Books published by Steidl Publishers

"The most beautiful summers are often also the most painful. We rarely feel more alive. And at the end of those summers, we're reminded all the more strongly that everything passes. Looking at Philipp Keel's new works in Last Summer there is the absence-apart from a single nude-of people. Instead, there are still lifes and above all pictures of palms, pools, drinks, initially seeming cool and summery, as well as many captured moments and incidental poetry. Common to them all is Keel's eye for specific details and moods, and yet on closer inspection melancholy permeates many of his works. At times, the moment has already passed or is only visible on the blurred margins of our consciousness. What remains is a feeling of transience, perhaps even a faint touch of loneliness.One of the great strengths of Keel's works is that they stay subtle and reserved. We each find in them what we wish to find. In some, the melancholy is light-hearted, little more than a gentle, not unpleasant tug at a taut string somewhere deep inside us. In others there is more to it. Last Summer takes us to a threshold: evening has set in, a solitary view from a veranda with a drink in hand, friends laughing in the background as the day's last light fades. In our mind play the images of a day that passed far too quickly, some flickering, some clear. Perhaps we feel briefly wistful, or perhaps we turn around and go back to the others." Benedict Wells

Features an essay on the human and political dimensions of mining in South Africa by Nobel laureate Nadine Gordimer. This book is re-designed and expanded version of the author's influential book of 1973.

Co-published with The Walther Collection, this book is the first to present a comprehensive selection of the work of South African photographer Jo Ractliffe. Looking back over the past 35 years, it brings together images from major photo-essays, as well as early works that have not been seen before. Described by Okwui Enwezor as "one of the most accomplished and underrated photographers of her generation," Ractliffe started working in the early 1980s, and her photographs continue to reflect her preoccupation with the South African landscape and the ways in which it figures in the country's imaginary-particularly the violent legacies of apartheid. In 2007she extended her interests to the war in Angola and published three photobooks on the aftermath of that conflict and its manifestations in the South African landscape: Terreno Ocupado (2008), As Terras do Fim do Mundo (2010) and The Borderlands (2015).

In spring 2020 Edward Burtynsky found himself, like most of us, in lockdown due to the corona pandemic. At the time Burtynsky was in his beloved Grey County, Ontario-an area of wild beauty where he made his earliest photos-and he used his isolation there to reflect and create: with a new camera in hand he began recording nature in images which, in his words, are an "affirmation of the complexity, wonder and resilience of the natural order in all things."Over the past 40 years Burtynsky has compellingly explored the shocking variety and scale of industrialized landscapes, from oil refineries to quarries, from aquaculture to salt extraction. Yet in Natural Order he captures a moment when mankind has been temporarily stopped in its tracks, businesses suspended and economies disrupted-a moment for nature to breathe. These photos of trees and other flora show nature on the dynamic cusp between winter and spring, a time of melting snow, sprouting shoots and the promise of bounty: for Burtynsky, "an enduring order that remains intact regardless of our own human fate."

Survivors. Faces of Life after the Holocaust zeigt frontale, eindringliche Porträts von 75 Holocaust-Überlebenden in Israel. Entstanden sind diese Aufnahmen von Martin Schoeller in Zusammenarbeit mit dem World Holocaust Remembrance Center Yad Vashem mit Blick auf den 75. Jahrestag der Befreiung von Auschwitz am 27. Januar 2020. Diese überwältigenden Bilder halten vom Leben gezeichnete Gesichter jüdischer Frauen und Männer fest, die die Gräuel der Schoa mit angesehen, erduldet und überstanden haben. Sie vermitteln eine Ahnung vom Überlebenskampf und von der außergewöhnlichen körperlichen wie seelischen Zähigkeit dieser Menschen. Aus allernächster Nähe aufgenommen, erzählt uns jedes dieser Porträts von Martin Schoeller eine zugleich individuelle und kollektive Geschichte. Diese Augen betrachten uns, ihr Blick hält den unseren, die Falten dieser Gesichter bezeugen erlittene Qualen, aber auch den Triumph, überlebt und sich ein neues Leben aufgebaut zu haben. Survivors gibt Opfern der Schoa ein Gesicht - denjenigen, die überlebt haben, wie auch den vielen anderen, die nicht überlebt haben, und erlaubt uns als Betrachtern eine große Nähe zu diesen Menschen. Martin Schoellers Fotografien sind der Versuch, das Unbegreifliche für künftige Generationen zu bewahren.

Silent Cities presents Mat Hennek's portraits of some of the world's great cities-from New York, Los Angeles and London, to Tokyo, Munich and Abu Dhabi-yet all curiously lacking people. Conceived and constructed by man as vessels for human activity, these metropolises are transformed by Hennek into monuments of silence: empty, sometimes eerie sites for rituals of work and recreation that are yet to take place. Whether the shimmering windows of a Dallas office building, a lush Hong Kong garden of palms, blooms and fountains, the famed pastel terraced facades of Monaco, or rows of trolleys outside the concrete bulk of Paris' Charles de Gaulle airport, Hennek's pictures demonstrate a consistent formal rigor and recast familiar environments as new sources for focus and reflection.

Born in 1939, Antanas Sutkus learnt of the mass killing of the Jews already during World War II from his grandparents. He felt bitterly opposed to the humiliation and human destruction that occurred in his homeland Lithuania, experiencing shame and guilt for the atrocities committed behind the Vilijampole ghetto gates and the Ninth Fort. During the "Sonderaktion 1005" between 1942 and '44, German occupation forces tried to vanish the relics of the victims. In 1988 Sutkus began photographing the Kaunas Jews who had escaped death in concentration camps; Pro Memoria presents a selection of these portraits, and evidences the relationships Sutkus forged with his sitters.As far back as the time of Grand Duke Gediminas (1275-1341), who invited tradesmen and artisans to Lithuania from various European states, the Jews had been offered protection and support there. Over the next 600 years they took root in Lithuania through their accomplishments and prayers, printing workshops and synagogues, libraries and gymnasiums, song and legends. This vibrant branch of Lithuania's cultural history was then violently destroyed when 200,000 Jews were murdered and thrown into pits on forest edges, quarries and death camps. This book is a tribute to these people, and an expression of attempts at understanding, penitence, purification and rebirth.

Steidl is committed to publishing the ongoing life's work of Massimo Vitali, and Entering a New World, collecting images from 2009 to 2018, is the newest book in this series. Following the first two now out-of-print volumes published together as Landscape with Figures / Natural Habitats, 1994-2009 in 2011, Volume 3 presents Vitali's largescale color images of humans interacting en masse-both consciously and unconsciously-with their environments. Whether relaxing beachside, exploring the ruins of the Roman Forum or navigating a crowded shopping promenade, Vitali's pictures are topographical celebrations and subtle critiques of our changing habits of leisure. The book furthermore traces an important shift in Vitali's practice: his move from large-format film to medium-format digital.

Late in 2016 Chris Killip's son serendipitously discovered a box of contact sheets of the photos his father had made at The Station, an anarcho-punk music venue in Gateshead open from 1981 to 1985. These images of raw youth caught in the heat of celebration had lain dormant for 30 years; they now return to life in this book. The Station was not merely a music and rehearsal space, but a crucible for the self-expression of the sub-cultures and punk politics of the time. As Killip recollects: "When I first went to The Station in April 1985, I was amazed by the energy and feel of the place. It was totally different, run for and by the people who went there. Every Saturday that I could, I photographed there. Nobody ever asked me where I was from or even who I was. A 39-year-old with cropped white hair, always wearing a suit, with pockets stitched inside the jacket to hold my slides. With a 4 × 5 camera around my neck and a Norman flash and its battery around my waist, I must have looked like something out of a 1950s B movie. 1985 was just after the miners strike and there was a lot of youth unemployment. Most of the punks at The Station didn't have a job, and this place, run as a very inclusive collective, was so important to them and their self-worth."