Klaus Staeck - Pornografie - 1971

Klaus Staeck - Staeck: Pornography - Steinbach-Giessen, 1971 - [342]p. - Softcover/paperback - 25 x 20 x 2.7 cm. Richly illustrated with black-and-white grainy photos.

Condition: Light wear and some chipping of the lamination along the edges, as is common. The spine is cracked and the lamination partly loose and a few pages threaten to come away. Otherwise this copy is in good condition. Included in Martin Parr & Gerry Badger, The Photobook, Part II, p. 150-151. Rare collectible object.

This is a stupefying collection of peculiar everyday scenes of violence: press photos of street fights, naked war victims and tortured prisoners are interspersed with staged body-art photos and a wide range of objects, colored by desire, power, exposure and surveillance. With a title that refers to x-rated images and the obscene, the works in Pornography may be far from what a voyeur expects. The book is indeed full of obscene photos, but as philosopher Herbert Marcuse stated: "It is not the picture of a naked woman that is obscene, but that of a general who flaunts his medals earned in an aggressive war." The book is a complete artwork, provocative in every sense of the word, and as an artistic manifest about violence in the twenty-first century it is more relevant than ever, certainly in light of movements such as activist art.

* Klaus Staeck (born 1938) is a German graphic artist. He is known as a politically conscious person and creates satirical prints. Additionally, he runs a publishing house (edition Staeck), which publishes art in series from internationally renowned artists such as Joseph Beuys, Panamarenko, Dieter Roth, Nam June Paik, Wolf Vostell and many others. Often he managed, with his satirical work, to provoke conservative politicians, leading to legal battles, which only heightened his fame. In the 1960s and 1970s his work was very popular among left-leaning circles; today many people create such montages themselves on their computers.