Book Review: Annual Series No. 7, TBW Books
Annuel Series No. 7: Body Index by Carment Winant, 2021 © TBW Books, Carment Winant
Written by Claire Ping
An independent publisher with a focus on photography, TBW Books produces selection of monographs and the thoughtfully curated Annual Series collections. Each of the latter features four individual photo books, united by a cohesive theme and visual design. The latest installment invites artists to experiment with the human form – one of the most recurring, yet challenging, subjects in the visual arts. Despite a seemingly familiar topic, the photographers have devised new creative paths both within their own practices and the medium in general.
Annual Series No. 7: Study by Mona Kuhn, 2021 © TBW Books, Mona Kuhn
Annual Series No. 7: Study by Mona Kuhn, 2021 © TBW Books, Mona Kuhn
An acclaimed photographer known for her re-interpretation of nudity, Mona Kuhn makes a bold return to the latent image – the initial point of her fascination with photography – in Study. In the darkroom, she experiments with solarization, a method accidentally uncovered by Lee Miller when printing for Man Ray. It typically involves an effect of tone reversal through overexposure. Man Ray constantly adopted the method to highlight the contours of female nudity in his photographs, eventually claiming credit for its discovery. With an approach that nearly reverses his take on the process, Kuhn develops a group of highly distinctive images that also depart from her earlier oeuvre. Having previously used solarization to expose the imperfect human body and visualize women’s struggles in Bushes and Succulents, Kuhn adopts the process to portray a male figure in the present series.
The results show little sign of fetishizing. The male nude, though elevated on a low stand used commonly in modelling for still life drawing, is not reminiscent of the classic muscular torso celebrated through Greek sculptures and fashion magazines alike. It is, instead, a truly “human” body, awkwardly shifting poses from one image to the next, ultimately landing in a confident stance. Solarization has a transforming impact on the images, creating a sense of ephemerality as the body alternates between concrete mass and translucent phantom until its very boundaries become unstable and blurred. The volatility of this body echoes that of the method, which is also highly uncertain and constantly changing as aged procedures no longer work on contemporary materials.
Annuel Series No. 7: Body Index by Carment Winant, 2021 © TBW Books, Carment Winant
Carmen Winant’s Body Index also engages with the nude and, in particular, its manipulated representation in figure drawing. Informed by her experience modelling for classes, she became aware of the process through which the surveilled female body is instrumentalized and subsequently legitimized as art. In an attempt to unveil the rebellion hidden in what appears to be passive bodies, Winant collects and reassembles images of women posing before the camera. She complicates gendered agency by collaging the images with other bodies, thus disrupting and irritating the voyeuristic gaze of the viewer.
Annual Series No. 7: The Nipple by Juergen Teller, 2021 © TBW Books, Juergen Teller
Meanwhile, Juergen Teller’s The Nipple and Paul Kooiker’s Business of Fashion examine the human figure through fresh lenses. Teller’s work, notably created before the pandemic, includes images of the mask-wearing nude intercepted by pictures of abandoned exercise equipment, the artist himself during an endoscopic medical procedure, and proxies alluding to the body in wreckage such as a lifeless frog. Juxtaposing portrayals of vitality with those of weakness and devastation, the book now seems to be an eerie reminder on the precarious state of the mortal body. Conversing directly with the fashion industry, Kooiker’s portraits – capturing headless and ordinarily dressed models in identical postures – may suggest shopping catalogues or online displays at first sight. A subversive effect only becomes apparent when one learns that they are, in fact, high-profile guests at an exclusive event for tastemakers in the fashion world.
Annual Series No. 7: Business of Fashion by Paul Kooiker, 2021 © TBW Books, Paul Kooiker
Released at the timely moment when a global health crisis coupled with prolonged isolation create new contexts for rethinking the human form, TBW Books’ Annual Series No. 7 provides a platform to explore innovative grounds in photography. Its format allows individual artists, each representing a unique voice, to communicate and generate new sparks via visual means.
