Adam Broomberg Boeken

Fig. features over 80 still lives, portraits and landscapes by London-based photographers Adam Broomberg and Oliver Chanarin. Tracing connections between photography and British colonial acquisitiveness, they unearth and document weird arcana from Victorian collections in various public museums. As Broomberg and Chanarin themselves have "the history of photography is intimately bound up with the idea of colonial power. Documentary photographers today have a worrying amount in common with the collector/adventurers of past eras. As unreliable witnesses, we have gathered together 'evidence' of our experiences and present our findings here; a muddle of fact and fantasy." The items photographed range from bizarre objects found at the Booth Museum of Natural History, Brighton, such as a merman's body and a unicorn's horn, to ancient waxworks and a dodo skeleton; or from floral arrangements found in the rooms of Hotel Rwanda to a single leaf blown from a tree in Tel Aviv by a bomb blast.

Chicago is a fake Arab town built by the Israeli Defense Force for urban combat training. It is a place that is familiar to Israeli and American soldiers, but until now largely unknown outside Israel. Chicago stands in the middle of the Negev desert, a ghost town whose history directly mirrors the story of the conflict with Palestine. During the first Gulf War, American Special Forces had their first taste of the Middle East here. "Rehearsals" included a failed attempt to assassinate Saddam Hussein, the Battle of Fallujah and, most recently, the evacuation of the Gaza settlements.

Adam Broomberg and Oliver Chanarin are photographic artists, best known for the way they merge photojournalism and visual art, producing provocative, ambiguous interpretations of history and current events.

Zwei einflussreiche Fotobücher von Adam Broomberg und Oliver Chanarin stehen im Zentrum dieser Publikation, die eine Ausstellung im Centre Pompidou begleitet: War Primer 2 und Holy Bible. Es sind Fotobücher, die sich mit Bildern von Gewalt, Krieg und Terror auseinandersetzen; Bücher, deren Ausgangspunkt existierende Bücher sind – Brechts Kriegsfibel und die King James Bible, die von Broomberg und Chanarin in einem Akt der Aneignung fortgeschrieben und überarbeitet werden. Beide Fotobücher verbindet ein Umgang mit visuellem Material, in dem sich Aspekte der Collage und des Palimpsests wiederfinden. Es sind Bücher, deren Seiten eine Tiefendimension eingeschrieben ist, denn auf ihnen sind die einzelnen Elemente – Texte und Bilder – übereinander geschichtet, gestapelt. Die Essays und Gespräche reflektieren diesen neuartigen Umgang mit der Buchseite, ihre radikale Verräumlichung. Das Buch erscheint in der Serie Applied Publishing Studies.