“Anne Collier: Photographic” is published by Hartmann Books to accompany the artist’s solo presentations at the Sprengel Museum Hannover and the Fotomuseum Winterthur, described by the publisher as her first solo museum exhibitions in Germany and Switzerland. The book presents an overview of Collier’s work from the preceding eleven years. Collier, born in 1970 and based in New York, photographs existing pictures: posters and album covers, magazine pages, film stills, and book spreads. She re-shoots these found images and edits them, so that the act of taking a photograph becomes both subject and method.
The selection foregrounds motifs with an intense emotional charge—eyes, clouds, waves—alongside examples of overtly romanticized sexism. By reproducing such material and holding it at a distance, Collier filters out sentiment and pathos without replacing them with commentary. The viewer, whatever their position, is left to take a stance. Her handling of the camera is restrained, the emotional temperature low, and the reflection deliberate. That combination gives the work its particular weight.
The volume is edited by Stefan Gronert and Nadine Wietlisbach, who also contribute texts. The design is by Doug Lloyd of Lloyd + Co, New York. Measuring 22.8 by 30.4 centimeters, with 42 illustrations across 64 pages and a softcover binding, it is conceived as a considered exhibition publication rather than a comprehensive monograph. It is published by Hartmann Books.
For readers, the interest lies in the conjunction: a focused selection from a distinctive body of work, edited by the curators associated with its first German and Swiss museum showings. Collier’s engagement with the photographic medium’s history and with pictures that circulate in daily life has been recognized in international exhibitions at institutions including the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Centre Pompidou, the Fondazione Prada, and the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago. This book documents that thinking at a specific moment, in a form that treats sequence and design as integral to the argument.
