‘Except the Clouds’

A book by Bérangère Fromont, published by Void.

Athens is an oxymoron-city. Its flamboyant mythological heritage coexists with its dark and dramatic political-economic situation. Its sun shines with a thousand lights but crushes its streets. It is a blinding light that reveals its violence and its twilight faces. And yet we feel a life force much more intense than elsewhere. The idea of resistance takes on its full meaning. Bodies tirelessly rise up to face the chaos of history as one. In permanent revolution.

“My project is to give an account of this oxymoron in images, but also of the complexity of the contemporary in its different temporal layers. With this phrase of Walter Benjamin always in mind, as an invisible and obsessive thread, seek light in the ruins of Attica.” – Bérangère Fromont

‘Except the Clouds’ is a work on Athens but not only. It is above all a reflection on the place of the human in a civilization in decline and its fragility.

In this series there are several types of images, accounting for the complexity of the contemporary in these different temporal strata.

Portraits: one young boy, staring at the sun, dazzled, makes the link between the past and the present.

Isolated objects: objects found in abandoned sites, vacant lots, or in the streets. Decontextualized. Each has its own strength and takes on a new meaning. These objects were those used by the demonstrators against police and for the break-in. Everything reuses and transforms itself.

Archive images: the idea of resistance takes on its full meaning. Bodies tirelessly rise up to face the chaos of history as one. The different layers of stories in images with different temporalities. Re-appropriated.

Geometry: always more disturbing, geometry, in Greek, means to survey, it is about the place where one learns to apprehend space. We're back to the stroller. My reflection on the flaneur. The link with Benjamin who was the greatest thinker. Geometry is one of the founding principles of architecture and construction. By its own strict rules, it unites the rules of nature. In itself immutable. The use of geometric images as a formal basis for the construction of the series. The images of chaos revolve around it. 

The black: Bérangère's subjectivity as an artist. She is the one who walks and sees. Black as black as anarchy. But also twilight. Will the light win over the black?

-

Bérangère was the laureated of both jury and public Mentor 2018 prize in Arles with the project ‘Except the Clouds’.

With the kind support of Institut Français de Paris & Institut Français de Grèce

14 x 21 cm
112 Pages
500 copies
French fold binding
Die-cut softcover with silver printing

ISBN 978-618-83825-6-5

Buy ‘Except the Clouds’ by Bérangère Fromont now.

Read more about ‘Except the Clouds’ in:
American Suburb X
Photobookstore Magazine – Best Photobooks of 2018: Brad Feuerhelm
Photobookstore Magazine – Best Photobooks of 2018: Cécile Poimboeuf-Koizumi
PHmuseum – The Best Photobooks of 2018
Aldebaran, Contemporary Photography Hub

Download ‘Except the Clouds’ presentation PDF.

Bérangère Fromont is also featured in ‘Hunger 2’.

‘Beyond the Mirror’

A book by Leif Sandberg, published by Void.

‘Beyond the Mirror’ starts where ‘Ending’ ends.

Materialized after a cancer surgery, ‘Ending’ was a critically acclaimed book by Leif Sandberg (1943) that dealt with the proximity of death. What could possibly be a sequence to a publication titled ‘Ending’?

‘Beyond the Mirror’ is a unique answer to that. Happening after death, with death still indeed present, his new book has biographical elements such as photos from Leif’s several crossings through Camino de Santiago, family and intimate photos and also a touch of sci-fi: “Yes, I think I saw a UFO on my way home after working late a cold and crisp winter night. I saw a slow moving light in the sky and stopped the car and stepped out looking and saw a large toroid form rotating slowly in the sky.”

For this reason, Lotta Lotass’ text included in a side booklet, brings a new layer to the work. “I was looking for a text that had some sort of connection to my images, something that could add to the perspective. And it was right in front of me. In my bookshelf I had a trilogy of Lotass, where ‘Mars’ is one of the books. Reading it again, I found it very suitable for what I was looking for and when she without hesitation let me use the text, I was delighted.”

At a time, Leif was scanning old negatives from his archive, as well as his father’s slides from his family holidays that were dated back up to 50 years. Among the scans Leif found images alluding to deserted and foreign landscapes, which gave him access into other worlds, other than the one we live in. He also realized that some images from his Santiago de Compostela walks had similar connotations. The project guided itself into worlds beyond what we see, beyond the mirror.

In Sandberg’s own words: “Fiction can take us into other people’s lives and widen our experience. What we call reality can be quite different for each of us, but basically I believe it is what our senses register and what the brain transform it to. Fiction is something made up by your own or other people’s fantasy and I am fascinated by the mixture of these two things as it enriches your life.”

Compared to Leif’s first book, ‘Beyond the Mirror’ has a more experimental approach to photography. Trying to make something related to other worlds, the photographer felt that it was natural to use a special language. - “I believe we only experience a fraction what is going on around us and that there are many ”worlds” we cannot see or experience. ‘Beyond the Mirror’ is a fantasy around these things.”

‘Beyond the Mirror’ is published internationally by Void and by Skreid Publishing in Sweden.

Collector’s Edition

Leif Sandberg’s ‘Beyond the Mirror’ Collector’s Edition is still in design development. Though, it will consist in the original book (international edition) coming in a slipcase with a portfolio with five 12 x 17cm signed original inkjet prints in an Edition of 18 + 2APs.

The following images are the photographs contained in ‘Beyond the Mirror’ Collector’s Edition

For inquires, talkto@void.photo

14 x 19,5 cm
96 Pages + 24-page text booklet
250 copies
Embossed hardcover with book’s sides died
English text

ISBN 978-618-83825-5-8

Swedish edition published by Skreid, ISBN 978-91-639-9026-7, can be purchased from the artist.

Buy ‘Beyond the Mirror’ by Leif Sandberg now.

Download ‘Beyond the Mirror’ Presentation PDF.

Leif Sandberg is also featured in ‘Hunger 6’.

‘Oscurana’

A book by Antoine d’Agata, published by Void.

‘Oscurana’ presents a body of work that results from the various trips that Antoine d'Agata has made during more than thirty years in American countries: Brazil, Peru, Nicaragua, Salvador, Ecuador, Bolivia, Guatemala, Haiti, Puerto Rico, United States, Cuba, and Mexico.

The images are notable for its immediate, almost brutal vision of the societies taken by the brutal spiral of violence. Through the degeneration and paroxysm of the flesh, the photographer tries to reveal fragments of a society that escape the usual analysis and visualization of the collective body. He exposes himself, sharpens his awareness of a world that absorbs and feeds, without any precaution or judgment.

The Project

Edited from a common selection of Antoine d’Agata’s images from Latin America, 7 different books share the same dimensions, title and artistic statement - a text called ‘Oscurana’. The project is done by different invited publishers, that were given the freedom to select the images, the design, the materials, printing and binding techniques.

The publishers:

Editions FIFV – Chile
Inframundo – Mexico
KWY – Peru
Le Dernier Cri – France
Sub, Editora – Argentina
Void – Brazil-Greece

‘Oscurana’ is a collaborative project developed amongst 6 publishers from different countries. Offering a reflection on the work of the Antoine d'Agata by several countries and publishers, in a dialogue that opens new perspectives in the ways of making photobooks.

‘Oscurana’ by Void

For ‘Oscurana’ project, Void proposes a book to be autopsied. The reader will dig in the darkness within Antoine's oeuvre, being themselves, the legists of d'Agata's universe. An investigation from the intimacy, through the narcotic experiences until the darkness of the violence’s banality in America.

These 7 books will be assembled in a special edition box that will be presented in Paris at PARIS PHOTO (08 – 11 NOV ‘18) and at POLYCOPIES (07 – 10 NOV ‘18). In Madrid at LA FÁBRICA (17 NOV ‘18).

Void’s edition can also be purchased from our online store.

17,4 x 23 cm
120 Pages
500 copies [400 copies + 100 copies sold in an special box for the Oscurana Project]
Softcover
Portuguese text

ISBN 978-618-83825-7-2

Buy ‘Oscurana’ by Antoine d’Agata now.

Download ‘Oscurana’ Presentation PDF.

Antoine d’Agata is also featured in ‘Hunger 1’ and ‘Cidade de Pedra’.

‘Meat’

A book by Olivier Pin-Fat,
Painfully handcrafted & published by Void.

‘Meat’ is primarily about Body-Form, deformation, the flesh, the carnal. How all matter decays, transforms itself from one form to another and ultimately disintegrates into ash. Stacks of bone shards and ash, the human remains after cremation, appear like hotel pillows ready for laundry on a factory line in the morning. Biographies exist, momentarily, within slabs of frying flesh like gristle, fat, nerve or bone whilst the landscape looms outside, this endless city, ever present, howling like a beast to chew you up and spit you out disfigured once more, or swallow you up completely once you emerge from this illusory sanctuary.

“She spoke to me through gums. When she was born a boy, her German father had already flown back to Europe just like you would close a brothel door. Her past was a diffusion of buzzing neon lit hospital wards, operating theatres, and red light; I was surprised to see she had no penis, most of the lady boys I’d been with and photographed had dicks. She’d gone the whole way. She told me aside from all of the surgery she received and underwent to slowly over the years become a woman, that she’d been in three serious car accidents. It showed.

If you flicked through it all rapidly like you would a full deck of playing cards, the sound would be the same, a sharp shocking snap. Any card you randomly pull out, a slab of meat.”

The Project

Olivier Pin-Fat. In Bangkok. Outdated medium format colour films, along with 35mm monochrome films of various kinds. Embracing the accidental. The damage. The entropic surge.

His practice is all about the physicality of the materials he uses. Manipulating the films before and after the darkroom, in the end he prints what he feasibly can, what is “given” to him by his process.

As he puts it: “The scratches on the negatives are random, they’re not forced or designed, it’s not artifice, it comes from when I hang wet film and stroke the negatives all the way down in a streak with two fingers to get excess water off for more effective drying after a painfully rigorous developing process for the emulsions.”

Those “broken” photos suit perfectly this ‘Bangkok’ series, a city that according to Pin-Fat “it’s frayed, it’s choked, it’s bestial, it’s repetitive, it’s looped, it’s endless, it’s addictive, you smoke it and it smokes you, it’s an animal trap, it’s compelling chaos, it’s bait, it’s hunter, it’s life and it’s doom, it’s all teeth and jowls – a place to get lost in and in so doing have segments or steaks of meat bitten and torn out of you forever, or if not pieces, then your entirety.”  

“The series is a culmination and liquidized assemblage, a collage or layering of all of these processes. It’s not an accident waiting to happen, it’s a gathering of the detritus and a collecting of the remains from a crash that’s already occurred.”

The Book

‘Meat’ consists of 28 signatures printed in 6 different printing techniques: Offset, Silkscreen, Letterpress, Photocopy, Digital printing, Risograph, using 8 different paper stocks.

Each copy of ‘Meat’ will be painfully hand-bound by Void team.

Hand-binding 250 copies of a book this complex will last for several months, and each copy will be unique: dated and signed by the person who produced it.

‘Meat’ brings together more than 500 Olivier Pin-Fat's photographs, and 2 of his texts: one about the project and context of ‘Meat’, the other, about his approach to photography.

As an invited artist displaying his very personal view on the project, the book comes with an entr’acte by Brad Feuerhelm: ‘The Bleach at the End of the Bottle Tastes Just as Nice’
In Olivier’s words: “Brad’s text spins my work on its head, then spins it in the opposite direction simultaneously whilst raising questions about how we look at or read images, what porn is or not, where the fine line between the gratuitous and resonant lies, where placement really is, what is real or isn't, what is art or isn't, what direct and unsentimental representation can mean through the eyes of certain practitioners, what mirrors what (violence, to the negative/material) or vice versa [...] It runs in parallel with my work, although at a tangent, and in the end elevates it. Much of the conversation pieces btw are Brad and i chatting on messenger.”

MEAT Comes in 3 different editions:

• 230 copies of the handmade edition.

• 20 collector’s edition copies containing 20 different handmade darkroom prints, printed, numbered and signed by the artist.

• 5 one-of-a-kind artist’s book handmade by Olivier Pin-Fat.

Olivier Pin-Fat

“We have never been confronted by such images, which are so direct, so devoid of romanticism and yet so sensitive at the same time. pin-fat presents his work in gigantic albums, which refer more to the format of ‘real’ cinema than to documentary, emphasizing the fascinating aspect of his generous as well as disturbing approach.” – Christian Caujolle (1998)

Olivier Pin-Fat was a member of Galerie VU and Agence VU in Paris from 1997–2008. In 2011 he founded ‘AM projects’. He works solely in analogue.

 ‘Meat’

PROMOTIONAL VIDEO

23,5 x 34 cm
336 Pages
Numbered Limited Edition
230 numbered copies + 20 collectors' editions + 5 artists' books
Cloth cover with silkscreen artwork.
2 texts by the artist + an entr'acte by Brad Feuerhelm

ISBN 978-618-83825-2-7

Buy ‘Meat’ by Olivier Pin-Fat now.

Read more about ‘Meat’ in:
Photobookstore Magazine – Best Photobooks of 2018: Brad Feuerhelm

Download ‘Meat’ presentation PDF.

Olivier Pin-Fat is also featured in ‘Hunger 3’.

‘Hunger’

A project by Void.

Check the online exhibition at PHmuseum from 27 NOV ‘18 to 28 Jan ‘19

The background of the project is Franz Kafka’s short story ‘A Hunger Artist’
that tells the story of a starving artist that keeps
his practice with the same (or maybe more) passion
even after the public’s interest diverges to different and new forms of amusement.

7 issues of a newspaper started to be released one each six weeks, starting from March 2018.

‘Hunger’ is a project in 7 chapters

34 x 50 cm
Newspaper, broadsheet
Edition of 300

Hunger 1 - 40 pages - ISBN: 978-618-83318-4-6
Hunger 2 - 40 pages - ISBN: 978-618-83318-6-0
Hunger 3 - 44 pages - ISBN: 978-618-83318-7-7
Hunger 4 - 40 pages - ISBN: 978-618-83825-1-0
Hunger 5 - 44 pages - ISBN: 978-618-83825-3-4
Hunger 6 - 44 pages - ISBN: 978-618-83825-4-1
Hunger 7 - 44 pages - ISBN: 978-618-83825-8-9

Buy ‘Hunger’ now.

Visit the online exhibition:
PHmuseum

Read more about ‘Hunger’ in:
Lifo

‘My Dearest Javanese Concubine’
Outtakes Limited Edition

A book by LucA Desienna, published by Void.

“Luca Desienna’s ‘My Dearest Javanese Concubine’ is an intense and personal visiont of the lives of two Javanese people - Tira and Dayang. Its blend of intensely personal images, sense of commitment from Luca and a mix of the emotional and documentary hit the spot for me. It’s on the edge of several different things, but somehow Luca’s very passionate and personal commitment keeps it from tipping over.”

Colin Pantall

Invited by Luca Desienna to create a limited edition of ‘My Dearest Javanese Concubine’ (his book to be released in the Summer of 2018), Void proposes an alternative reading of the project. The Outtakes Limited Edition by Void includes material edited out of the standard edition, showing the background of the project and all those impressive photos that otherwise would not see the light of day.

18,5 x 27 cm
112 pages
Signed and Numbered Limited Edition of 100 copies
Cloth Hardcover
With an exclusive conversation between Michael Ackerman and Luca Desienna

ISBN 978-618-83318-8-4

Buy ‘My Dearest Javanese Concubine’ by Luca Desienna now.

Download ‘My Dearest Javanese Concubine’ PDF presentation.

‘The Splitting of the Chrysalis
&
the Slow Unfolding of the Wings’

A book by Yorgos yatromanolakis, published by Void.

Collector’s Edition still available.

‘The Splitting of the Chrysalis and the Slow Unfolding of the Wings’ arose from the unforeseen return of the photographer to his homeland.
Isolated in the countryside of an island, he was confronted with his traumatic past, his memories and himself.

Gradually, through wandering in nature, a conceivable field of action was created within him, an intermediate space full of transformative dynamics, a place of becoming.

This book is a visual notebook, constructed through this experience, that attempts to capture the cycle of an internal process of metamorphosis.

Standard Edition

Collector's Edition Box

 ‘The Splitting of the Chrysalis and the Slow Unfolding of the Wings’

Promotional Video

17 x 23 cm
128 Pages
500 copies
Embossed hardcover with silver, black & dry embossing
English text

ISBN 978-618-83318-5-3
-
Also available as a collector's edition box

Edition of 20
Comes in a portfolio with 1 fine art print, signed and numbered by the artist
The Book comes in a black cover version

‘The Splitting of the Chrysalis and the Slow Unfolding of the Wings’ by Yorgos Yatromanolakis is sold out from the publisher. The collector’s edition is still available at our web store.

Read more about ‘The Splitting of the Chrysalis and the Slow Unfolding of the Wings’ in:
LensCulture
Urbanautica
Photo-Eye – Best Photobooks of 2018: Emily Sheffer

Download ‘The Splitting of the Chrysalis and the Slow Unfolding of the Wings’ presentation PDF.

‘Home Video Diary’

A book by Attilio Solzi, published by Void.

“If there is a task for art it is to represent its time. Art that does not hurt anyone probably does not serve anything.” - This was Attilio Solzi’s answer when told that some situations portrayed in ‘Home Video Diary’ would raise a few eyebrows amongst conservative people.

The straightforward title of Attilio Solzi’s new book might not do justice to its complexity.

The reader only needs to glimpse a few pages of his work before they are flooded with questions. What is happening? What leads these people to such surreal moments? Who are they? Where do these daily life spectacle take place?

Attilio’s way of seeing it is: “Ultimately, life is a comedy played between the drama and the grotesque. Depending on where you were born, one or the other character prevails. Around me, 90% is grotesque. I start from there, but then each "actor" adds their own ideas.”

Fascinated by vernacular photography and family home videos made during holidays and parties, Solzi’s idea was to make low-quality videos that mix the contemporary view of directors such as Ulrich Seidl and the poetics of certain avant-garde photography of the 1970s.

‘Home Video Diary’ is a project that started about 10 years ago. It was a "time-consuming" job over the years that only ended when Attilio’s camcorder broke.

The videos have been shot in the small Italian village where Attilio lived. The people portrayed on those videos aren’t actors or models but his acquaintances, friends and neighbours... People that he knew. People who allowed him to enter into their intimate moments, and who in return were able to enter into Attilio’s peculiar universe.

Who is playing a character? Who is playing themselves? It is hard to figure out where reality ends and fiction begins. The strong bond between artist and the people within the images blurs such definitions. In the words of the artist: “’Video Diary’ is fiction but wants to be truer than the truth. It is a look at daily life where the border between the real and the surreal is not clear.”

‘Home Video Diary’ is definitely a book that raises more questions than answers.

‘Home Video Diary’

PROMOTIONAL VIDEO

200 Pages
404 Photos
1 Spaghetti Recipe
Text by Achille Filipponi
Language: Italian / English
Designed by João Linneu

ISBN 978-618-83318-0-8

Buy ‘Home Video Diary’ by Attilio Solzi now.

Read more about ‘Home Video Diary’ in:
Yogurt Magazine

Download ‘Home Video Diary’ presentation PDF.

‘Cidade de Pedra’

A book by Antoine d'Agata, published by Void.

From 2005 to 2009 Antoine d’Agata had spent most of his time in Cracolandia, the crack neighborhoods of São Paulo and Salvador. Doubtless the roughest areas of Brazil.

With 169 images and more than 140 unseen photographs, ‘Cidade de Pedra’ is the most comprehensive document about this period. It reveals the brutality and the
intimacy of his experience.

‘Cidade de Pedra’

PROMOTIONAL VIDEO

228 Pages
57 Unbound Folds
169 Photos
142 Unseen Images

56 Full colour Offset unbound folds
+ 1 Black and White fold with text in 3 languages:
French, Portuguese and English
Designed by João Linneu

ISBN 978-85-93212-00-0

‘Cidade de Pedra’ was launched at Paris Photo, 11 NOV '16

Buy ‘Cidade de Pedra’ by Antoine d'Agata now.

Download ‘Cidade de Pedra’ presentation PDF.

Antoine d’Agata is also featured in ‘Hunger 1’ and ‘Oscurana’.

‘Paradise Inn’

A book by Marinos Tsagkarakis, published by Void.

‘Paradise Inn’ aims
to highlight the consequences
of this massive and
 uncontrolled tourist
development.

The word "Paradise" literally means walled enclosure or recreational and entertainment area, probably derived from the Persian word "Pardes" which is attributed to the walled pleasure gardens of the Great King of Persia.

In recent decades, countless of artificial "paradises" were developed around the world and their number still grows faster than ever before. This industry that manufactures an entertainment product of mass consumption meant to satisfy the average man's need for recreational time and fun, is called tourism.

The tourism industry has drastically intruded the land, transforming it into a product while causing several effects with a severe socio-cultural character. Destinations are in danger of losing their original appearance, structure and identity, through a standardization process that aims to satisfy the tourists' wishes. What is not understood though, is that this process doesn't degrade only the final product but mostly affects the local societies which have to survive the low periods relying only on the remnants of a seasonal industry.

‘Paradise Inn’ aims to highlight the consequences of this massive and uncontrolled tourist development. In Greece, as in Southern Europe in general, these effects are reflected on the constructed landscape mostly through the unregulated and shoddy architecture, the kitsch and folklore decoration,  the construction and adoption of artificial elements and entertainment structures, the falsification of identity and cultural heritage, the violation of the natural environment and finally the desolation that occurs after peak season.

As Proust said, the only true paradise is the paradise we have lost. ‘Paradise Inn’ is a tribute to all the lost paradises, in which millions of ordinary people manage to impose their own selves, the desperate experience that anyone could eventually face: the impairment of our quality of life and aesthetics and the loss of use of the natural space.
 

Artist book by the Greek photographer Marinos Tsagkarakis.

15 x 21 cm
84 color pages divided into 3 x 28 pages books
Handbound
With 2 postcards
Edition of 90 + 10 A.P.s

ISBN: 978-618-83318-1-5

‘Paradise Inn’ by Marinos Tsagkarakis is sold out from the publisher.

Read more about ‘Paradise Inn’ in:
Collector Daily
Der Spiegel
Urbanautica
PHROOM

Download ‘Paradise Inn’ presentation PDF.

‘The Core’

A book by Stéphane Charpentier, published by Void.

Stéphane Charpentier’s photographs manifest conflicted inner worlds; they haunt with the essence of the present time. ‘The Core’, continues his never-ending analog series.

Scattered within a worn scientific text, the photographs make a poetic parallel between the duality of human souls and nuclear fission. At the heart of a being or the deep center of an atom, energies coalesce, diffuse, or ignite. ‘The Core’ shows visions of characters trapped in an alienating and dystopian environment, and the perception that human activity has overpassed a forbidden or dangerous border.

20 x 26,5 cm
68 Pages
Limited Edition
100 numbered copies
Soft cover with silkscreen vegetal paper oversleeve.
Greek texts with English notes

ISBN 978-618-83318-3-9

‘The Core’ by Stéphane Charpentier is sold out from the publisher.

Read more about ‘The Core’ in:
Aldebaran, Contemporary Photography Hub
Le blog de Fabien Ribery

Download ‘The Core’ presentation PDF.

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