1. Frank Horvat - 50-65 - © Éditions de La Martinière - 2023
Éditions de La Martinière - Book review
As part of the new series of articles dedicated to books and publishing houses, I'm really happy to collaborate with the French publishing house Éditions de La Martinière, who I contacted in early 2023 for a collaboration. For this first review, the publisher and I agreed on a selection of books, and after careful consideration and reading, I am happy to give you my top two readings for these summer months.
The history of the house
The Éditions de La Martinière was founded in 1992, and since it's creation they published a variety of books ranging from children books (which is created in 1995 as Éditions de La Martinière Jeunesse), exhibition catalogs, art books, literature, photography, luxury, cinema, cooking and travelling books, most of them as a project with the house of a museum.
The publisher is known in France and in bookstores due to their "powerful visual writing and identity", but also important publication such as the publication of La Terre vue du ciel by Yann Arthus-Bertrand in 1999. With this publication, the publishing house became quite interest with photography, and it's still one of the focus points of the publications.
In 2006, the publishing house opened up to the gender of fiction with numerous eclectic authors, genre and style, but all driven by a deep personality, a commitment, all linked by a taste for the imagination and their desire to interpret the world.
Nowadays, the publishing house is part of the group Media Participations, the 4th largest publishing group in France.
Lucas's favourite
2. Percevoir - Coco, Capitan - © Éditions de La Martinière - 2023
Percevoir - Coco, Capitan, Coco Capitan and Anne Levine | 120 pages, in color, softcover, 17 x 24 cm
ISBN 979-1-040-1111-53 | French | 2023 |
The collection of photographic books "Percevoir" present emerging talents in photography from Europe and all around the world. Thus, the collection which is directed by Simon Baker, director of the European House of Photography (MEP) present the artist Coco Capitán, which is born in Spain in 1992, but now lives and works in London.
After the artist had studied photography at the University of the Arts in London, she obtained a master's degree in photography at the Royal College of Art, and since then she created various works in various gender such as photography, painting, fresco, text, video and installations, sometimes for her production and sometimes in collaboration with major fashion houses (Gucci, Dior, etc) and prestigious magazines (Vogue, Dazed, etc).
At one point, she became quite an important fashion photographer, a sector with which she collaborates, not without humor and derision.
3. Frank Horvat - 50-65 - © Éditions de La Martinière - 2023
Frank Horvat - 50 - 65, Virginie Chardin, Susanna Brown, Bernard Wooding | 288 pages, in color, hardcover, 24 x 28,5 cm
ISBN 979-1-040-1111-542 | French | 2022 |
The exhibition catalog of the exhibition Frank Horvat, which was presented at the Jeu de Paume in Tours in 2022, and now in the Jeu de Paume in Paris (until the 17.9.2023), present the work of the photographer, and especially the one produced after the Second World War between 1950 and 1965.
The photographer was born in Italy in 1928 to Jewish parents, but short before the war, at the age of eleven the family took refuge in Switzerland. At the age of 22, he started taking photographs of his family, but also the world surrounding him, and after a three year long trip from 1952 to 1955, to Pakistan, India, Israel and England, he received numerous commissions from magazines and newspapers.
During those fifteen years, he creates his own style, managing close-ups of scenes of great intensity and sometimes forbidden places, which will also lead him to create fashion images for Jardin des modes, Vogue, Harper's Bazaar and numerous fashion houses.
Virginie Chardin is an independent exhibition curator, specialist in the history of photography. For the Jeu de Paume, she curated the exhibition dedicated to Sabine Weiss (2016) and that, today, of Frank Horvat.
Susanna Brown is a lecturer at the Courtauld Institute of Art in London. After working at the National Portrait Gallery, she was curator for the photography collection of the Victoria & Albert Museum (London).
