TEMPORARY DISCOMFORT CHAPTER 1 - 5: DAVOS GENOA NEW YORK EVIAN GENEVA - Rare Pristine Copy of The First Hardcover Edition/First Printing: Signed by Jules Spinatsch - SIGNED ON THE PAGE ITSELF

Spinatsch, Jules (Photographer); Jaeggi, Martin & Shea, Jamie (Contributors)

ISBN 10: 3037780479 / ISBN 13: 9783037780473

Published by Baden, Switzerland: Lars Muller Publishers, 2005, 2005

About this Item

1st Printing. Signed. Unpaginated. Published in 2005. Retrospective collection of color photographs. One of the greatest photography books of our time. The first and only edition. Published in a small and limited print run as a hardcover original only. The First Edition is now scarce. A brilliant production by Jules Spinatsch and Winfried Heininger: Oversize-volume format. Black leatherette boards with titles on cover and spine and photographic reproduction pasted on the back, as issued. Photographs and text by Jules Spinatsch. Essays by Martin Jaeggi and Jamie Shea. Printed on glossy stock paper in Switzerland to the highest standards. The book ironically mimics the look and feel of an Annual Corporate Report. Without DJ, as issued. Presents Jules Spinatsch's "Temporary Discomfort". In five interrelated chapters. An anti-heroic visual approach is shown as the only possible antidote to the toxic effects of the imagery of power. "Spinatsch examines the waiting for the big event as meticulously planned down to the last detail. Whatever will happen is already inscribed in its security architecture. He creates landscapes that could serve as the antithesis to the Romantic tradition. He shows landscapes and cityscapes as they appear under the cold, strategic gaze of security planners, a terrain where every movement must be controlled and contained. Spinatsch mimics the gaze of power, power as a gaze that sees the world only as a security hazard to be contained. At the heart of the security architecture that Spinatsch shows us, we find a hermetically sealed vacuum in which politicians and managers meet to organize world trade in the name of liberal democracy while they smile at TV cameras, remote and untouchable. Spinatsch does not want to be a hero. He is a spy behind enemy lines. Only such a clever anti-strategist can show the cold and imperious glance of power so clearly and hauntingly" (Martin Jaeggi). In the Age of CNN and Fox News, power means having absolute control over the image that people see of power. By taking photographs of the preparations, security measures, and other precautions needed to achieve this goal (while no one else, including all other photographers, was looking or paying attention), Spinatsch exposes the heroic iconography of power as a pompous lie. An absolute "must-have" title for Jules Spinatsch collectors. This copy is very prominently and beautifully signed in black ink-pen by Jules Spinatsch. It is signed directly on the page itself, not on a tipped-in page. This title is a great photography book. This is one of few such signed copies of the First Hardcover Edition/First Printing still available online and is in especially fine condition: Clean, crisp, and bright, a pristine beauty. A rare signed copy thus. Jules Spinatsch's "Temporary Discomfort" was selected as one of the greatest photography books in "The Photobook". One of the most brilliant photographers of our time. A fine copy. ISBN 3037780479. Seller Inventory # 10926

Bibliographic Details

Title: TEMPORARY DISCOMFORT CHAPTER 1 - 5: DAVOS ...

Publisher: Baden, Switzerland: Lars Muller Publishers, 2005

Publication Date: 2005

Binding: Hardcover

Condition: As New

Dust Jacket Condition: None, As Issued

Signed: Signed by Author

Edition: 1st Edition.

About this title

Synopsis:

Temporary Discomfort is artist Jules Spinatsch's documentation of three cities in a transitory state of emergency lock-down during two global economic summits (WEF and G8). It comines different photographical genres: landscape photography of the site, photojournalism, and police photography, but with the camera lens turned, atypically, on the security forces. The photo series and videos aim to achieve a speculative reconstruction of the situations in Davos, New York, Genoa and Evian/Geneva, while they also ask questions about the conditions under which photography is and can be produced today. Spinatsch's position while working on the project was that of an informed outsider--his presence in the area around the meetings was acknowledged by the security forces but not really appreciated, which was one the factors that determined his work. Spinatsch's new approach to documentary photography is theorized here by essayist Martin Jaeggi and presented through beautiful photographs with strong political undertones.