Stuttgart 2016 Photography Exhibition

18 January 2016

The Stuttgart Antiquarian Book Fair is one of the oldest fairs of this kind worldwide. Founded in 1962 and shortly after the first antiquarian book fair in London, it now looks back to 55 successful years of existence.

Exactly thirty years ago, an exciting experiment – a mixture between art performance and historical documentation – took place at the Stuttgart Fair. In 1985, the German photographer Joachim W. Siener set up a photo studio at the fair, and among all the books and business he took portraits of all the 80 exhibitors during the four book fair days. Siener used a special high-format technique of time exposure which had been developed by the photographers of the 1920s with the effect that the pictures have a high artistic quality. They look vivid and “out of life” – like movie stills.

There are many familiar faces among the antiquarian booksellers photographed at the Stuttgart Antiquarian Book Fair thirty years ago: Walter Alicke, Maria Bloch, Dr. Maria Conradt, Charlotte Du Rietz, Gunnar Kaldewey, Dr. Frieder Kocher-Benzing, Louis Loeb-Larocque, Hans Marcus, Klaus Mecklenburg, Fritz Neidhardt, Godebert Reiss, Jörg Schäfer, Hans Schneider, Michael Steinbach, Heribert Tenschert, Frank Werner …

Some of them belong to the grand old times of the trade, some have long inherited their companies to the next generations (who are now exhibiting in Stuttgart), and many others, who were newcomers in 1985, have long become well-known members of the international antiquarian book business.

A Portrait of the Bookseller as a Young Man and Woman - this special photography exhibition during the 55th Stuttgart Antiquarian Book Fair from 29 to 31 January 2016 allows close encounters with the history of the trade, with some of its famous protagonists and, maybe, even with yourself.

A Portrait of the Bookseller as a Young Man and Woman – Portraits by Joachim Siener

Photography Exhibition at the Stuttgart Antiquarian Book Fair

29 to 31 January 2016, Württembergischer Kunstverein, Stuttgart, Germany

A special catalogue including 60 selected photographs (with biographies) and two histories of the Stuttgart Fair written from the perspectives of an historian and of a long-time visitor will be published:

Der Antiquar lässt sich fotografieren. Porträts von Joachim Siener.

Herausgegeben von Eberhard Köstler und Frieder Weitbrecht. Mit Beiträgen von Björn Biester, Wulf D. von Lucius u. a. Verband Deutscher Antiquare e. V., Stuttgart 2016. 148 pp.