Imaginary Club.

Photographs by Oliver Sieber.

Editions GwinZegal&BöhmKobayachi, 2013. 422 pp., color illustrations throughout, 8x10".

Selected as a Book of the Week by Gordon MacDonald

»For many years Oliver Sieber has been asking young people to appear before his camera, people whose clothing is associated with a specific subculture, be it punk, skin, teddy boy, rockabilly, goth, etc. Many are extravagantly styled, yet while sometimes the look is an elaborate act, other times an individual figure’s appearance strikes the artist’s interest. Despite the narrow frame and the precision of the photographic depiction, the form of Sieber’s portraits lends the models a certain freedom. Seemingly lost in their thoughts, staring into the distance, they exude an autonomy, a presence within themselves at the moment when the image is made. This freedom also corresponds to the manner in which Sieber displays the pictures in the most recent presentation of his work. In Imaginary Club the figures are not arranged according to types, instead the photographer combines the images of different color series with black and white shots of street scenes or concerts. In these juxtapositions of different styles and locations he creates an “imaginary club”, a co-existence of diverse styles that define themselves by the way in which they diverge from mainstream society. The fact that the portraits were created in Europe, the U.S. and Japan indicates how the shadowy apparitions of subcultures propagate themselves and are modified in the globalized pop underground.« Florian Ebner, Museum Folkwang
"The first thing that hits you about Oliver Seiber’s new book Imaginary Club is the handsome scale, the weight and the feel of the publication. The second is the rich, pungent smell of printing ink rising from the beautifully printed pages. From the outset it feels (and smells) like a photobook lovers dream. Inside, the mixture of striking colour portraits of the young and the strange, and the dark monochrome photographs of street scenes and nightclub interiors, take you on a journey with Oliver to his Imaginary Club. If I were 20 years younger, I would go there every night." —Gordon MacDonald - See more on the photo-eye blog.

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