AUSTRIAN PARLIAMENT – photographer Lois Lammerhuber’s new book pays tribute to this exceptional and freshly renovated building as an art treasure, appearing at EDITION LAMMERHUBER
After nearly five years of construction, the renovation of Austrian Parliament finally came to an end in 2023. Only a few days ahead of its official re-opening in January 2023, Lois Lammerhuber had the honor of capturing each of the more than 1000 rooms in the high house with his camera. Floor by floor, he explored this synthesis of the arts – and found some very surprising perspectives.
A building like a sculpture. A building that is home. A building of democracy formed into architecture. A memorial for peace. The very place where life itself is measured. Renovation equates to preservation of value. But renovation also means modernization. It means redefinition. It means a break with tradition, a caesura. It means pausing at a turning point in time. Like a general pause in a piece of music. The ultimate symbol of the country becomes even more visible. Becomes a building like no other. Radically new. Representatively open to everyone. The ultimate agora for all people. And Austrians. A meeting place. Shaping identity. It is where the life we live together as a community is determined.
The book was created to take readers by the hand, guide them through the building, make them feel at home and familiar with it. This book opens up the house … ‘makes the visible more visible’ through light, perspective, contrast and a mathematical-geometric design language … and makes discoveries where everything seems to already be known. This book was created as a visual contribution to helping all Austrians make the parliament building their parliament.
Lois Lammerhuber is a photographer and publisher. He has produced more than 1000 reportages, 250 of which for the magazine GEO, in addition to 80 books as well as hundreds of magazine covers. His photographs have brought him numerous awards, including three Graphis Photo Awards for the world’s best photo reportage of the year. He joined the Art Directors Club New York in 1994.
In 2009, he and his wife Frau Silvia Lammerhuber founded the publishing house Edition Lammerhuber, which has since garnered more than 200 awards from the Art Directors Club New York and the German Photobook Prize, among others. In 2013, 2015 and 2017, Edition Lammerhuber was chosen by the Federation of European Photographers (FEP) as the best photo book publisher in Europe.
In 2014, Lois Lammerhuber received the Republic of Austria’s Cross of Honor, First Class, for Science and Art, followed in 2017 by the Golden Medal of Honor for Services to the City of Vienna, the Prize for Special Merit for Representative and Media Art by the City of Baden, and the Grand Medal of Honor for Services to the Province of Lower Austria. In 2013, he co-founded the Global Peace Photo Award, which has since been held annually at the Austrian Parliament. Since 2018, he has been the Director of the Festival La Gacilly-Baden Photo. In 2023, Lois Lammerhuber initiated the Open Your Eyes Photo Festival Zurich.
AUSTRIAN PARLIAMENT by Lois Lammerhuber . 27 × 27 cm, 264 pages, 165 color photos . German | English . Hardcover, bound in linen, French fold jacket . ISBN 978-3-903101-96-8 . EUR 49.90
GoSee : edition.lammerhuber.at//parlament-oesterreich
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Photographer Lois Lammerhuber
About EDITION LAMMERHUBER
IT’S ALL ABOUT PASSION ...
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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