The book GESAMTKUNSTWERK presents a collection of favorite photos of Lois Lammerhuber from his 10-year cooperation with the Vienna State Opera under the direction of Dominique Meyer: 100 atmospheric and essayistic images give an account of the passionate and creative work going on backstage, which is normally hidden from the audience of the Vienna State Opera. The photos of the book can also be seen in an exhibition at the photography museum ROSPHOTO in St.Petersburg through 19 April, 2020 – and, of course, safely and at a safe distance online here on GoSee.
Together with Dominique Meyer, Director of the Vienna State Opera, multiple award-winning photographer Lois Lammerhuber have created a book for the Vienna Opera Ball each year – the so-called ‘gentlemen’s ball gift’. Each book was dedicated to a facet of the Vienna State Opera as a complete work of art: PASSION dealt with the Vienna State Opera Orchestra, [E]MOTION with the Vienna State Ballet, GLAMOUR with the costume workshops, ON STAGE with the stagehands, HARMONY with the ensemble of the Vienna State Opera, GENESIS with the creation of a premiere, CHORUS with the Vienna State Opera Choir, REPERTOIRE with the repertory of the Vienna State Opera and BEL CANTO with the singers of the 150-year history of the Vienna State Opera.
The new book GESAMTKUNSTWERK presents a best-of from the last 10 years. It also contains ink pen drawings by tenor and State Opera ensemble member KS Benedikt Kobel which illustrate special moments from the seasons under Dominique Meyer’s directorship. The texts were written by dramaturgists Oliver Láng and Andreas Láng as well as ballet dramaturgist Oliver Peter Graber.
LOIS LAMMERHUBER is a photographer and publisher. He has produced more than 1000 reportages, some 250 of which for the magazine GEO. This, plus 80 books and hundreds of magazine covers. He has received numerous awards for his photos, including three times the Graphis Photo Awards for the world’s best photo report of the year. He joined the Art Directors Club New York in 1994.
In 2009, he and his wife Silvia Lammerhuber founded the publishing house Edition Lammerhuber, which has since been honored with more than 200 awards, among others, at ADC New York and the German Photo Book Prize. In 2013, 2015 and 2017, Edition Lammerhuber was awarded by the Federation of European Photographers (FEP) as the Best Photo Book Publisher in Europe.
In 2014 he 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 2018, he became Director of the Festival La Gacilly-Baden Photo.
DOMINIQUE MEYER became Director of the Vienna State Opera on 1 September 2010. He had worked in the cabinet of Minister of Cultural Affairs, Jack Lang, before being appointed, in 1989, as Director General of the Paris Opera, which includes Palais Garnier and Opéra Bastille. From 1994 to 1999 he was Director General of Opera Lausanne, from September 1999 until the end of the 2009/2010 season he worked as general manager and Artistic Director of the Théâtre des Champs-Elysées in Paris. Dominique Meyer will be the general director of La Scala in Milan as of 1 March, 2020.
OLIVER LÁNG was born in Vienna. He studied the violin, musicology, theatre studies, and law. His wide-ranging professional career includes writing reviews of cultural events; work as a lecturer; writing publications; working at the Academy of Sciences and the European Academy for Music Theatre; freelance dramaturgy projects; lecturing at the Institute for Theatre, Film and Media Sciences and the Institute for Musicology at the University of Vienna. He joined the Bundestheater-Holding in 2003 and has been working as dramaturg at the Vienna State Opera since 2007.
OLIVER PETER GRABER is an internationally renowned composer and interpreter of his own works focussing on ballet, solo concerts and experimental music. Some of his compositions of ballet music were performed at the Wiener Staatsoper. He was a university lecturer and is the ballet dramaturg of the Vienna State Ballet.
EXHIBITION:
LOIS LAMMERHUBER – VIENNA STATE OPERA
Museum ROSPHOTO, St. Petersburg, Russia
7 March – 19 April, 2020
GESAMTKUNSTWERK – Vienna State Opera [Backstage]
Lois Lammerhuber, Dominique Meyer
Andreas Láng, Oliver Lang, Oliver Peter Graber, Benedikt Kobel
German | English | French
24 × 32 cm, 200 pages, 112 photos
Hardcover, ISBN 978-3-903101-77-7, € 59.00
CREDITS
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