Lewis Baltz Livres

Common Objects revisits Lewis Baltz’s most remarkable series from The Prototype Works (1967–1976) to Ronde de Nuit (1992–1995), and interrogates for the first time the influence of European cinema (Antonioni, Godard, Hitchcock) on his work. Baltz’s seminal series The Prototype Works, The Tract Houses (1969–1971), Candlestick Point (1987–1989), Sites of Technology (1989–1991) and Ronde de Nuit are presented in dialogue with stills from several films: Alfred Hitchcock’s Saboteur and Psycho, Michelangelo Antonioni’s Zabriskie Point, La Notte and Red Desert, and Jean-Luc Godard’s Les Carabiniers.

This comprehensive book accompanies the first large retrospective exhibition of Lewis Baltz’s work following his passing in 2014. Lewis Baltz explores the artist’s oeuvre as a complex whole of interrelated series, from his first “Prototypes” and “The Tract Houses” to “Park City,” “San Quentin Point,” and “Candlestick Point” through to “New Sites of Technology” and “Venezia Marghera,” all published by Steidl. The book simultaneously locates Baltz’s work in the context of photography and contemporary art since the 1970s, to fully examine his significant influence and legacy. Baltz is one of the most prominent representatives of the New Topographics movement, which was seminal to the development of conceptual photography. His photo series document the impact of industrial civilization on the landscape, focusing on places outside the bounds of canonical reception: urban wastelands, abandoned industrial sites, warehouses. His photographs uncover the correspondences between everyday spatial forms and the more advanced forms found in art. Baltz’s strategies reflect a deep knowledge of the history of photography and present the photographer as a teacher of seeing who visualizes the world in reductive, often ironic, gestures. Co-published with Fundación Mapfre, Madrid

This is the long-awaited compendium of Lewis Baltz’s writings from 1975 until 2007, drawn from his critical writing for magazines such as Art in America, the Times Literary Supplement, L’Architecture d’Aujourd’hui, and Purple. The book includes Baltz’s texts on Edward Weston, Walker Evans, Robert Adams, Michael Schmidt, Allan Sekuka, Chris Burden, Thomas Ruff, Barry Le Va, Jeff Wall, Félix González-Torres, John McLaughlin, Slavica Perkovic and Krzysztof Wodiczko, among others. This important publication gives Baltz’s literary output the standing it deserves and offers a unique insight into some of history’s leading photographers.

The New York curator Marvin Heiferman characterized Lewis Baltz’s landscape photography as a “topography of the emptiness of random, damaged, remote places”. The images in his 1989 series Candlestick Point show Californian fallow land, where piles of rubble and waste accumulate in the middle of the prairie. Traces of technical land development – drainage channels and water dams – are visible, becoming a typically American theme: the development of a territory in the almost infinite prairie. Baltz’s photographic record of the development at Candlestick Point combines sociological and analytical rigour and is strongly oriented towards the tradition of Land Art, and retrospectively pays tribute to its crucial influence on conceptual art since the 1970s. Candlestick Point was first published in 1989 and has been unavailable for decades, other than as an expensive collectible on the secondary photobook market. Lewis Baltz’s works have been the subject of over fifty one person exhibitions. Seventeen monographs have been published on his work. He came to prominence as a part of the ‘New Topography’ movement of the 1970s. Baltz studied at the San Francisco Art Institute and received a Master of Fine Arts from Claremont Graduate School in 1971. He is currently based in Paris and Venice.

In the late 1960s and early 70s, Lewis Baltz's fascination with the American landscape led to a groundbreaking exploration of urban and suburban environments. His work captured the stark beauty of industrial sites and the impact of development on nature, challenging traditional notions of photography and art. Through a minimalist approach, Baltz's images evoke themes of isolation and the passage of time, prompting viewers to reflect on the changing landscape of America during a transformative era.

Conceived and edited by artist Slavica Perkovic, this book for Lewis Baltz presents letters she asked Baltz_s friends to write to him without seeing the images he had secretly made while teaching in Venice. (Baltz had told all he had stopped photographing; he had in fact continued to do so, walking the empty Lido beach to the Grand Hotel des Bains, then closed for renovation.) The first book of new material by Baltz since his passing in 2014, For Lewis Baltz. 8 + 38 texts.14 images is shaped by the continuing resonance of his oeuvre, his absence and the complex notion of self. Lewis left me negatives that he_d never printed. He knew about this book and asked me to wait four years before bringing it to fruition. Slavica Perkovic

This publication brings together a transcript of a discussion, installation views of the 2013 exhibition as well as an introductory interview with Lewis Baltz by the head curator of Albertina's photographic collection, Walter Moser.This comprehensive compilation enables a well-founded insight into the oeuvre of one of the most multifaceted photographic artists of our time.English and German text.

This much anticipated edition is one of the publishing phenomena of the year, encompassing the oeuvre of one of the most significant artists working with photography in the twentieth century. Limited to 1,100 copies each signed and numbered by Lewis Baltz, this edition contains ten hardback, linen bound volumes, housed in an embossed slipcase. WORKS celebrates Lewis Baltz’s indelible influence on the development of contemporary photography and contains reissues of Baltz’s most significant books, many of which are now collectible rarities, as well as four as yet unpublished projects. Each of the books has been crafted in close collaboration with Baltz, who oversaw each stage of production with Gerhard Steidl. From scanning of the vintage prints, to book design, selection of paper and binding materials, pre-press and printing, Baltz has shaped the form and aesthetic of these publications. Printed in luminous quadratone, WORKS is a testament to the importance of the book as a primary medium in Baltz’s practice. “Baltz’s work exemplifies the ways in which photography, beginning some four decades ago, started to loose the bonds of its isolation within its own segregated history and aesthetics and began to take its place as an equal among other media.” Adam D. Weinberg, Alice Pratt Brown Director, Whitney Museum of American Art.

Foreword by Angela Vettese. Text by Antonello Frongia.