Hans Peter Feldmann, ALBUM, 2009

Pin-up girls, weight-lifting studies, newspaper clippings, baby pictures… Hans-Peter Feldmann tells stories with pictures. Accordingly, apart from the title page, this photo album contains no text. Even the frontispiece is a photograph of boxes from Feldmann’s picture archive–amassed over many years and comprising images from magazines, advertising supplements, photography books, postcards and collectibles. Travel photos, family snapshots and pictures of friends play their part as well. In recent years, Feldmann has become increasingly noted for his commentary on the way we archive photos, sending up the everyday from a very personal perspective. He seeks out the trivial incidents, the unnoticed moments, and keeps them close at hand. According to Feldmann, ‘Works of art should not be expensive, nor unique, but cheap and fast to produce. A painting immediately acquires a sort of importance, whereas a photo is much more arbitrary, as it’s a lot easier to throw away.