AHNUNG by Volker Heinze (SIGNED)

Verlag Dirk Nishen, 1989, First edition of 800 copies, 28 pp., 9 3/4" X 11 3/4", Hardcover

Very good + (SIGNED & limited to 800 copies)

One of THE truly great photobooks. Published in 1989 by Verlag Dirk Nishen, in an edition of just 800 copies, the work was made in Berlin while the Wall still cast its Cold War shadow over the city. Heinze, along with fellow German Michael Schmidt, John Gossage (USA) and Paul Graham (UK) were perfecting a new language of photography which is evident here, as it is in Schmidt’s ‘Waffenruhe’ (1987), Gossage’s ‘Stade des Schwarz’ (1987) and Graham’s ‘New Europe’ (1993). All those books are classics, and it’s no coincidence that the four artists were friends.

"About the sense of uncertainty that the advent of this brave new world [after the fall of the Berlin wall] might generate, and also about how colour photographs can be made to reflect feelings rather than just documenting the superficial aspect of things...another remarkable photobook dealing not only with the alienation that many feel in relation to today's world, but also with the unique situation that was Berlin in the time of the Wall." (Parr Badger, The Photobook: A History, Vol. II)

Volker Heinze’s Ahnung (Foreboding) was about Berlin in the late 1980s, when the wall was still up. Great images, shallow focus, details that are pointless to describe: a gate, a pipe’s shadow, a girl’s fingers. But really it’s not about Berlin so much as a state of mind, a point of time in the walled-off city.
We were close friends and shared an apartment in Berlin, working together and roaming the city. I was present when he took many of the images (and am in one). He was around for some of mine, which ended up in my New Europe book, so there is that sweet memory of freedom and fertile youth. He designed the book and struggled to find a way to print it – this was before digital presses, so it was expensive. But he managed. Just 1,000 copies. All gone now.“  -Paul Graham

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