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Best Books 2013: Elisa Medde


Best Books 2013 Best Books 2013 Elisa Medde Best Books picks from Managing Editor of Foam Magazine Elisa Medde.

By Carlos Spottorno
RM & Phree
 

This is one of those rare cases in which great photography and visual communication meet with a very simple idea and come up with a successful outcome. The Pigs tells a complicated story in a straightforward way, managing to be hilarious at the same time. Plus, one of the best back covers ever.

By Adam Broomberg & Oliver Chanarin
MACK
 

To me this book is a masterpiece. It’s not a photobook, but a book about photography, power, faith and conflict, and ultimately about us dealing with them. It’s a moving, painful and uncanny journey and read, and a beautiful object at the same time.

By Lieko Shiga
AKAAKA
 

Such beautiful images. Lieko is one of my favorite photo-graphers, and I just loved this book.
By Lorenzo Vitturi
Self Publish Be Happy
 

This is the story of one of the most colorful street markets in London. Vitturi strolled around, took pictures, collected objects he found there, made collages, built sculptures and then photographed them. A beautiful, limited edition gem created with the support of SPBH.


By Adam Broomberg &
Oliver Chanarin
Trolley
 

The beauty of this book comes from the visionary genius of the late Gigi Giannuzzi. When B&C worked on the making of Ghetto (Trolley Books) 10 years ago, Gigi saved and stored all the “Scarti di avviamento,”an Italian technical term for the paper that is fed through the printing press to clean the drums of ink between print runs. The sheets are printed twice, thus producing a randomly perfect layering that gives a brand new look to the whole body of work. I like it more than the original.
By Joan Fontcuberta
MACK
 

This publication comes after Joan Fontcuberta was granted with the Hasselblad Award 2013. Beautifully produced by MACK, it presents as a unique, fantastic journey in six different series spanning from 1984 to 2002. Through a fascinating wandering through botany, zoology, astronomy, cosmonautics, paleontology, geography and geology, Fontcuberta makes us test the limits of our desire to believe in photography, as Geoffrey Batchen writes in the accompanying text.
Lucas*
By Eric Stephanian
Self-Published

When Eric gave me this little, simple, zine-like book in Arles I could not stop looking at it. It consists of only one photo, and it’s hypnotic, haunting, and even uncanny. Only quite some time later I got to know the story behind it, and the whole thing became also heart breaking. Now I still look at it every now and then, and I usually just think – wow.

*This title is out-of-print. Email us to be notified if copies become available.

By Salvatore Santoro
Self-Published 

Officially a personal project about the places of his childhood, Salvatore Santoro with this book managed instead to tell the story (one of the stories) of a country. The book has been developed with 3/3, the magic duo behind many of the most interesting projects happening now in Italy.


(c) De FotomeisjesFoam

Elisa Medde has worked for various cultural institutions, publishing houses and non profit organizations as project and research coordinator as well as independent curator. She is now the managing editor of the Amsterdam based Foam Magazine, one of the most important platforms for contemporary photography.