Kosmos

144 pages

73 images

Six variably-sized softcover books housed in a printed and folded portfolio box
28.5 x 37 cm

English
First Edition December 2017

With a box of props, a team of willing humans, some clippings from the garden, and his camera, German photographer Jan von Holleben takes inspiration from Italo Calvino’s Invisible Cities and creates six imaginary worlds – planets, if you will, each as unique and peculiar as the planets circling our sun. In Holleben’s worlds, ghosts flash through the cityscape. Plants cast shadows on the sky. Many places gather in the same place at once. Monsters imitate flowers and flowers imitate monsters. At the center of this otherworldly drama is not the sun, but photography itself. Therein lie the answers to the visual riddles of Holleben’s Kosmos.

The set consists of six books of varying sizes that are housed together in a portfolio box. Each cover carries a single letter of the title, printed in a specially mixed graphite ink. The neutral covers open into the often shockingly vibrant vistas of Planeta Symmatrius, Planeta Visumbra, Planeta Isolametro, Planeta Florala, Planeta Phantafulgeo, and Planeta Microidi.

The edition was designed, printed, hand-folded, and hand-stitched by Nina Holland at Little Steidl.