FÁBRICA. Daniel Blaufuks. Pierre von Kleist Editions.

“One cannot walk through an assembly factory
and not feel that one is in Hell.” – W.H. Auden

‘Fábrica’, a new book and film by photographer Daniel Blaufuks, is a collection of images composed into an expanded scenery of memory, a walk through the abandoned spaces of one of the largest factories in Europe in an once flourishing industrial region, that never recovered from the loss of the textile market to the Chinese exports.

Blaufuks worked the book and the film (which comes with this edition) as a documental piece, collecting different kinds of memories, crossing old photographs, manuscripts and objects with images of the present state of the building interiors and surroundings.

The result is a reflection not only on the idea of a ‘factory’ in itself, most generic and abstract, but also about forgetting and abandonment, thus creating a significant memento about labor and the disappearance of the working class in Europe in the last century, which is one of the reasons for the present crisis in the region.

* This title was co-published with Guimarães 2012.

More about the artist: www.danielblaufuks.com

Color, B&W, 172 pages, 2013
DVD + Postcard included.
Language: Portuguese and English.

Price: €28.00

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Casa de Lava – Caderno. Pedro Costa. Pierre von Kleist Editions

During the course of the production preparation for his film ‘Casa de Lava’ (1994), Portuguese filmmaker Pedro Costa compiled what he saw, what he read, his many ideas and images into a scrapbook instead of a screenplay.

Paintings, movie stills, letters, newspaper articles, scribbles, quotes from novels, postcards, lines of dialogue, snapshots, that guided him throughout the shooting of the film and that he continued – and finished – after returning to Lisboa.

This green covered notebook became an autonomous object, a visual record of Costa’s way of thinking. Reproducing the original book in full color, we’ve included an exclusive interview with Nuno Crespo and a text by Philippe Azoury (both in Portuguese, English and French).

Born in Lisbon in 1959, he left his course of studies in History to attend classes taught by the poet and filmmaker António Reis at the Lisbon Film School. His first film ‘O Sangue / Blood’ had its world premiere at the Mostra Cinematografica di Venezia in 1989.
‘Casa de Lava’, his second feature, shot on the Island of Fogo in Cabo Verde, was shown in Cannes, ‘Un Certain Regard’, in 1994.
His other feature films include ‘Ossos’, ‘In Vanda’s Room’ and ‘Where Does Your Hidden Smile Lie?’, on the work of Danièle Huillet and Jean-Marie Straub.
Recently he directed ‘Sweet Exorcist’, a segment of the omnibus feature ‘Centro Histórico’, with Manoel de Oliveira, Aki Kaurismaki and Victor Erice and he was of the invited artists of the Cuban Pavilion at the Venice Biennale 2013.
His work has been presented in galleries and museums around the world.

More about the artist: www.pedro-costa.net

Price: €28.00

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Rien. André Cepeda. Pierre von Kleist Editions

Dark alleys, blocks of cement, tired naked bodies, strings that lead to nowhere, abandoned tubes.
Rien, the new André Cepeda book, is an immersive experience.
Page after page we are led into a void where all things seem to have lost their name, creating a restless and suspended time. More than looking at physical spaces, we feel as if in an endless present tense. There is Emptiness, but a desired one.
Cepeda makes the beautiful more white than black large format photographs look spontaneous and free.

A book about the process of photographing, about film.
A desire to touch and enlighten all things around us.

André Cepeda (b. Coimbra, 1976) Lives and works in Porto, Portugal.

Price: €28.00

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O Perfume Do Boi, André Princípe. Published by Pierre von Kleist Editions.

O Perfume do Boi (The Perfume of the Bull) is Princípe’s latest book, shot during a three-month anticlockwise journey around Portugal’s borders.

We are outside cities, out in the fields and woods, in small town circuses, with the lunatics and acrobats. The very strong narrative feeling comes with an equally strong suspicion that there might be no story. The photos of the animals and people combined with the natural elements, cause a sense of eminent danger and trouble. There is an aura of prophecy and myth, and in the end we are left with the echo of a cry in the night.

About the book, Príncipe has said “The Japanese five elements are, in ascending order of power – Earth, Water, Fire, Wind, and Void”.

D 20 €

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