Gerhard Vormwald (1948–2016) created staged and montaged photographs that undermined the documentary claims of the medium. People float, water is consumed from within, and objects perform choreographies impossible to stage in a studio. He reached an international audience in the 1980s, before digital manipulation tools such as Photoshop existed. Hartmann Books published the book in 2019 under the German title ‘Bilderfinder’; the publisher’s English-language page presents it as ‘Image Finder’. The book includes a text by Heinz Norbert Jocks. It offers an overview of Vormwald’s visual worlds, moving from early documentary photographs grouped under ‘On the Road’ through architectural montages (‘Concrete Illusions’), paired images (‘Blind Date Essentials’), still lifes estranged through surreal or negative registers (‘Autonomy of Things’, ‘Black Light’), and a small selection of advertising work. The publisher describes these works as a poetic ‘unrealization’ of the world pursued with fervour.

Jutta Herden designed the volume. It contains 86 illustrations across 160 pages, reproduced in duotone and color, with German and English texts. The book measures 20 × 28 cm and is published in hardcover. The publisher’s page credits Heinz Norbert Jocks as the author of the accompanying text, while Gerhard Vormwald is the photographer. The volume draws on Vormwald’s extensive archive to present a broad view of his found and invented visual worlds.

The publisher attributes Vormwald’s relative obscurity to the sheer bulk of his archive and the difficulty of reducing his work to an easily recognizable trademark. The overview format is intended to make this material more accessible. The publisher lists the book as sold out, with last copies remaining. Exhibition dates of April 13 to June 30, 2019, are not the publication date.