Candida Höfer
Libraries
Introduction by Umberto Eco
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| ‘Breathtaking … brings out the scale and beauty of these temples of learning’ | | – The Sunday Telegraph |
Candida Höfer's photographs of libraries are sober and restrained – the atmosphere is disturbed by neither visitors nor users, especially as she forgoes any staging of the locations. The emptiness is imbued with substance by a subtle attention to colour, and the prevailing silence instilled with a metaphysical quality that gives voice to the objects, over and above the eloquence of the furnishings or the pathos of the architecture.
This sumptuous volume contains Höfer’s famously ascetic images of the British Library in London, the Escorial in Spain, the Whitney Museum and the Pierpoint Library in New York, the Bibliothèque nationale de France in Paris, the Villa Medici in Rome and the Hamburg University Library, among others.
Umberto Eco introduces the collection with a witty reflection on the role of libraries in all our lives.
Almost completely devoid of people, as is Höfer’s trademark, these pictures radiate a comforting serenity that is exceptional in contemporary photography.
Candida Höfer is now considered one of the greats of the current international photographic and art community. Thames & Hudson published Candida Höfer: A Monograph in 2003.
Umberto Eco is a philosopher and professor of semiotics at the University of Bologna. His novel The Name of the Rose is an international bestseller.
Also of interest
Candida Höfer A Monograph
Basic Forms of Industrial Buildings by Bernd Becher
The Most Beautiful Libraries of the World
No Man’s Land: The Photography of Lynne Cohen
Books on Fire: The Tumultuous Story of the
World's Great Libraries
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|  |  | | | | ISBN 0500543143 | | ISBN-13 978-0500543146 | | | | 30.0 x 24.5 cm | | Hardback | | 272pp | | 137 illustrations, 137 in colour | | First published 2005 | | | | £45.00 | | | |  | | | | 
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