931 with the same title, ‘Der Baum’ features 44 photographs of trees taken by Van der Weijde in recent years. The tree's locations range from historical sites like Hitler's elementary school and the scenes of famous crimes, to unidentified places that give rise to oblique atmospheres and titles such as 'School', 'Road' and 'Park'. As in his other publications, Van der Weijde deals in typological representations that explore the photo book itself as an object. "Der Baum presents forty-four photographs of trees taken by Van der Weijde over the last several years at diverse locations in Europe and Brazil. Titled for their locations, some of the images become filled with significance, Hitler's elementary school or scenes of famous crimes, while others, "School" or "Road" are anonymous and descriptive. Like Van der Weijde's previous publications, Der Baum is a stunning combination of traditional D.I.Y publishing, photographic typology and a nuanced relationship to the materiality of printed matter."- Daniel Espeset from photo-eye Newsletter Selected by:

● Bruno Ceschel

How Terry Likes His Coffee. Photographs by Florian van Roekel.Florian van Roekel. In “How Terry likes his Coffee” I examined the consequences of professionalization on the way we cope with reality and each other. All photo’s are candid. The images were taken in a fifteen month period throughout five different companies in the Netherlands. This body of work has been produced as part of the final exam of my Bachelor of Photography at the Royal Academy of Arts in the Hague, Netherlands. Selected by:

● Martin Parr

Fringe Phenomena 1.

Photographs by Andre Thijssen. Edited with introduction by Erik Kessels.De Jonge Hond. Andre Thijssen takes photos of images that most people in everyday life unnoticed. Everyday situations, especially by the way he looks at it. Thijssen literally look over the surrounding reality. This fascination with fringe phenomena, providing images that he calls Fringe Phenomena. Intriguing because the photographed images that are often not immediately reveal. The photographs challenge our sense of perception and force it to not watch. Photography by Andre Thijssen in many international publications to see. His photographs were published in NRC Next, Fri Netherlands and Hollands Diep. For the first time they are brought together in one book. Erik Kessels and Hans Aarsman have developed a selection of unique and previously unpublished photographs from the archives of Thijssen. Fringe Phenomena calls attention to that which is usually somewhere in our corners play and most people miss. It is a unique combination which shows the richness of skew. Selected by:

● Willem van Zoetendaal

Garage. Photographs by Jan Adriaans.Fw:. These days even black-a colour that has a history with Ford-has its own trendy name: Panther Black. Other colours in the company's colour palette are Hypnotic Silver, Tango and Frozen White. How different things were at the beginning of the last century when the first of 15 million T-Fords rolled

off the revolutionary production line in Detroit. Henry Ford reportedly said that his ‘Tin Lizzie' would be delivered in any colour, as long as it was black. In truth, no one ever actually heard him say these words and between 1913 and 1926 Ford customers could choose between Brewster Green, Red, Blue and Grey. Indeed, during those early years there were no T-Fords delivered in the colour black. – Andrew Mason, 2010. The publication 'Garage' shows work of Jan Adriaans which he made out of the fascination for the relation between the car and the garage. The publication also contains a DVD with an original videowork of Adriaans. The publication is printed in 5 different coloured covers, each of these colours are a translation of iconic car colours: Morello by Citroen (2008), Britisch Racing Green by Jaguar (1974), Cumbria Beige by Fiat (2008), Deep Sea Blue by BMW (2009) and Panther Black by Ford (1997). If you prefer a specific colour for your publication you can send an email to Fw: after you have placed your order. Selected by:

● Hester Keijser

Haphazard. Photographs by Ellert Haitjema.Timmer Art Books. Selected by:

● Martin Parr

Mimicry. Photographs by Judith van Ijken.Judith van Ijken. Walking around in the New York neighbourhood of Williamsburg, I kept thinking I saw my father going past. Not the way he looks now, but as I know him from old photos. Nothing but young guys with great mops of black curls, moustaches and beards, 1980s-style training tops, tight jeans and often on racing bikes. Guys who looked like their fathers did in the 1980s. In the first instance I saw this as a matter of fashion, the ‘retro’ trend that seems to move in parallel with my generation. Ten years ago I wore wide-legged slacks, today tight jeans. Just like my mother when she was twenty and later thirty. When I gave it some more thought, I realised that this everyday phenomenon raises interesting questions about the age we live in. Questions such as: “Why is it that this generation wants to look like its parents?”, “What does that say about our time?”, “What is the relationship between these generations?” and “What has happened in the meantime?” Selected by:

● Martin Parr

Foto & Copyright. Volume 2. By G.P. Fieret.Voetnoot. Self-taught photographer Gerard P. Fieret photographed every aspect of the life around him, from himself to children, animals, street scenes and, most commonly, women. Fieret's emotions and experiences are the central reference point of his work, while his complex printing techniques and copyright marks became an unmistakable part of his images. Volume 1 of this title, published in 2004 to commemorate Fieret's 80th birthday, is now sold out and a collectible object. Volume 2, compiled from the rich collection of the Hague Museum of Photography, contains some 160 works that are being published for the first time. Selected by:

● Willem van Zoetendaal

Sketches. Polaroids of Africa (2002-2010). Photographs by Viviane Sassen.Kominek Gallery. Polaroids from the African series by Viviane Sassen, de Selected by:

● Willem van Zoetendaal

Tokyo Tokyo. By WassinkLundgren.

WassinkLundgren. Selected by:

● Willem van Zoetendaal

Queen Ann. P.S. Belly Cut Off. By Mariken Wessels.Alauda Publications. Mariken Wessels’ second art book is titled Queen Ann. P.S. Belly cut off. Here again, the photographs are sourced from an existing person, a middle-aged woman wringing with her self-image in an endless stream of manipulated photographs of herself, making them into a true cabinet of curiosities. The authentic arrangement of the discovered material, with its strange mixture of old and new photographs, film material and collages is strikingly deceptive. In fact, both in Elisabeth - I want to eat - as well as in Queen Ann. P.S. Belly cut off, it is the hand of the fine craftswoman Mariken Wessels at work. The suggestive, intimate force of the ‘found’ photographic material and other personal documents, as well as the sequencing of the images as a whole, are both deliberately arranged with great precision. Wessels sensitively appropriates the photo and film material by newly photographing, editing, and re-organizing them, often incorporating other material in a complementary gesture. In doing so, she constructs a narrative, weaving together images in the medium of the book. In Queen

Ann. P.S. Belly cut off it is the unfolding of a melancholic narrative of a woman, whose life seems to be dominated by her obesity. Yet the reader is never turned into a voyeur. ‘Queen Ann’s’ peculiar and touching photo collages of herself, expressing a longing for another ‘being’, are fused with the image that the book evokes around her persona. In the contrast which the arrangement of the photos make all too evident, an uncomfortable incompatibility emerges between the present and the past life of Ann and the status of being beautiful. Wessels breathes new life into her protagonist, blurring the lines between fiction and reality, giving way in the process to a seemingly ‘higher’ reality. The genre of the art book, in particular the picture novel, is currently witnessing a huge emergence in the contemporary art scene. Mariken Wessels lends her unique interpretation to this form through a skillful combination of picture novel and independent photo book. It is thus not without reason that her first book has already turned into a collector’s item. Selected by:

● Jörg M. Colberg