Fotografien / Photographies / Photographs 1985–1998

Exhibition catalogue of Im Horizont des Objekts. Objekte in diesem Spiegel sind näher als sie erscheinen. Fotografien 1985-1998 / A l'horizon de l'objet : Les objets dans ce miroir sont plus proches qu'ils n'apparaissent : photographies, 1985-1998 / Within the Horizon of the Object: Objects in This Mirror are Closer than They Appear: Photographs, 1985-1998, at the Neue Galerie Graz am Landesmuseum Joanneum (Jan. 9 to Feb. 14, 1999).Trilingual edition in German/French/English.Jean Baudrillard is one of France's leading modern philosophers and has had a tremendous impact on contemporary art. This book presents, for the first time, Baudrillard's own photographs together with his collected texts on photographic theory. He began taking photographs during his travels about twelve years ago, and has taken pictures intensively for the past six years. In his pictures he strolls through the world of objects, looking for insignificant and arbitrary things. According to essayist Peter Weibel, the laconic nature of things is the reason for their beauty, and Baudrillard photographs this beauty in a laconic way -- without the pathos of history, without the constructed objectivity or staging of art photography. His photographic glance literally rests on the surface of objects and celebrates their visual appearance.