26.06.2022  •  Events NEWS

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CAMPING  EDITION LAMMERHUBER presents you the sensual-intellectual-pragmatic attempt by Verena Andrea Prenners to artistically comprehend the miscondition of life in refugee camps and make us all accomplices to her sociopolitical studies

After graduating with a degree in sociology, Verena Prenner moved to the Middle East. During her stay, she received a funding grant for a project in the Palestinian West Bank. Out of interest for sociological issues, she chose to live in a refugee camp. Besides working on the project at hand, examining the impact of Israel’s security wall on the living and working conditions of Palestinian taxi drivers, Verena Andrea Prenner was given the opportunity to work as a photographer at Muslim weddings. At the same time, she began studying life in the camp: How did the precarious living conditions affect the individuals? How was the community organized, what were its structures? And how did the life there affect her personally?

Daily routines are shaped by the Muslim culture and religion, a life between haram and halal, what is forbidden and what is allowed. Leaving only minimal individual space, especially for women. Residents were surprised about her, as a single woman, moving into the camp. She was soon seen as an Israeli or Palestinian spy and as an inferior woman.

Countless eyes followed her whenever she left the house. Shortly after she moved in, in June 2014, the Gaza War started. Public life froze. Only protest actions and military operations continued in the camp. Pain, misery and death were everywhere. During this time, a strange bond with the camp community evolved. On the one hand, she still did not understand many cultural and social paradigms, on the other, I felt close to the community on an emotional level

After months there and two more stays in the following years, mutual trust slowly built up. Eventually, she was no longer a stranger, and Verena Andrea Prenner decided to realize a photographic work, not just outside the camp but also inside it. Which raised the big question: What do you show?”

“Who or what surrounds me? Where am I? What challenges am I confronted with? What do I represent as a foreign entity in a closed social structure? Commuting between cultures and different societies: What develops? What was formative? Spontaneous moments, a project idea, ad-hoc statements. After long considerations, conversations and observations on site, I attempted to express my subjectively perceived mood in photographic works. At the end of a several month stay, I had found settings, the costumes had been built; the only thing left to do was to motivate lay people to have their photo taken with them. It quickly proved to be the greatest challenge of all to stage men in public wearing costumes. It was immediately seen as embarrassment of the men by a woman,” says Verena Andrea Prenner.

VERENA ANDREA PRENNER is a sociologist and photographer. For her artistic work, she conducts long-term sociological fieldwork and researches marginal groups, since margins are, after all, what define the middle. From this, she develops ideas as well as individual reflections and views of societies, which she depicts in the form of staged photography with the help of lay volunteers and passers-by on location.

EXHIBITION the photographs of the book are on display in the exhibition CAMPING as part of the Festival La Gacilly-Baden Photo from 9 June through 16 October.

CAMPING – Verena Andrea Prenner . 22.5 × 27.5 cm, 144 pages, 60 photos . German, English . Hardcover . ISBN 978-3-903101-81-4 . EUR 49.90 

GoSee : festival-lagacilly-baden.photo///verena-anderea-prenner & edition.lammerhuber.at//camping
CREDITS
Photographer     Verena Andrea Prenner

 
EDITION LAMMERHUBER presents Verena Andrea Prenner´s “CAMPING“

EDITION LAMMERHUBER presents Verena Andrea Prenner´s “CAMPING“

 
EDITION LAMMERHUBER presents Verena Andrea Prenner´s “CAMPING“

EDITION LAMMERHUBER presents Verena Andrea Prenner´s “CAMPING“

 
EDITION LAMMERHUBER presents Verena Andrea Prenner´s “CAMPING“

EDITION LAMMERHUBER presents Verena Andrea Prenner´s “CAMPING“

 
EDITION LAMMERHUBER presents Verena Andrea Prenner´s “CAMPING“

EDITION LAMMERHUBER presents Verena Andrea Prenner´s “CAMPING“

 
EDITION LAMMERHUBER presents Verena Andrea Prenner´s “CAMPING“

EDITION LAMMERHUBER presents Verena Andrea Prenner´s “CAMPING“

 
EDITION LAMMERHUBER presents Verena Andrea Prenner´s “CAMPING“

EDITION LAMMERHUBER presents Verena Andrea Prenner´s “CAMPING“

 
EDITION LAMMERHUBER presents Verena Andrea Prenner´s “CAMPING“

EDITION LAMMERHUBER presents Verena Andrea Prenner´s “CAMPING“

 
EDITION LAMMERHUBER presents Verena Andrea Prenner´s “CAMPING“

EDITION LAMMERHUBER presents Verena Andrea Prenner´s “CAMPING“

 
EDITION LAMMERHUBER presents Verena Andrea Prenner´s “CAMPING“

EDITION LAMMERHUBER presents Verena Andrea Prenner´s “CAMPING“

 
EDITION LAMMERHUBER presents Verena Andrea Prenner´s “CAMPING“

EDITION LAMMERHUBER presents Verena Andrea Prenner´s “CAMPING“

 
EDITION LAMMERHUBER presents Verena Andrea Prenner´s “CAMPING“

EDITION LAMMERHUBER presents Verena Andrea Prenner´s “CAMPING“

 
EDITION LAMMERHUBER presents Verena Andrea Prenner´s “CAMPING“

EDITION LAMMERHUBER presents Verena Andrea Prenner´s “CAMPING“

 
EDITION LAMMERHUBER presents Verena Andrea Prenner´s “CAMPING“

EDITION LAMMERHUBER presents Verena Andrea Prenner´s “CAMPING“

 
EDITION LAMMERHUBER presents Verena Andrea Prenner´s “CAMPING“

EDITION LAMMERHUBER presents Verena Andrea Prenner´s “CAMPING“

 



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Dear fans of beautiful and sophisticated books,

“An extraordinary publisher, dedicated to little known themes, who presents them with courage and high quality, without descending into stereotypes.” This is how the jury of the FEP European Book Prize of the Year Awards argued their choice of Edition Lammerhuber for Best Publisher 2017, an accolade also awarded to the publisher from Baden bei Wien in the preceding competitions in 2013 and 2015 of this biennial event.

Present on the book market for more than seven years, with a steadily growing programme, we have worked our way to the top – internationally. Your are best at what you love doing. And we love books, we love photography. The photobook is the ideal medium to combine these loves. Photography documents the world in a very particular way and shapes human memory like no other medium does. Our ambition is twofold: We want to publish books with fascinating themes from art and science, with excellent photography, sophisticated texts and brilliant authors, but, most of all, we want to make books that have something to say, books that transport important themes into the heart of society. For us, a book charged with emotional photography is a point of reference for communication that reverberates far beyond the number of sold copies. We believe that we can  make a real impact with a book. For us, a book is not just a commodity but an incomparable cultural technique.

Edition Lammerhuber wants to be the publisher for writer-photographers, for whom seeing is a vocation and whose ways of seeing the world is a process of insights. A process they are capable of transforming into the immediacy of a photograph, a creative act, initiated and completed within seconds or split seconds. As in the motto of Hungarian photographic artist László Moholy-Nagy, who declared, “Photography is there to make the visible visible.” Edition Lammerhuber strives to be home to the best ‘cyclops’ of our time, legends and new talents alike.  

And how does an Edition Lammerhuber book come about? The theme must be important to us, the photography captivate us, there must be something special, magical, in the pictures. Once a decision has been made to publish, the photographer visits us at our publishing house. We go through the photographic material, determine the format of the book, think about a setting to suit the theme. This is when the almost magical process of designing and layouting starts. It usually takes about a week for the concept to be completed to the point where the work of everyone involved can be browsed on-screen, then it passes on to the next steps in the production.

Our declared aim is to approach a perfect book through a passionate creative process. Craft aspects are an essential part of it and of our publishing philosophy. All production steps up to the printing are done in our house. Our own experts produce the prepress. We really care about the reproduction quality of the photographs, the feel of the printed papers and the quality of the binding. We check every single printing form.

So it is hardly surprising that some reviewers call the books of Edition Lammerhuber pieces of art emanating from a ‘book chamber of marvels’ and that nearly all titles gather awards, including those of the Art Directors Club New York, the Deutsche Fotobuchpreis, the Pictures of the Year International (POYI) Awards, USA, the Visa d’or, France, the FEP European Book Prize of the Year Awards or the World Press Photo. Today our books are available in more than 170 countries, usually published in two, sometimes three, languages.

Exceptional photography is not only found in the books of Edition Lammerhuber but also in a photo competition jointly initiated in Vienna in 2013 by Edition Lammerhuber and the Photographische Gesellschaft. Under the general heading What Does Peace Look Like? , the Alfred Fried Photography Award, worth 10 000 euros, chooses the peace image of the year. Participation in the award has exploded in recent years, confirming the status of photography as a medium for transporting essential socio-political themes. From 2017, a separate competition for the peace image of the year is open to children up to the age of 14.

At the biennial LUMIX Festival in Hannover, the Lammerhuber Photography Award for young photo journalists is presented, with a prize money of 5000 euros. Photography and the photobook are an essential, defining, medium for society and for our publishing house. This is why we believe it is important to encourage young photographic talent.

We would be honoured to see our books available from your bookshops and libraries.

Yours
Silvia Lammerhuber and Lois Lammerhuber
Publisher

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