Book Editing

DFA EDITING CHALLENGE

1. Apr 2025

10. Sep 2024

25. May 2024

6. Jun 2023

3. Mar 2023

23. Jan 2023

16. Dec 2022

16. Dec 2022

30. May 2022

31. Mar 2022

14. Jan 2022

30. Oct 2020

Commissions

CALL IT CORONA

Photo book published by Edition Bildperlen
Curated by Wolfgang Zurborn
The publication will be available from mid-October in bookshops
or directly at www.callitcorona.com.

elf uhr elf

For the first time, nine of Cologne’s best-known photojournalists and photo artists have prepared the Cologne Carnival as a as a collaborative photographic art project for the first time: Ute Behrend, Theodor Barth, Thekla Ehling, Dirk Gebhardt, Matthias Jung, David Klammer, Frederic Lezmi, Nadine Preiß und Wolfgang Zurborn

elf uhr elf sympathises with the actors and the festival itself. The Cologne carnival is not only one of the biggest of the republic, but for the Rhinelander it is the pure form of happiness that provides him with lasting strength and energy. The photographers have sought out themes, stories and people that portray carnival as a as a multi-layered, powerful and topical cultural event. They create a modern and exciting picture of the Cologne carnival between the gentlemen’s session and the street carnival, between glimpses into the private world of the club’s chairmen and the public bliss of love, between reality and fairy tale. The photos show the celebration of the little people in the suburbs and the international flair of the Rose Monday procession as well as the mystical, archaic and fantastic of alternative culture.

La Lunga Strada by Monika Barth

Text by Wolfgang Zurborn
The photographs of the series La Lunga Strada by Monika Barth take the viewer on a journey through different frames of mind between faith, love, hope and desperation. The concrete locations of her photographs in Italy, Ukraine, Norway, and Costa Rica merge in the flow of images to form an existential space filled with religious, cultural and political contexts. In their sequencing, however, the photographs do not fit together to form a linear story, a clear message. The often surreal-looking concatenations of motifs and the paradox of the relationships between the different layers of an image rather give the protagonists of this peculiar theatre of real life the freedom to embody a vital spectrum of emotions. It is the precise eye for the special moment, the archaic in the everyday, the expressive voice, the magical idealisation, with which the photographer lends her portraits, street scenes, nature shots, still lifes and architectural details a narrative power beyond all anecdote. With her photographic diary of journeys between 2018 and 2020, she creates a radically subjective document of our contemporary globalised world, in which she abandons any objectifying distance. She is driven by a great empathy for people, and it is her special ability to create a closeness in the foreign. The virtuoso balancing act between document and invention, between realism and magic is what makes the book La Lunga Strada so special.

A World behind Glas by Marie Goslich

Born in Frankfurt (Oder) in 1859, Marie Goslich tried her hand at various things before beginning to work as an “author and editor”. Cited in Berlin’s residents register, this professional title alone is remarkable for a woman of her time. To cap it all, she began training as a photographer at the age of 44 in order to be able to provide her own pictures for her articles. Consequently, she became one of the first professional female photographers in the world. In 2008, a part of her estate which was long thought to have been lost was rediscovered in a guest house in Geltow at the Schwielowsee lake. Some 400 glass plate negatives still exist today, having survived the chaos of two world wars. With social injustice being her main concern, Goslich wrote and illustrated many articles, some of which were quite radical, to address the causes of suffering and misery. Again and again, her works denounce the gap between rich and poor and portray travelling people, street vendors, beggars, ragmen and tinkers. All of her pictures betray her empathy towards her subjects, giving her photos a very intimate and rousing effect. This book makes Goslich’s comprehensive work available to the public 100 years after it was created, celebrating her as a bold pioneer and grande dame of German photojournalism and social critique.

Father, what are you selling?

Ten people and their everyday work photographed by Wolfgang Zurborn

This book is not a textbook or a non-fiction book on professional studies. It is also not a publication that polishes the daily to a high gloss. In ten reportages, ten authors try to capture something of the reality of the working world. What stands behind the job titles - in terms of requirements, goals, personal expectations and disappointments? And how do the people portrayed deal with it? The result is an exciting book that dispels clichés and prejudices. The vet doesn’t fit into any home movie, and for the alternative ensemble of actors, everyday trivia and catastrophes take precedence over artistic success. The pastor has nothing of the world-weary shepherd of souls, but instead fights for his parish with commitment and unconventional (sometimes uncomfortable) methods.

Indirectly, and without a cautionary finger, the book reveals a central aspect of our social life. All those portrayed sell; all offer a benefit - whether as a service or as a product. Selling is the driving force of our economic and social life - in all the variations presented in the book.

Photo books for which I created the image layout or was significantly involved in its creation.

For many publications, I also wrote the foreword or afterword.