Went for quick visit in Stockholm yesterday and grabbed HANS GEDDA "Dead Plates" book.
c. 100 pages hardcover book, ltd 666. Neat matte print with very smooth tones in black & white images.
What hit me instantly, was the realization that it is nearly identical to some works I have done. Still life images, but with sort of grotesque objects. Dead animals, geometric forms, skulls, bones... In some ways, it seems like things what "anyone" will do at some point of their photography journey, but in the end - how often it is presented in such a neat and stylish art book form?
Livraison has done 2 more artbooks and published 4 issues of their "magazine" (if one can call c. 400 page monsters such..). Issues 1-3 doesn't appeal to me too much, but #4 looks like something I'd like to purchase if such opportunity comes.
http://www.livraison.se/hans-gedda-dead-plates#
http://www.livraison.se/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/Hans–Gedda–Dead–Plates-LB001.pdfQuoteHans Gedda is best known as a portrait photographer. Showing uncommon sensibility for people's character, he captures their faces at the very moment when the internal and external become one. They are always expressive and personal. Something special must have taken place between model and photographer right there and then. It could be described as a disarming combination of trust and concentration.
Another and less recognised side of Hans Gedda's work is his long-term interest in objects – or more precisely, still life. This well-established genre had one of its golden ages in Dutch painting of the Renaissance and Baroque. The motifs are at once strikingly sensual and saturated with symbolism that is more or less hidden. With a dazzling wealth of detail, they display the physical world's visible and tactile surface. They awaken desire, but also open an abyss. The pictures bear witness to the fragility of life and remind the observer of the transient nature of all things.
