French photographer Bertrand Fleuret (born 1969) has made some of the most poetical and beautifully produced photobooks of the past ten years--among them The Risk of an Early Spring and Landmasses and Railways, published by J&L Books, who brings us Fleuret’s latest volume--a continuation of Landmasses and Railway’s exploration of the moods and imagery of imaginary worlds. Several years ago, Fleuret had an unusually intense dream that began with him standing by a wall of dark cliffs. When he awoke, he found that the details of the dream remained oddly vivid, and he decided to reconstruct it in photographs. This volume reproduces the sequence of color photographs along with Fleuret’s account of the dream.
A photograph of an image of a woman with a triangular slice where her eyes should be, a two-page aerial shot of a forest, a train coming straight at us: Bertrand Fleuret's artist's book Landmasses and Railways juxtaposes such enigmatic and striking black-and-white images to create a pleasantly unsettling, difficult-to-decipher narrative. Edited by photographer Jason Fulford, whose own influential publications are helping to define a new generation of photobooks, this exquisitely designed 200-page volume is dreamlike, taking us on a journey through rural and urban landscapes, construction and decay, chaos and clarity.
Bertrand Fleuret, currently based in Berlin, was born in Versailles in 1969. His first book, The Risk of an Early Spring, was published by Artimo in 2004 and described thus by photo critic and publisher Darius Himes: "From the minute you open the book, you are the eyes and mind of Fleuret, a participant in a tightly edited stream-of-consciousness exercise."
Published by Artimo. Edited by Niek van Lonkhuijzen. Essay by Lorenzo Rita.
Is this a book about the environment? Is this a book about people and their relationships? The beautiful, strange and often cryptic black and white images within suggest that it is a bit of both: here we see hedges of flowers, and the view from an airplane; a mountain range, and a girl alone in a booth. As our physical world becomes increasingly out of synch, so too do human cycles and interactions. Essayist Lorenzo de Rita writes, “This year, like every year, spring has sprung. But not when it was supposed to... As temperatures of the earth and the oceans are rising, ecosystems go nuts... That's the world where we live now... Wrong timings, missed encounters, unclear destinations: that's the early spring of the human species. Self-contemplation is not allowed, as we rush to the next fraction of an instant, at the speed of a hiccup... Next year will spring again... let's synchronize our watches.”
PUBLISHER Artimo
BOOK FORMAT Hardcover, 7.75 x 10 in. / 200 pgs.
PUBLISHING STATUS Pub Date 3/15/2005 No longer our product
DISTRIBUTION D.A.P. Exclusive Catalog: SPRING 2005 p. 76
PRODUCT DETAILS ISBN 9789085460060TRADE List Price: $49.95 CAD $67.50
Bertrand Fleuret: Landmasses and Railways
Bertrand Fleuret: The Risk Of An Early Spring