Don't shake

PUBLICATION

DON’T SHAKE LARS MÜLLER PUBLISHER

Zurich photographer Ruth Erdt possesses the ability to describe her world with means beyond her own genre: an extraordinarily striking autobiographical text, together with previously unseen pictures, tells the tale of her personal and artistic development – and that of contemporary photography.

Ruth Erdt’s photography looks for what is hidden, yet the life documented is more than an illustration of intimate reality. That which is private, familiar and individual is an opportunity for interpersonal encounters, a source of fiction or the beginning of a narrative. Hauntingly revealing pictures emerge within the tradition of autobiographical photography – and allow us to see the world anew, with Erdt’s eyes.

The autobiographical text is by no means secondary to the photographic work. Direct, unrelenting language reveals Erdt’s world; she describes her personal and photographic life in tones hard and soft, from her youth to the present day. The slow, painstaking work with negatives, developing in the darkroom, the unique and fragile nature of the material – some of this only emerges in the language. The viewer is not an interloper in this world but a guest, not somewhere foreign but, in fact, at home.

@Lars Müller Publishers 18 × 28,2 cm, 7 × 11 in 272 pages, 121 illustrations hardback 2017, 978-3-03778-540-9, German 40,00 €

@Lars Müller Publishers 18 × 28, 2 cm, 7 × 11 in, 272 pages 121 illustrations, hardback 2017, 978-3-03778-540-9, German 40,00 €