#vienna photobook festival

I just came back from ViennaPhotoBookFestival 2017 where I heard a very witty & interesting lecture by Martin Parr, met Kurt Hörbst (who revived my long-forgotten love for photography many years ago) and saw an exhibition of Klaus Pichler’s latest work, “This will change your life forever.”

I had such a great time (even after a sleepless night) – thanks for that, and thanks for joining me, Sarah Fe (Austria’s next top photographer – check out her Instagram)!

As I need to get some sleep now I’m going to be lazy and just reblog the review I wrote about one of Klaus Pichler’s book in 2013! Here we go:

BOOK:KLAUS PICHLER-SKELETONS IN THE CLOSET

One and a half years after writing about the wonderful series ’One Third’, a project on food waste by Austrian photographer Klaus Pichler, it is long overdue to continue my chorus of praises by presenting his latest photobook, ’Skeletons in the Closet’.

I got this self-published book already three months ago, at the Vienna Photo Book Festival where I met Klaus for the first time. The photographs for this beautiful book were taken between 2008 and 2011 in the Museum of Natural History Vienna and give an unusual insight into the life behind museum scenes.

Here’s an excerpt of the project description to give you a short introduction:

“It all started when I happened to catch a glimpse through a basement window of the Museum of Natural History one night: an office with a desk, a computer, shelves and a stuffed antelope. This experience left me wondering: what does a museum look like behind the scenes? How are exhibits stored when they are not on display? (…)

The museum’s back rooms presented to me a huge array of still lives. Their creation is determined by the need to find space saving storage solutions for the preservation of objects but also the fact that work on and with the exhibits is an ongoing process. Full of life, but dead nonetheless. Surprises included!

(…) I was aiming to find arrangements and scenes where prepared animals interacted with one another or the surrounding spaces of the museum. (…) as a result of constant change in the non-public rooms of the museum, new constellations were forever creating themselves, all I needed to do was to wait and keep my eyes open.” (Klaus Pichler)

KLAUS PICHLER   1 : 0   BEN STILLER

Klaus assured me that none of these photos were staged, what he did was to just put the objects in the right perspective - and he did that in a wonderful, charming way. The 63 images, combined with texts by Julia Edthofer, Herbert Justnik and Pichler himself, seem to breathe life into these dusty witnesses of the past, and the result is way more entertaining than Hollywood could ever dream of (sorry Mr. Stiller).

The cover of the book is made of rough, grey cardboard: this grey layer represents the layers of dust Klaus found in the archives of the museum, with a small peephole to uncover what’s beneath.

Klaus Pichler’s ’Skeletons in the Closet’ (hardbound, 21x21cm, Munken uncoated paper, limited to 700 hand numbered copies) can be ordered here.

Order the limited edition (including a - I’m not joking - fossil shark tooth and a print, coming along in an exclusive book box) here.

More of his work on his website.