photography in print

These Birds Walk Books
4096 Piedmont Ave #701
Oakland, CA 94611
paul@tbwbooks.com

Subscription Series

Series One: Jim Goldberg, Ari Macropoulos, Paul Schiek, and Mike Brodie

Series Two: Todd Hido, Marianne Mueller, Abner Nolan, and Alec Soth

These books do not need to be hyped up. The first series had a great look and feel to them, and somehow flew below the radar of most photobook enthusiasts. The model Paul Schiek (the mastermind behind TBW) is following seems closer to that of an indie rock label then a book publisher. Paul is completely grassroots, and uses a lot of local Oakland folk to produce the books. For both series he has secured an all star line up of photographers who believe in his do it yourself ideals.

Amazingly the first series (limited edition of 500) is still available, so you should scoop up a set before it is out of print. We would also recommend you purchase the second series for yourself, or any photobook lover. The best part of the subscription is every few weeks you get a new book in the mail. Paul has informed us that series two will have a slightly modified format. PIP is excited to see the new look, and thrilled that Todd Hido’s book is expected to ship next Monday, the 22nd of December.

Around this time of year a lot of people make list of the years top photobooks, and the result is fellow book lovers purchase those suggested books. If you are going to make one book purchase this year, or give a gift to any fan of photography this holiday season, the good folks at PIP think TBW’s Subscription Series is hands down the best choice possible. Support independent publishers! - PIP

You can purchase, and get more info about TBW’s Subscription Series at These Birds Walk

On Duty Photographs by Arnold Odermatt
Steidl, Gottingen, 2007.
244 pages, color illustrations throughout, 9½x12½”.

We love this book…it has been in the collection since it was published in 2007. PIP is looking forward to Odermatt’s follow-up Off Duty, also being published by Steidl in 2009. Keep an eye out for it, and add On Duty to your collection today. -PIP

Arnold Odermatt joined the police force in his native Swiss canton of Nidwalden in 1948, when he was just in his twenties. When he retired more than 40 years later as Vice Commander of the department and Lieutenant Director of Traffic Police, he found sudden, unexpected fame as an artist. His photographs of the vehicle accidents that had been part of his professional life, collected in the book Karambolage, led to international recognition: his work was shown at the 2001 Armory Fair and Venice Biennale, followed by solo exhibitions at the Art Institute of Chicago in 2002 and at the Fotomuseum Winterthur in 2004.br/>

In addition to his car crash photographs, Odermatt has also used his camera to recreate scenes from his days in law enforcement, spurred on by the fears of the shrinking Nidwalden police force, in hopes of enticing the village youth to join its increasingly unfashionable ranks. On Duty collects these images, which are populated by Odermatt’s colleagues reenacting their daily adventures, in a compelling sequence of colorful tableaux. It is a strange and impressive document offering unexpected insight into a hidden world. -Steidl

On Duty is available at Amazon

Hackney Flowers. Photographs by Stephen Gill.
Nobody, London, 2007.
114 Pages, 65 color illustraitons, 11¼x8¾”.

UK photographer Stephen Gill has again used his surroundings as the inspiration for this beautiful and evocative series. Hackney Flowers evolved from Gill’s longstanding interest in Hackney, East London. For this volume, Gill collected flowers, seeds, berries and objects from Hackney, then pressed them in his studio and re-photographed them alongside his own photographs and other found ephemera, thus building up multi-layered images built from the area. Some of the base photographs were also buried in Hackney Wick, allowing the subsequent decay to imprint upon the images, stressing this collaboration with place. A parallel series also runs within this finely produced book, showing members of the Hackney public with floral details on their person. This is a warm, poetic and visually exciting book containing images that leave an overwhelming sense of color, emotion and rhythm extracted from a single borough of London.

Hackney Flowers is available at Amazon

Archaeology in Reverse. Photographs by Stephen Gill.
Nobody, London, 2007.
104 pages, 104 color illustrations, 8½x8½”.

Stephen Gill has learnt this: to haunt the places that haunt him. His photo-accumulations demonstrate a tender vision factored out of experience; alert, watchful, not overeager, wary of that mendacious conceit, “closure.” There is always flow, momentum, the sense of a man passing through a place that delights him. A sense of stepping down, immediate engagement, politic exchange. Then he remounts the bicycle and away. Loving retrievals, like a letter to a friend, never possession What I like about Stephen Gill is that he has learnt to give us only as much as we need, the bones of the bones of the bones… –Iain Sinclair

Continuing to photograph where his award-winning book Hackney Wick left off, Stephen Gill also made Archaeology in Reverse in this personally cherished area of East London. Still making pictures with the camera he bought at Hackney Wick market for 50 pence, for this volume Gill focuses on things that do not yet exist.

This magnificently produced book features traces and clues of things to come in a poetic, sometimes eerie and quiet photographic study of a place in a state of limbo prior to the rapid transformation that the area faces during the build-up to the Olympics in 2012

Archaeology in reverse is available at Amazon

Vinter. Photographs by Lars Tunbjork. Edited by Greger Ulf Nilson.
Steidl, Gottingen, 2007.
144 pages, 105 color illustrations, 12¼x9½”.

This is Lars Tunbjörk’s most interesting book to date. He returns to his gritty roots. There are some really great portraits inside. A must have for any Photobook collection. Pick up a copy before it costs as much as Home or A Country Beside Itself! - PIP




‘I often feel beside myself in the wintertime, and I try to go to warmer and lighter places. But the last couple of years I have traveled into the winter and darkness instead-into areas, conditions and encounters in which I don’t really know where the outer and inner begin. And even less where they end.’ Lars Tunbjörk’s photographic explorations of northern Sweden capture the atmosphere of the gloaming winter months in Scandinavia, and the lives of the people who live under those dark skies. Vinter began as a means of surviving the dark part of the year; it has a correspondingly different mood, color range and temperament from Tunbjörk’s previous work, but shares its style, understated humor and often absurd subject matter. The artist was born in 1956 in Borås, on the western coast of Sweden, and now lives and works in Stockholm. His images have been exhibited internationally, and are published regularly through the Paris picture agency VU and in monographs, among them Country Beside Itself (1993), Office (2001), Home (2002), Dom alla (2003) and I Love Borås! (2006). -Steidl

Vinter is available at Amazon

A Shimmer of Possibility. Photographs by Paul Graham.
Steidl Mack, 2007.
360 pages, 160 color illustrations, 13×10″

Since all the recent scholarship about “photobooks,” this is the most important and interesting thing to happen. This is a must have for any book collection. Paul Graham, and Steidl have created a classic. Get it while you can! - PIP

Inspired by Chekhov’s short stories-and by his own contagious joy in the book form-photographer Paul Graham has created A Shimmer of Possibility, comprised of 10 individual books, each a photographic short story of everyday life. Some are simple and linear-a man smokes a cigarette while he waits for a bus in Las Vegas, or the camera tracks an autumn walk in Boston. Some entwine two, three or four scenes-while a couple carry their shopping home in Texas, a small child dances with a plastic bag in a garden. Some watch a quiet narrative break unexpectedly into a sublime moment-as a man cuts the grass in Pittsburgh it begins to rain, until the low sun breaks through and illuminates each drop. Graham’s filmic haikus shun any forceful summation or tidy packaging. Instead, they create the impression of life flowing around and past us while we stand and stare, and make it hard not to share the artist’s quiet astonishment with its beauty and grace. The 10 books gathered here are identical in trim size, but vary in length from just a single photograph to 60 pages of images made at one street corner. Paul Graham’s work has been widely exhibited and published for 25 years, most recently in the book American Night. -Steidl

A Shimmer of Possibility is available at Amazon

Stardust photographs by Melissa Catanese.
Ping Pong, 2007.
68 pages, full color illustrations, soft cover, 7½x9¾”.

Stardust is a subtle but uplifting narrative about the visual potential of what is around us. -Ping Pong

This is an interesting book from a little know independent press…Ping Pong. You can’t beat the price - $18.

Stardust is available at Ping Pong

I Love Boras.Photographs by Lars Tunbjork. Edited by Greger Ulf Nilson.
Steidl, Gottingen, 2007.
168 pages, 175 color illustrations, 10¾x13½”.

I Love Boras is Lars Tunbjörk’s document of an aimless journey around Sweden between 1988 and 1995. Supermarkets, parties, small town streets, amusement parks, gas stations, TV-shows, landscapes, food. During that time Tunbjörk was working on his series Landet utom sig / Country Beside Itself, but these images were not used in that series because they didn’t fit, they were too ugly, too beautiful or too silly. Together they show a darker and more hysteric view of modern western society and Sweden during the economic recession of the early nineties. -Steidl

I Love Boras is available at Amazon

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