Book of the Week: A Pick by Regina Maria Anzenberger

Book of the Week Book of the Week: A Pick by Regina Maria Anzenberger Regina Maria Anzenberger selects The Gardner by Jan Brykczynski as Book of the Week.

The Gardner by Jan Brykczynski.
Dewi Lewis Publishing, 2015.

This week's Book of the Week pick comes from Regina Maria Anzenberger who has selected The Gardener by Jan Brykczynski from Dewi Lewis Publishing.

"The most surprising book for me was for sure Jan Brykczynski’s The Gardener, recently published by Dewi Lewis. Jan won the Syngentsa Award and went on a world trip in search of urban farming. So far so good. As a Viennese, I am familiar with many pictures of small garden plots. A small piece of land in the city was given to worker families 100 years ago, where they started to grow all kinds of plants and vegetables. The government thought that they would not start a revolution if they gave them their own piece of land. Urban idylls. But in The Gardener, the pictures are like raw fruits, bound to the realities of the earth, disorder governs the manmade paradise. Nairobi, New York, Yerevan, and his hometown Warsaw make up the places of this project. It’s hard to tell them apart, and I think that’s the strength of the photographs. Somehow, the gardens look like land art or chaotic installations. Vegetables or flowers seem to be left to chance. The human touch is only apparent in those places where it’s really necessary to harvest. 'Art but not idyll' could be the motto — the art of extracting what nourishes us from the earth. And in the end, it is still a luxury when we know what we are eating. Simplicity and authentic life create a feeling of abandonment and loss — the Garden of Eden. Finally, a few portraits of the owners of the gardens show us the existence of human lives and proud creators. And if you look through the book several times, you will discover 'small bliss' and idyll — just like in a Viennese garden plot."—Regina Maria Anzenberger

Purchase Book

The Gardner by Jan Brykczynski. Dewi Lewis Publishing, 2015.

The Gardner by Jan Brykczynski. Dewi Lewis Publishing, 2015.

Regina Maria Anzenberger 

Born and lives in Vienna/Austria. Artist, curator, founder and director of the photographer’s representation AnzenbergerAgency (since 1989), owner of the AnzenbergerGallery (since 2002) and book shop (since 2011)  www.anzenberger.com. Director of the ViennaPhotoBookFestival (since 2013) www.viennaphotobookfestival.com.







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